‘Swapped’ Composer Siddhartha Khosla Used Music From Every Continent For Netflix’s Animated Adventure – Sound & Screen Film

Netflix and Skydance’s animated film Swapped is set in a world like our own but different. A bird and a forest creature swap places, and the voices of Michael B. Jordan, Juno Temple, Tracy Morgan and more bring an alternate world to life.

At Deadline’s Sound & Screen Film, composer Siddhardtha Khosla explained how he gave director Nathan Greno and producers John Lasseter and Mary Ellen Bauder Andrews a sense of the score on their first Zoom call.

“My knee-jerk reaction was, and then we really did do this, is that we should create an alternate Earth with different continents,” Khosla said. “Let’s create a musical language for each of those continents representing each of the ecosystems where they’re all from.”

The instruments came from the real continents and the score was ultimately played by a 90 piece orchestra, including the harmonium which Khosla played onstage for Sound & Screen.

“We’d have the Indian violins, we would have the English violins,” Khosla said. “They were always playing the way they play, the same themes.”

The score was mixed at Abbey Road with some of the same engineers who mastered The Beatles’ albums. Khosla brought his family.

“My kids came to it,” he said. “They got to meet the Beatles engineers; some of them mastered the records who worked on this film. It was really special for my kids. They got to watch us work the mixer.”

Khosla represented world music on stage too. He wore a kurta, a South Asian tunic, which reminded him of a formative experience.

“The last time I wore this kurta and [played] that harmonium on stage at the same time was in eighth grade,” he said. “As a kid I grew up singing Indian music. I was this dorky Indian kid going to a new school in eighth grade and I got to this new school and there was a cultural diversity day. I got up, I sat on the floor with my harmonium in a khurta and I sang a Hindi song. That’s what actually gave me confidence to keep on making music because people recognize what made me different made me special.”

Khosla also dedicated his outfit and performance to the Democrats’ midterm election victories last week.

“This is also in honor of this incredible week that just happened,” Khosla said. “Whether you’re red or whether you’re blue, whether or Black or white or brown or every color of the rainbow, this week is a huge achievement for our society.”