HIVE INDUSTRY SESSION #04: Breathing Life Into Stories Through Music and Visuals - Molfa Music

Molfa Music, co-founded by Dheer Momaya, Dar Gai, and Pranit Sahni, blends music and visuals into immersive storytelling. From Gini’s multi-city tour to Raman’s introspective debut, their journey includes talent-first artistry, nostalgia-driven aesthetics, and crafting multi-sensory experiences.

HIVE INDUSTRY SESSION #04: Breathing Life Into Stories Through Music and Visuals - Molfa Music

Edited by Shashwat Hota & Yatin Srivastava

Focused on discovering raw talent and shaping their artistic vision, Molfa Music is synonymous with storytelling that seamlessly blends polished music, impeccable visuals, and an artist’s unique essence. In this conversation, we dive into the journey of Molfa Music and its creative forces — Dheer Momaya, Dar Gai, and Pranit Sahni, as they reflect on their mission, artists, and innovative approach to music and visuals.

From Dheer’s early inspiration from the narrative depths of classic albums like ‘Houses of the Holy’ to the collaborative magic behind projects like Prateek Kuhad’s ‘cold/mess’, Molfa has redefined how music and storytelling coexist. With Gini’s groundbreaking multi-city tour marking a first for the label, the team discusses their efforts to create not just songs but entire worlds for their artists, infused with mythology, sensory experiences and powerful narratives.


Srishti Das: What is your earliest memory of interacting with music that made you want to have a career in this space? 

Dheer Momaya: I am an old soul when it comes to my music, with my playlists filled with songs from before my time. Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Stones, Bob Dylan, and Creedence Clearwater Revival are some of my staples. What got me so excited to do something in music was the first time I heard Led Zeppelin's ‘Houses of the Holy. I was about 14 or 15 years old when I listened to  it for the first time, cover to cover, that too on vinyl owned by my friend’s father. There were three acts in the music that correlated to my love for film and storytelling, within the narrative that was put out. Albums like Yellow Submarine’ by The Beatles, too, had a similar concept of an idea, conflict and  resolution. With ‘Houses of the Holy’ specifically, there is such a strong, through-line narrative that inspired me.  

Later, I discovered an old interview with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, discussing what the album meant. I was blown away. I had never thought that music was written with such depth of intentions. This felt right up my alley and every time I went abroad, I would buy books for the folklore they were trying to build with it. That was my first deep dive into music. 

Srishti: You talked about your love for films, which takes me to my next question. Tell me about the journey of ‘cold/mess’ and Jugaad Motion Pictures. 

Dheer: When we started with Jugaad Motion Pictures in 2016, our dream was to put our stories on the big screen for a shared, communal experience. We were lucky to have our first feature film distributed internationally, eventually getting acquired by Netflix for India. But our films weren't being distributed in India to our core viewer base. While we had backing from Netflix and Anurag Kashyap, we were not getting wide viewership, which came purely from a distribution standpoint.

It was coincidental that when we started thinking about short format work, Prateek Kuhad reached out to us with  cold/mess’. As an "old soul", I hadn't paid attention to the Indie scene and the Independent singer-songwriters in India or America. So, when Prateek reached out and I heard the song, I recognised Prateek as a deep reflection of a storyteller. There were fans of this kind of music and story-telling. Prateek had an idea working off the album artwork, of these two people who are suffocating each other underwater, which was a great starting point on which to expand. We thought of making it a wider narrative, the kind that we used to see during the ITV days. Prateek loved the idea. 

Regarding casting, Jim Sarbh and Zoya Hussain were our first choices based on their theatre experience and having worked with us on our first feature, the workshops for which came to good use while shooting the video.

With the screenplay, we tried to create a powerful sense of nostalgia based on the youthful and offline romances that took place in our early and late teens. Hence, we decided to shoot it on film. It was a long time since anyone had shot anything on film, which was a logistical nightmare. The whole thing was quite a nerdy affair where even Prateek chimed in as he used to shoot a lot on 35mm. A small team and the label not getting involved were required for creativity to flourish freely!  

Srishti: Dar, would you like to add to Dheer’s views? 

Dar Gai: Creating the film began with Prateek’s idea of the song, which is about toxic relationships. When you come to Bombay for the first time and are dating for the first time, everything is new. Every car ride is associated with a new city, new relationships and those terrible texts that you get from your boyfriend or ex. That idea of a living and breathing city, which is not yours, when your young spirit is trying to conquer it, while also trying to conquer the relationship – I wanted to capture that in the film.  

Prateek discovered us after watching the trailer of Teen Aur Aadha. He got inspired by the long-take visuals and moving through different rooms with completely different atmospheres. Interestingly enough, that idea of bridging cinema and music followed us throughout and brought us to Molfa as a label because, for us, it was never only about music. 

For us, it was about a film you imagined while listening to the music, where it's not just a story, just random visuals, or just performance videos, but a story you play in your brain while listening to the song. I remember coming up with ideas in this way for all the videos I’ve made. And I was just listening to the song repeatedly, completely relaxed and just waiting for those visuals to come to me. I knew that the visuals which came, if it were something that would bother me or give me anxiety, inspiration, or empathy; people would feel that as well. 

Srishti: What was making it to the year-end Obama list like for you? 

Dheer: I would give that accolade more to Prateek than to us. He would feel more at being on that list. What it did prove for us, though, is that good music, good video, good IP, and good art always have a long-term legacy, a long tail end. You never know when a good song or piece of art will pop up. Social media has been reflective of this. The Obama list came two years after the song was released, after the music video did what it did and after all the love that poured in, the fresh wave of love and discovery that came after the Obama list was so exciting. That was the contribution of the Obama list to ‘cold/mess’.

Shashwat: As Dheer mentioned, during the pre-internet era, we did not have information regarding a song or an album. Today, there's so much information that you can go to the internet and read everything about the music, the album, and the artist. How important are these self-interpretations by listeners or viewers? 

Pranit Sahni: Self-interpretation is the most important as it helps make something unique. Not many filmmakers or artists do breakdowns of what went through their minds while creating something. One of the best examples is a music video we did for Vayu in 2020 for the song ‘Baatein Karo’, which was his first video with Sony Music. When he played the song, his interpretation was about a shy guy who is not able to talk to someone that they like. While our starting ideas were along those lines, a couple of listens later, we could make it stand out with a new interpretation of what the phrase ‘Baatein Karo’ means. This led to the idea of a couple dating for so long that they have forgotten what it is like to just have a conversation. And that added a whole new layer and meaning to the song.  

Whenever we get a track, we look at it from an audience perspective and who's listening to it for the first time. We look at making our interpretation special. We let the song be the background score to the short film we want to tell and not make a literal translation of what the song says.

Srishti: How did Molfa come into being? What is the story behind artists like Gini, Raman, etc.? 

Dar Gai: The idea was to create a label that doesn't just make music, but creates stories, mythology, that when you listen to the music it's not just music, it comes with so many senses, contexts, motives, visual associations and we try to capture it by creating an entire world with different interpretations, visuals and photo shoots. Whenever we put out any work of our artists, it’s a puzzle to the bigger picture or the bigger mystery of the artists. When we started thinking about Molfa, it was along the lines of creating spaces where artists can experiment and we can create new visuals and music. Hence, the label is not just a place where we're putting out the music, but it's a place where we're putting out all possible and impossible senses. 

Dheer: Molfa is Dar’s baby. She approaches her ideas with dream-like optimism and I figure out the viability and business end of things. Pranit, although not technically, is the lead A&R with his ear on the ground, constantly listening to artists live and going through social media profiles. Because of that, a lot of our artists have been found by Pranit and Dar. This is how our process works. It is Dar’s taste and ability to figure out the artist’s path and it is finally her decision when it comes to signing an artist or what songs to put out. 

Jafa and Raman were a product of a casting call before Molfa was born. The casting process involved us going to the grassroots level to find new talent without the help of a casting director. A team of 15 people went across North India and taped almost 22,000 people for 12 spots. A take, on average, was 18-22 minutes long, with applicants answering certain questions. Every person at Jugaad was tasked with watching the tapes and hats off to Dar, who reviewed almost all the tapes. One of the questions was to see what other things the person could do. Through this process, we found a lot of talent, including Raman and Jafa who are both Molfa artists now. From these tapes, we found such incredible untapped talent, with beautiful voices and great writing ability, who would not have been noticed otherwise by big labels. This led Molfa to become a talent-first label, where we try to identify young talent who have never had the opportunity to be discovered. 

Then we found Gini, an intelligent, deep-thinking songwriter with a sharp mind and incredible work ethic. Early on, Dar asked her to write music in Hindi to be discovered and grow in her primary market and create social media content to expand her engaged community online. Gini’s initial collaborations, how she positioned herself and how she captured the attention of these young listeners and viewers early on are commendable! Her meteoric rise on social media was complimented by the music that she was putting out. The growth in the first three releases that she did with Molfa has been huge. That gave us confidence to put our time, effort and love behind her music. 

Srishti: Gini went on her first multi-city tour which seemed successful. How was that? What are you looking forward to this year?

Dheer: I was incredibly excited about Gini’s seven-city tour —  a first for Molfa. Since I watched videos of artists like Elvis or Johnny Cash touring across America, I’ve dreamed of taking our circus-like experience across India, especially to non-metropolitan cities, where I believe the future of Indian music culture lies. While this tour focused on cities with the biggest expected footfall, our long-term goal is to expand into smaller towns and bring that music culture to those areas.

Dar: I was also excited to see how Gini connects with her audience during the tour. I'm looking forward to her collaborations with some really interesting artists. Beyond that, I’m eager to hear new tracks from Raman and other artists pushing boundaries and experimenting with their music. For me, talent, skill and hard work are the foundations of a successful artist and we will be looking out for such artists to sign for Molfa.

Pranit: I’m a mix of Dheer and Dar’s perspectives. For me, the most exciting part is seeing the direct correlation between an artist’s visual identity and their live performance. So far, we’ve focused on creating music videos. Still, the intention behind launching our label was to be part of every step of an artist’s journey, curating every element that represents them. I was thrilled to see how this tour amplified that vision and I’m eager to discover more talent we can collaborate with.


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Hivewire is an independent music industry publication launched in June 2023 by Srishti Das and supported by Akriti, Shashwat Hota and Yatin Srivastava. This dynamic newsletter offers a unique perspective on the music industry, focusing on emerging markets and the rapidly growing music cultures gradually making their mark globally.