 What is that sound is very very very difficult to say it's the sound you know It's not it's not the music the music. We already know I personally get finicky when People call us fusion It will be difficult To explain contemporary karnatic because you can easily get categorized into fusion rock It's not metal. It is this amalgamated shaken, but not stirred sort of mixture that contemporary Indian music Hello, check check Hold on hello. Hello check monitor. There's no chance of me able me being able to tell you or anybody being able to tell you What Indian Ocean sounds like So everybody would try and find terms for us We gave up to be able to find a sound of their own is something which cannot be taught It has to come from within Swaratmas music is the sound of India Just like what India's youth is to be honest expression of a collective emotion Two perspectives come together and when we manage to create a balance between them, that's what makes you the cost Loud and lusty lusty. I don't know what that means Definitely earthy. It's the music that is breeding at the time that you're living in what we do is take Diverse styles of music play them together. I come from a classical music background The thing is since I play guitar, so then I said, how do I interpret my Indian classical music on on the guitar? I want to play the new song Naga Foglos and what is Naga Foglos or she's different The Indian sound which is now started to come up and it will come up from other bands also The idea is just to have something very soulful and that can you know kind of connect with the audience and For ourselves as musicians Music is a form of expression a Form of expression which is definitely not through the normal language that we speak Kinetic Experimental, I think Agam is a mixture of all three the inner self music comes from within so We thought maybe it makes sense You know completely based on single we don't try to mix Raga's See the Most of the times we take a melody which is based on Indian classical Raga's and then we start experimenting on that So we thought okay, let's retain the kinetic aspect of the music and by retaining that let's bring our own metal or rock Flavor of the South Indian instrument flavor Not necessarily just rock, but he also brought in elements of funk blues and Little bit of jazz We didn't try to bring in Western into Carnatic or Carnatic into Western So I do the Carnatic music and then you know as you move forward it actually converges at a point where you actually think This should have been together. I mean it should have been always together Taking Carnatic music and doing Western or you know any other You know contrasting a complimenting style of music is actually fairly seamless and it happens in the classical Rhythm patterns are so amazingly complicated. Okay, I don't think Mathematically also you can decipher how the hell a human being is being able to Render a beat pattern like that. Okay, but they do Indian classical music is very scale based music The fundamental of Western music is that you can stack more than one note on top of each other like a Durga Durga Ragh would go something like this. So we give a lot of importance to these Notes in that particular Ragh relevant to that Ragh and then create a melody over it And you know and then solo over that. That is when a true essence of a Ragh comes out You can get lucky enough that the tune that you're making can work both ways like an Indian classical Approach and a Western harmony harmony based approach and you can infuse both of them into one song But sometimes it doesn't happen sometimes. It just naturally does not let you go that way It's it's a nice idea when you kind of blend the two because you kind of taking the best of both worlds Sonata's music to me is is is that expression of emotion between Six creative partners. You are a performer of the music that you have practiced of the music that you have composed of the songs So you are just a medium on stage from what you have already created I discovered my love for music when we bought a music system which had which had two cassette Decks which meant that I could borrow a cassette and create a copy and keep that copy for myself Music is not folk music. It's just we just use elements of folk elements of rock elements of Indian classical elements of you know jazz and other forms of music you take the elements and Bring it to people in a way that they can understand and hear stories of what's happening now Most of the times the ideas or the feeling what we get with that sound Just coincides then putting lyrics just happens very easily The issues are always stuff that we feel are around us are affecting us and Which turns into an expression and so it's a song We can have a visual memory imbibed in our viewers minds Which goes well with our sound. I think then we can connect better You're part of evolution Somewhere you have to be grounded somewhere you also have to stretch to grow It doesn't matter what language you're singing in It really doesn't matter at all It doesn't matter that you don't understand what I'm saying in the in the words as long as you get what I'm saying in my Body language and in the music. I always think that musicians are musically should be like water Like you can put them in any vessel and they can take part of that We've grown up listening to Hindi film music in folk music some in classical music and whatever so The the rhythm structures that we use in our local music folk music or other music They're not alien at all to us if you're really doing music the way you love to do it It means that your psyche is coming out and somebody is always appreciating the fact that you are actually allowing yourself to be yourself So it's possible to stand your own ground, you know follow your own inner voice and I'm not ready listen to too many people who telling you to do different things becomes like a like a melting pot of genres of Influences of feelings that the band members are feeling at at at that point in time If you find yourself in whatever you are doing, you know in any kind of music and you think that you are making sense Then it's perfectly fine. I even when we are playing Western instruments like drums and bass and guitar I don't think we all of us are playing them exactly in the Western way I think my guitar style has a lot of influence of Indian classical and folk The East India Company, which is a band which is Post-colonial in the sense that it is showing an awareness of our and yet willing to have fun with it that Yeah, so what now this is the Israel this is us We're from our home and we'll do a home music and we'll do a home a fork and we'll bring electronic eye into it In the last few years what we have seen is an increasing number of bands and individuals starting to sing and compose music in their own languages as For us it The art form always keeps evolving. It's it's more like a conversation like how I how I answer your question I You've been working with traditional Slocums also we work with ancient writings from The folk singers. I mean we never claim to say that. Okay. This is what we've come up with We always feel that this is our expression to that name Yodhaka itself happens to be a Sanskrit name and it means warriors Shweta Gandham Vandeham Shah Radha Pratma Sanam Shubha After performing Yodhaka for two years with all random world music Songs and little bit of karnataka drums and distortion guitars and all that personally To be honest I was both doing that The That's when no we decided why can't we use Sanskrit all the slogans are so musical and it's it's on meter It fits on any kind of tune no as long as you understand how it So what we have tried to do is take take all those chance and not distort the ideas and The feel of the chant and the sound of the chant We were very strong that we are going to do Indian music the but The elements that are gonna come in are the ones from around We also work together on another project It's also a performing band. It's called lapongal That's like an interesting thing for us to see how folk music sounds in a rock band It sounded really good for me with the raw folk performance and what I could hear in my head It was such a it was such a great Like combination of this contemporary instrument and and the folk melody We've tried our best to keep the aesthetics of folk music so strong that if you listen to it You would say okay, this is folk music The traditional Indian instrument and the western instrument aren't very different at all They are both musical instruments. They both create music. Let me show you is folk instrument This is we call tindi line The young sir mindset is the folk instruments cannot play to the modern instrument See I try to put in between the nerves Up down Then I can play with any instrument So I may be playing the bass guitar and I may be holding down a A western groove, but there are still points of confluence where It doesn't matter where the instrument is is from where the instrument you're playing is from it's still gonna come in and say hello I tune it more like an Indian instrumentalist would do it and So yeah, so it gives a beautiful drone It's very satar like or the like a Sarod like But to me I felt the need of changing my tune to be a little more authentic Now you have Kadri Gopalan playing saxophone He's playing the sax is playing an alto sax, but he's playing conducting so the instrument is not what pushes It's this Ocean started off in 1990 and We started doing just our own music using a lot of folk and classical influences But yet because we were contemporary people in cities So listening to rock and jazz and reggae and all that came into our music But something very Indian emerged influenced by so you can say rooted in India, but global in its We do not follow court patterns. We go by the Indian way of following scales Many you start playing in scales With slightly Indian rhythm. It's amazing that it really starts sounding in May have played something four years back in a song, which is also recorded and gone But we will keep changing it till the time. It's completely at ease with itself and I don't feel that I'm straining any muscle in my body while playing it Composition has to have a particular flow it has to tell a story Let's say something comes to my head and I'm singing it whatever it may be now the way or she was seeing it is I don't know how so he may let's say he may be thinking of it From the way he's heard music in the 70s. Suppose suppose and Schu-Schmidt suddenly hears that and he says oh I'm feeling like playing something classical at that point And Raul is hearing something at the same time and he thinks something more Reggae-ish at the same time and I think that's roughly what used to happen everybody would pull the things that we were making towards their own little influences and And For music this has a way of sounding for key There's that spirit in folk music that you can't find in some other sort of music sometimes I start learning for music folk songs from all guys Many people ask me we need to save our culture we need to save our culture. I Ask them very humble humble if You want to save our culture our folk should be richie and police and Mix and Of course there is that traditional music there is that folk music there is nothing wrong in creating your own form of Music using elements from here Then when you see something in that East India company when Papuan sings his big who he grew up with Before Which part is within his body Audience starts moving because he's moving From there then the folk music will start becoming more and more interesting if you ask me that okay. We are giving you a musical path And how would you walk on that so I would walk the way I've been taught to walk You know in Advaita, we try and make sure that we give the first priority to the song rather than our own playing How tabla for that matter will work in a particular song You know, it's just eight minds coming together and everybody's bringing in their own instruments They're the vocal abilities and suddenly come up with this idea It could be a melodic line or a set of few lines or just a groove We These songs are like pure old Compositions in particular Ragh so we've used those You know Compositions and we've done it in such a way that it complements, you know the western elements when they come in He has a written thing that that a song is always bigger than the musician at that point of time because we are eight of us working on that plot working on that song and trying to make that song sound like Eat of us together at a personal level It's not only western or Indian. It's about the people who have you know, you know You know, they they find it, you know a common ground If you really want to have expression absolutely free for the floor You have to let your mind lose fusion is not about just bringing in musicians bringing all this instrument and play it together Fusion is in the minds. You have to be open enough in your mind to let other form of music come and blend with your Mindset of music. So I guess fusion happens then When we were doing the first album, we almost consciously try to make it sound not like an Indian band And you know, we wanted to put out an album that was international rock in that particular sense And then when we started touring with the first album, these elements used to start creeping inside And then after some time we realized that you know, that was the fun part of it Put all these rural melodies and juxtaposed it with very very intense energy It was very nice to see recently We had this young fan of ours And he was standing there in head bang next to us his dad standing there and the best part It was the young little boy. He was also painted up and he got his dad to paint his face into half You know, and that's the most important thing, you know, you're playing rock or whatever you call it You know if it connects, that's the most important thing music is in itself is is very large for it to be confined to To a narrow pocket invented by a human mind For example the word genre, I am probably not a very big fan of this Genreism and you know, just classifying Band, I think but it's important at of the day also because if I tell you that our music is Bob Marley Jamming with a ball singer when he's high on some substance You it would at least make you curious because more and more everybody is influenced by everything And yet when they make their music, they don't want to sound like other people. They want to sound different So that's why it becomes more and more difficult to say who belongs to what genre there are n genres They're going to keep expanding and we're going to keep getting confused and we're going to all put it under contemporary Indian music At one point of time. I wanted to be a professional dancer. In fact, then my father cost it brilliantly I'm a very limited musician that way. I'm never trained myself in music. It's the rest of the musicians who make it make me look good on stage It's more like like a constantly evolving sound really not really getting stagnant with one particular set of musicians or set of sounds But instead keep the doors open for new people to walk in and their colors and sounds and textures The Western world has known Indian music only in its three glorious forms one is sitar and tabla and then you have Bollywood and then you have So people are very surprised when we go to a broad music festivals call ourselves Indian music band and then have these complete rock band set up of bass guitar Electric guitars acoustic guitar and violin and a drummer and then play music, which is completely Indian and but with rhythms which they can really understand And our music or the roots that we have in our country taken in a form that is acceptable to the younger generation We are lively on stage. We crack jokes. We jump around. We're singing about serious stuff The music is fun. Our body language is fun 26 I discovered this poet named Santhashishnala Sharifa. He used to use these words which are very funny quirky And at the same time explaining some really huge philosophical message through those funny simple words take those songs yuppie Contemporary sound which a rocker kid will probably come and head bang, but at the same time say Santhashishnala Sharifa rocks, you know So if something is honest and it's straight from the heart, I think the people will people will react Everyone asks us so you go to the UK and I'm sure you play English songs. I said no, we play Canada songs How do they Understand I said they don't but we make it a point to explain what you're singing The audience that is seeing that is identifying with that They are saying that you know what I can also be proud of the fact that I'm from Rajasthan off of UP or whatever it is They're basically saying, yeah, what the hell And so the audience is Loving this they're loving the fact that they can listen to contemporary stuff being done in their own language And you can dance to it or you can follow the lyrics and you know you Have that pride in your own decisions If it makes you happy about the fact that the Sun is out on a cloudy day There isn't really very much more that the lyrics can say than what you've already understood I can say this from my own experience is that we are getting more comfortable in our skin. It'll be almost impossible to you know Pin down the exact reason A lot has changed. I mean for the better. I mean the the avenues the venues the Audiences have changed. There's This vibrancy in the way of music is made in the way now music is going to be distributed Recorded everything now you see the studio size has shrunk. I think it's the economic confidence of the country I also think it's a fact that so many of our Indians today are truly global citizens Part-on and that's that's what's happening as an explosion You know all sorts of Indian sound or Southeast Asian sounding South Asian sounding bands are doing quite well It's the right time for India to showcase itself The way it's becoming globalized becoming modern and and at the same time holding on to its roots and Therefore having its own identity, you know What kind of stuff contributing to this Move where the assertion of your own cultural identity is very very strongly and definitely made and If the rest of the world doesn't want to listen to us too bad We play our own stuff. You like it. You like it. You don't like to back. I know check Hello check I have never given it a thought yeah, I can't answer this question. What is music to me? I don't know I can't explain it in words, but it's something that is I know how to I can I can answer it in one line saying it's it's just my way of life Maybe but then that's also not my way of life. I really don't know what the answer to this question is Yeah, it's like a it's it's a it's a journey music is a journey