Sebastian D'Souza

Sebastian D'Souza (29 January 1906 – 9 March 1998) was an Indian music arranger in the Bollywood music industry, considered to be the master of fusing Indian music with European classical music concepts of harmony, cadence and obbligato. He is largely responsible for changing the entire harmonic structure of the Hindi film song to create an extremely listenable full body of sound behind the voice of the singer.

Sebastian was very competent in creating counter-melody which became popular from 1950 onwards and Sebastian became a well-known and the most wanted Music Arranger of many music directors of Hindi Film industry. Since 1951 till 1975, he was a permanent Assistant to Shankar–Jaikishan along with Datta Ram.

Bollywood career
He started his career as a Music Arranger in 1948–49 with O. P. Nayyar. Sebastian's role got noticed during the making of Raj Kapoor's Aawara (1951).

Providing violin obbligato at the background, preparing counter melodies for the bass cello, use of choir techniques in employing voices in Indian chorus singing, sparing but significant use of sonorous church organ, refining cordial harmonies suitable for Indian composers could be noted as features of Sebastian's contribution to the Hindi film music