In 2024, composer Kalaisan Kalaichelvan (pronounced kah-LAY-zun, kah-lay-CHEL-vin) found himself working for one of TV’s big machines, Netflix. He was tasked with composing the soundtrack for its 10-episode narrative series BET (a live-action adaptation of the popular Japanese manga and animé, Kakegurui – Compulsive Gambler). It was an opportunity Kalaichelvan never thought he’d get, even going so far as informing his agent not to submit his work. She, wisely, thought otherwise, helping him snag the coveted position. Once on board, Kalaichelvan learned one thing quickly: dive in and get swimming.
“I was really surprised by just how quickly things move at Netflix,” explains the warm, jovial Kalaichelvan, who splits his work time in between Toronto and New York City. “There’s a lot of material that happens in a condensed amount of time. And you don’t have the luxury of over-thinking; you can’t be the one that gets in the way.
Select the image to access the official BET trailer
“There’s a temptation for young composers – we’re artists, and we want to behave as artists – to get in our own way. What you need to understand is that there’s a job to do, and you have to do what serves the work best, and be sharp and quick about it. That means doubting yourself less; there’s no room for doubting yourself. You were brought on to this project for a specific reason, because you’re good at the things that you do, and that’s what they want you for. So, trust your instincts and get that stuff down on paper. Themes, cues, need to come together more quickly. And commit to the ideas, because committing is the hardest part of the process.”
A pre-teen Radiohead fan, with a love of books and film, Kalaichelvan recalls listening to Western Classical music, alongside South Indian Carnatic music. “I grew up in different places, different spaces of being, and [with] different languages,” he says. “And as I got older, I became interested in how ideas travel. And, when they travel, how they sort of disrupt each other, and how they get lost in translation. When things get lost in translation, they become something else, and I think we see that in music very often. I’m just really interested in how these things move between the boxes that we usually put them in.
“And that applies to the music, but also culturally. I was born in Toronto, but my parents came from Sri Lanka during the middle of the Civil War and genocide that was happening there. They bring a lot of things with them, and they try to pass on these things, and certain things get lost, and other things get added. I think a lot of what I try to do with my work kind of deals with that, not in a literal way, but in layers. And they keep changing. And we’re changing as we’re processing those things in our own work. And the way we inevitably pass them on.”
Still in the relatively early stages of a film and TV scoring career, the former biochemist – who quit his job during the pandemic in order to pursue full-time composing – has had his music performed by the Glenn Gould New Music Ensemble, MACE, the Dior Quartet, the NMC Ensemble and Extended Music Collective. He was named one to watch by daily Canadian classical music newsletter Ludwig Van as one of “six emerging Canadian composers to keep an eye on,.” And he earned one of SOCAN Foundation’s 2023 Emerging Composer Awards, and its 2024 Kathleen McMorrow Award. A few years later, Kalaichelvan found himself, instead of scoring the intimate feature films Flames, This Place, Shook, and Seahorse, sending e-mails to collaborators in L.A., with 20 people CC’ed.
“We’d be working three episodes at a time, every week, and going through many layers of notes”
“[With] independent films, the team that’s cooking is smaller,” says Kalaichelvan. “It’s me and the director having the conversation. We’re the ones involved in creative, and there’s a lot more room to try things out. We get to just experiment, [and] throw paint against the canvas until we land on what the sound is.
“With something as big as Netflix, they’ve already got everything locked in advance, and it happens very quickly. With BET, we’re spotting an episode with the whole production team, deciding where we want music, what kind of music, and what kind of themes. We’d be working three episodes at a time, every week, and going through many layers of notes. There’s the director’s thoughts; the Netflix music team’s thoughts; there’s the Netflix executive’s thoughts. We’d have spreadsheets with ten different columns of opinions.
Select the image to access the video of the Kalaisan Kalaichelvan’s “Concentric Vices”
“And it’s wall-to-wall music. It’s not like a drama, where you just have occasional dramatic music. From the beginning to the end, it’s fully scored. It was quite a lot in the beginning to find the workflow for it. But once we found the show’s sound, which is usually the most difficult part, then the floodgates opened.”
Kalaichelvan also recently added the Amazon documentary ROMCON: Who the F**k is Jason Porter?, helmed by Taking Care of Maya director Henry Roosevelt, to his resumé. “He reached out to me personally, I guess he heard about my work,” says the screen composer. “He sent me an e-mail, we started chatting over the phone, and it came together.”
As Kalaichelvan now readies himself for BET’s Season Two, he’s prepared to enjoy the ride. “The beautiful thing about TV is that it’s not just a two-hour movie,” he says. “You now have 10 hours to develop themes, extend them, and connect different characters together. You learn that this is a craft, and you have to show up to the table every day and write. There’s no time to pontificate and get lost.”