Someplace Else

Kolkata in the Eastern part of India is home to Tagore, Amartya Sen,  Mother Teresa, Satyajit Ray and old school romance. Nostalgia is the best sauce to feed your imagination. Ask anyone who has seen Park Street in its heydays in the late ’60s and ’70s. Christmas and New Years eve meant dancing on Park Street, I am told. The greats of Rock, Jazz and Blues all performed live in the various restaurants and nightclubs of Park Street during those golden years. The Victoria Memorial, Soccer fever and Utpal Dutt’s theatre all happened here. The long adda sessions at Coffee House is a thing of the past.

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Too Young to Rap’nRoll Too Old to Try

My kids have known this always. My wife always sides with them. So she does too. I denied it for a long time and pretended to love it. But today I am announcing it. I do not understand rap.

“Rap is a way of life bro’. Wanna rap? You gotcha live like us - the ghetto clothes. You gotta dress right … like a gangsta. Give attitoood and you’ll get it.”, the guy offered me the first AHA experience about Rap. He should know. He was the young 20 something who was being interviewed as he stepped off his stretch limo. I had gone to drop off a hysterical gang of teenagers at this Rap Concert. (Is that an oxymoron?) Read more

Of Balladeers and Dreamers

Music does these strange things. It cuts across boundaries. While words tend to have walls around them when you mix music and turn words into lyrics, they suddenly get wings. They reach out and tug at heart strings. The MTV office at Time in New York is a favorite destination for musicians to strut their stuff hoping some talent scout from the office would listen and give them their big break. i am not aware of anyone actually getting their break like that. But heck, New York is the city where dreams are bought and sold everyday. I have stood by mesmerized by the sound of a bunch of musicians from Andes playing their folk tunes on pan pipes accompanied by an electric guitar powered by a makeshift car battery and a set of drums. I have seen an African American drummer play the drums on a set of plastic paint barrels. I remember missing my train to watch a group of teenagers from Harlem show the world what break dancing was all about. And of course who can forget the Naked Cowboy stand in the middle of Time Square in his underwear and have a bunch of screaming hysterical teenagers line up to photograph themselves with him.

Last evening I went to see Sushmit Bose perform. He calls himself an urban folk musician. Sometimes I see him being referred to as an urban folk balladeer. It is difficult to imagine this person once sported shoulder length hair and wrote protest songs. Well he still writes songs and I guess he still protests against a range of issues. He briefly mentioned Tibet and then also sang a song protesting against the inhuman treatment given to stray dogs in Kerala. He sings about urbanization and the loss of soul etc. His songs are set to simple chords and will inevitably remind listeners of the sounds of Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger. The only tragedy was that when he finally sang Blowing In The Wind, he mixed up the lyrics. This is where his guitarist and banjo player Deepak Castelino stepped up to the mike and sang along with the crowd.

Sushmit was accompanied by Deepak Castelino - one of the finest guitarists I have heard. Many years back when Deepak was still in college, I watched him on TV singing Me and Bobby McGhee. His flawless strumming and deep baritone voice has only matured over the years. Deepak worked for fifteen years in the corporate sector and left it in disgust to pursue music. He composes and teaches music to children. I loved his composition called Corporation (which he calls कर परेशान meaning Make Miserable)। May his tribe increase. Maybe someday I will get a chance to learn from Deepak not just how to play the guitar but how to chase my dreams.

Sarod Less Travelled

My parents were both Hindustani Classical music addicts. My mother played Ragas on the Acoustic Hawaiian Lap Guitar (known simply as the Hawaiian Steel Guitar in India). My father never played an instrument or sang but made sure he taught himself ragas by reading, meeting musicians and attending concerts whenever possible. The concerts, the vinyl LP records and the ubiquitious radio with the All India Radio Sangeet Sammelan or the classical music hour at night were a part of my universe. Just as I was beginning to get excited about The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Cliff Richard, Pat Boone and all, thanks to the efforts of SPICMACAY (an acronym for Society for Promotion of Indian Classical Music And Culture Among Youth) my love for Indian Classical music co-existed with my love for every other sound that I got familiar with over the years. SPICMACAY used to organize Lecture Demonstrations (LecDems for short) to bring the best of the best Indian Classical Music maestros to explain the basics elements of the classical musical vocabulary and grammar and made it “cool” to listen to. The very first one I attended had Ustad Amjad Ali Khan xplaining the basics of Raga Yaman by playing raga based popular Bollywood hits on the sarod. Accompanied by the long haired Ustad Zakir Hussain on the tabla (who taught a semester at Princeton University in 2006) , they mesmerized the college crowd. Last fortnight I bumped into Ustad Amjad Ali Khan at Mumbai’s swank new airport terminal. Here is a photo capturing that moment.

AR Rahman - Yeh Dil Maange More

What would you need to do if you wanted to listen to AR Rahman, Hariharan, Chitra, Kailash Kher and Rapper Blaze in Delhi. You had to go to the mega concert that was held last evening in Delhi. I was there rubbing shoulders withthe 25,000 fans who ranged from six year olds to their grandparents - children below five years old were not allowed in. I don’t know why since the adults around were making enough racket anyway.

The show raises the basic question as to why one should go to see a live concert when you could listen to the same tracks in the quiet confines of your home on the stereo. Why jostle through crowds and listen to the same stuff. Just so that you see the show live. So the shows need to be lively to make it worth the fans time and money. It is rather difficult to have quality acoustics in an open air stadium to match what you can hear in your own living room’s music system.

I used to always have this question when I used to see Lata Mangeshkar perform on stage. She is a great singer but a terrible entertainer. AR Rahman came across as an immensely talented composer who has yet to make the transition to being a huge entertainer. He is an artiste who just focuses on creating great music and leaves the flash and glitz to others. I love the way he has transformed the face of Bollywood music by bringing in new sounds and singers with each venture.When the concert started with Rahman singing the operatic overture from the film Guru
“Jage hain der tak hamein kuchh der soney do
Thodi si raat aur hai subah to hone do.
Adhe adhure khwab jo pure na ho sake

Ek bar phir se neend mein woh khwab boney do”.Translated that would mean
“I have been up till late, let me sleep till the morning
Let me start dream again and complete those incomplete plans”

As Rahman’s voice joined Chitra’s in singing this overture, I got goosebumps at the thought of hearing the maestro sing. Rahman’s music draws inspiration from world music. While this song draws on Italian Opera, when you hear another composition Maiyya Maiyya from the same film, the influence of Turkish music seep through like the unmistakable notes of rich Turkish Coffee.

For me the highlight was to see the legendary Sivamani perform. Anandan Sivamani (born 1959) - the percussionist was wearing his trademark bandana. He created magic with the solo performance where he drummed without missing a beat even as he twirled his drumsticks and threw them in the air as the double bass drum thumped away. He has in the past, used even the humble wok used to make biriyani, to create music!! He has a musical group called Shraddha where he makes music with Hariharan, Shankar Mahadevan, and Mandolin Srinivas. According his official website<!–[if !vml]–>

“Siva was adept with his drumsticks even at the tender age of 7 and went on to give his first stage performance at the age of 12. “He led a troupe of twenty dhols to give us a glimpse of a track from the yet unreleased Bollywood film Jodha Akbar.

Allah Rakha Rahman was born AS Dilip Kumar on 6th January 1967 and has played keyboards for Ilaiyaraja. He has a degree in Western Classical Music from the Trinity College of Music at Oxford University. Last evening he played his hits from Hindi, Tamil and even English compositions. We got glimpses of Rahman playing the synthesizer and even a grand piano. The only thing that jarred was the sound system that was truly awful. The system did not do justice to the master of music. We go to see a concert to be entertained and not to hear what we already have heard through a CD. Stage performances are about entertainment. That’s an opportunity for the fans to see the artiste as a larger than life figure. It is all about playing to the gallery. Rahman lets his music do the talking and the only time he stepped up to admonish someone trying to surreptitiously record the show, he showed his human face. The entertainer to watch out for is Naresh Iyer who sang “I am a Rebel” and showed that he will leave a mark even while sharing the stage with Rahman.