Every time an old song kicks in, something is happening on screen that the song is not just accompanying, it is explaining. The music is not decoration. It is doing the heavy lifting that dialogue sometimes cannot.This is not accidental. Dhar grew up listening to music from across decades, across languages, across borders. That listening went somewhere. It went into two films that have collectively changed how an entire generation thinks about old Hindi songs, Punjabi folk, Sufi qawwali and even Algerian Raï music.Here is how he did it. Scene by scene. Song by song.

DHURANDHAR 1 (2025)

Na To Caravan Ki Talash Hai - The Introduction That Stopped Theatres

When Aditya Dhar needed to introduce Hamza Ali Mazari to the world for the first time, he did not reach for something new. He went back to 1960.

Na To Caravan Ki Talash Hai, the legendary qawwali from Barsaat Ki Raat, originally sung by Mohammed Rafi, Manna Dey, Asha Bhosle and others, had been sitting quietly in the Saregama catalogue for 65 years. Dhar and composer Shashwat Sachdev pulled it out, rebuilt it into Ishq Jalakar - Karvaan, and placed it under Ranveer Singh's grand entry sequence as Hamza.

The choice made complete sense. The original qawwali is about surrender, to a higher calling, to fate, to something far bigger than any one person. Hamza's entry is about exactly that. He is a man who has given everything to a cause that will never put his name anywhere. The music communicated in seconds what pages of dialogue could not.

The same song family gave Dhar a second moment. Yeh Hai Ishq Ishq, another track from Barsaat Ki Raat with Sonu Nigam's vocals - plays just before the end credits. Same source, completely different register. A film that opened with fire and closed with something aching and quiet, held together by a 65-year-old song.

Hawa Hawa - Sanjay Dutt Walks Into a Desert and Rewrites the Room

Pakistani singer Hasan Jahangir's 1989 superhit Hawa Hawa plays during SP Aslam's introduction - Sanjay Dutt set against a stark white desert, wiping out drug smugglers, immediately establishing himself as a force nobody should get in the way of.

The song itself carries layered history - its tune rooted in a 1970s Persian track. A Persian melody, adapted by a Pakistani artist, is used to introduce a character embedded in Karachi's criminal underworld. The geography of the song matched the geography of the film without a single line of explanation needed.

When Hawa Hawa kicked in during that sequence, theatres across the country reportedly went electric. That is what a perfectly placed old song does - it does not just set a mood, it creates a shared memory between the screen and everyone watching it.

Rambha Ho Ho Ho - A Wedding, A Gunfight, and Bappi Da's Beat

Rambha Ho Ho Ho from Armaan (1981), composed by Bappi Lahiri and sung by Usha Uthup, is one of those tracks that lodges itself in your brain whether you want it to or not. Loud, brassy, built entirely for celebration.

Dhar placed it during the wedding sequence where Hamza tries and fails to protect Rehman Dakait's elder son Naieem Baloch from Babu's men. People are dancing. Music is playing. And then violence tears through the middle of it all.

The song does not stop when the shooting starts. That is the point. Bappi Da's relentless beat continues playing over death and chaos. A festive song becomes something deeply unsettling. Life keeps going even when terrible things happen inside it - and that dissonance is exactly what Dhar was after.

Na Dil De Pardesi Nu - The Soul Underneath It All

The Dhurandhar title track samples a 1995 Punjabi folk song by Muhammad Sadiq and Ranjit Kaur alongside the 2003 Panjabi MC remix Jogi. Both songs at their core are about longing - a heart given away to someone far from home, distance that cannot be measured in miles.

Just before the climax, as Rahman Dakait realises inside a car that Hamza has been deceiving him all along, this melody rises again underneath the tension. Every time it surfaces in the film it is a quiet reminder of everything Jaskirat Singh Rangi has surrendered - his name, his family, his home - for a mission nobody will ever officially acknowledge.

Dum Maro Dum - A Man Living Completely Outside the Law

Asha Bhosle and R.D. Burman's iconic track from Hare Rama Hare Krishna carries an entire world with it - the 1970s, rebellion, a freedom that operates outside of everything sanctioned and official.

Dhar placed it at a moment where Hamza is most completely swallowed by the underworld. Surrounded by gangsters, deep inside a world running on its own rules and codes, far removed from anything resembling normal life. The song is about intoxication in its broadest sense. The scene is about a man so intoxicated by his mission that he can no longer tell where the role ends and where he begins.

DHURANDHAR: THE REVENGE (2026)

Dil Pe Zakham Khate Hain - Nusrat Opens the Film

Right at the very beginning of Dhurandhar: The Revenge, before the audience has even settled, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's 1977 qawwali Dil Pe Zakham Khate Hain plays during Hamza's introduction sequence.

It is a bold opening statement. Nusrat's voice is not subtle - it fills whatever space it occupies completely. Placing it at the very start of the sequel told the audience immediately that this film was going to be heavier, darker and more personal than the first. The qawwali is about wounds that keep bleeding. Hamza at the start of The Revenge is exactly that - a man carrying wounds from the first film that have not healed and are about to get worse.

Aari Aari - Vengeance Has Ancient Roots

Bombay Rockers took a traditional Punjabi folk tune in the early 2000s and gave it a pulse that stuck in people's heads for years. Dhar brought it back for the sequel's most visceral action sequence - the moment where Jaskirat stops being purely a state asset and becomes something far more raw and personal.

His family was destroyed. When he finally unleashes in this sequence, the folk music underneath him is not just an action beat. Folk songs carry memory - the weight of land, of ancestry, of pain that runs deeper than any mission briefing. The song reconnects him to something older and deeper than anything a government handler ever gave him.

Hum Pyaar Karne Wale - Udit Narayan in the Middle of an Abduction

Udit Narayan and Anuradha Paudwal's beloved track from the 1990 film Dil plays during the intense jail transfer and abduction sequence involving Jaskirat. A song associated with romance, with warmth, with two people in love - playing over a scene of capture and danger.

That gap between the song's emotional world and what is happening on screen is deeply deliberate. Dhar has used this technique across both films - taking music that carries one set of associations and placing it inside a completely opposite context. The result is a tension that straightforward action music could never create.

Didi - Algeria Meets Balochistan

Khaled's Didi is a 1992 Algerian Raï song that crossed every border it encountered after its release and became a global phenomenon. It has nothing to do with Bollywood or South Asia on the surface.

Dhar used it for Jaskirat's Sher-e-Baloch entry - the scene where the community he has spent years living among gives him a title, claims him as their own, and celebrates him as the Lion of Balochistan.

A man who has had no real name, no official existence, no identity that any government will acknowledge - in this one moment, people give him something genuine. And a 1992 Algerian song is what plays underneath it. The reach of that choice - across language, continent, genre and three decades - is what separates a filmmaker who uses music from one who truly understands it.

Tamma Tamma Loge - Bappi Lahiri at the Worst Possible Moment

This is the most audacious musical decision across both films. Tamma Tamma Loge from Thanedaar (1990) - Bappi Lahiri and Anuradha Paudwal at their most infectious, a song built for a dance floor, for celebration, for joy. It is one of the most recognisable feel-good songs of its era.

Dhar placed it over the assassination of SP Chaudhary Aslam. Sanjay Dutt's character - one of the most beloved presences across both films - is killed during this sequence.

You know the song the second it starts. Your body remembers it. Every association you have with it is about fun and energy. And on screen, a man you have spent hours with is being taken away from you. The song refuses to let you grieve cleanly. It does not give you the solemn orchestral score that would make the sadness simple and straightforward.

It gives you Tamma Tamma instead. And somehow that hurts more.

Tirchi Topi Wale - One Song, One Secret, 45 Years of Waiting

This is the most emotionally loaded placement in both films. Oye Oye... Tirchi Topi Wale from Tridev (1989), originally sung by Amit Kumar and Sapna Mukherjee, plays during the climax flashback - the moment when Jameel Jamali's entire hidden story is finally revealed. Who he really was. What he actually did. How he poisoned Bade Sahab - the film's version of Dawood Ibrahim. The biggest secret of the entire duology is told through a flashback while a 1989 dance number plays over it.

Sapna Mukherjee's original voice was kept completely intact. No new singer. No remix. The same recording from 1989, placed inside a 2026 spy thriller, asked to carry the weight of 45 years of secrets.

That is what makes it unforgettable. A song about swagger and tilted caps becomes, in this scene, the sound of a lifetime of deception finally coming into the light. Every person who grew up with that song heard it completely differently in that moment. Sapna Mukherjee herself said it - the voice was the same, the soul was the same, but the emotion shifted entirely because of the scene around it.

Man Atkeia Beparwah De Naal - Nusrat Closes the Story

After the credits roll, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan returns one final time. His 1992 qawwali Man Atkeia Beparwah De Naal plays over the post-credit scenes showing Jaskirat's early training - the gruelling military preparation, the building of an identity that does not exist, the making of a spy before he ever set foot in Pakistan.

Dhar bookended the sequel with Nusrat. He opened it with a wounded qawwali and closed it with one about a heart hopelessly attached to something it cannot let go of. A man's entire journey - from raw recruit to the most buried deep-cover agent in the story - framed by the same voice. The same voice that has been singing about devotion and sacrifice for centuries before either of these films existed.

What Aditya Dhar Actually Did

Look at the full list across both films and a pattern becomes impossible to ignore. He went to 1960 for a qawwali. To 1971 for Helen's cabaret number. To 1977 for Nusrat. To 1981 for Bappi Lahiri and Usha Uthup. To 1989 for Tirchi Topi Wale and Hawa Hawa. To 1990 for Tamma Tamma and Hum Pyaar Karne Wale. To 1992 for both Khaled's Didi and Nusrat again. Until 1995 for Punjabi folk.

No genre repeated. No era repeated. No mood repeated.

And in every single case, the song was earning its place on screen. It was telling you something about the character, the moment, the emotion - something that screenplay and performance alone could not fully deliver.

An entire generation that had forgotten Tamma Tamma is listening to it again. People who never knew Sapna Mukherjee's name now do. A 65-year-old qawwali from Barsaat Ki Raat is on Spotify playlists made by 22-year-olds. Hawa Hawa trended for weeks. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was being searched by teenagers who had never heard his name before.

That is not marketing. That is not nostalgia bait. That is a filmmaker who understood that great music never actually ages - it just waits for the right scene to find it.

Aditya Dhar gave those songs their scenes. And the songs gave his films their soul.

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