Gori Re is a song from 2004 British-American film Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair (2004 film)

Vanity Fair is a 2004 British-American costume drama film directed by Mira Nair and adapted from William Makepeace Thackeray's novel of the same name...

by Mira Nair

Mira Nair

Mira Nair is an Indian film director and producer based in New York. Her production company is Mirabai Films.She was educated at Delhi University and Harvard University. Her debut feature film, Salaam Bombay! , won the Golden Camera award at the Cannes Film Festival and also earned the nomination...

. The track is composed by Indian trio Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy

Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy

Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy are an Indian musical trio consisting of Shankar Mahadevan, Ehsaan Noorani and Loy Mendonsa. Record producers, musicians and multi-instrumentalists, they have composed music for over fifty soundtrack across four languages...

, while the lyrics are penned by Javed Akhtar

Javed Akhtar

Javed Akhtar is a poet, lyricist and scriptwriter from India. Some of his most successful work was done in the late 1970s and 1980s with Salim Khan as half of the script-writing duo credited as Salim-Javed...

.

Development

Mira Nair, the director of the film, was in search for good Indian musicians to score a single for the album, and finally roped Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy for the task at the last minute. She showed them a rough footage of the situation she wanted them to compose for, which was the last few sequences of the film. The trio has used table

Tabla

The tabla is a popular Indian percussion instrument used in Hindustani classical music and in popular and devotional music of the Indian subcontinent. The instrument consists of a pair of hand drums of contrasting sizes and timbres...

 and several other Indian musical instruments

Indian musical instruments

Indian musical instruments can be broadly classified into four categories, mainly classical, western and folk. See Carnatic music and Hindustani music. The instruments are further sub-classified into the type based on the science behind the same....

 for the song, without any synth

Synthesizer

A synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...

 to give it an ethnic feel. She asked lyricist Javed Akhtar, who is also an old friend of hers, to write the lyrics in a way that it conveys the idea of a woman who has achieved all that she wanted and found her own voice - as it was to be filmed on Becky when she comes to India. The song is written in the Rajasthani dialect

Rajasthani language

Rajasthani Rajasthani Rajasthani (Devanagari: , Perso-Arabic: is a language of the Indo-Aryan languages family. It is spoken by 50 million people in Rajasthan and other states of India and in some areas of Pakistan. The number of speakers may be up to 80 million worldwide...

.

The song was sung by Shankar

Shankar Mahadevan

Shankar Mahadevan is an Indian music composer and singer. He is a part of the Shankar Ehsaan Loy trio team that composes for Indian films and a playback singer.-Early life:...

 of the trio, along with Richa Sharma.

Reception

Jerry McCulley of Celtic-Instruments described the song as "a sprighty duet", while SoundtrackNet said the "aforementioned upbeat vocal number Gori Re" is enjoyable in its own way for one who enjoys Indian musical styles.