Rhythmic Horizons (Gavin Harrison interview)

PORCUPINE TREE DRUMMER GAVIN HARRISON TALKS ABOUT THE FIRST TIME THE CULT BRITISH BAND WILL PLAY IN INDIA

One of the most respected drummers in contemporary music, London resident GAVIN HARRISON is well known for his time-twisting rhythmic concepts and masterly touch on the instrument. But while Gavin has been a very popular clinician for Zildjian cymbals and Sonor drums and his books and DVDs are veritable bibles for the intelligent drummer, his reputation had been largely confined to the drumming community, till he joined British progressive rockers/ambience masters/everything-in-between PORCUPINE TREE in 2002. Since the cult band’s breakthrough album, 2004’s In Absentia, which showcased Gavin’s incredible playing, the band has moved from strength to strength, with its latest release The Incident garnering rave reviews. Porcupine Tree is scheduled to headline IIT-Mumbai’s annual festival, Mood Indigo, on December 21. t2 speaks to the modern-day master about versatility, the PT experience and “great expectations” from India...

From playing with everyone from Lisa Stansfield to Eros Ramazotti, how does it feel to be hailed as the king of modern-day progressive rock drumming?

Actually, very strange. I’ve never thought of myself really as any ‘kind’ of drummer — the thing I grew up listening to the most was jazz music. I’m happy if people think I’m a good prog rock drummer, of course, but I don’t really get so much into genres.

What are your expectations for your India show? Are you aware of a large fan base in this country?

We have no idea what it will be like or how many people will know us. It really is an exciting trip into the unknown for us.

How long a set will the band play in Mumbai?

I think about 90 minutes.

Has any Indian instrument caught your interest? What about the tabla?

I had a band in the late 80s called Dizrhythmia with a tabla player called Pandit Dinesh and we had a few Indian players guest on that record and Sultan Khan played sarangi on my first solo album in the mid 90s.

Are there any Indian musicians you would like to work with?

I’d love to play with Zakir Hussain. He really is a master of rhythm.

What does it feel like being in the drummer’s throne of a band like this, with its amazing visuals that sway with the mood of the concert?

Unfortunately I don’t really get to see the images whilst we’re playing because they are going on behind me on the big screen, but of course I do see them at the time they are made. It’s music you have to concentrate on whilst you’re performing it — so it takes a few concerts before you can really relax a bit.

Which has been your favourite recent PT concert?

The Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam just a week ago was an amazing concert. Probably the biggest gig we’ve played so far.

You never play a song the same way on consecutive nights. How do you keep the show experience fresh, night after night?

I improvise in small ways all the time. Maybe it’s not so noticeable to the public but I know it’s different and that keeps me interested. I’m always looking for a better way to play any song — even in subtle ways.

Any pre-gig rituals that the whole band follows?

Not really but we like to be left on our own at least 30 minutes before the concert so we can focus and not be distracted.

With The Incident being released just about a month ago, are you playing it in its entirety — as one, 55-minute track?

On this tour we are playing the entire 55 minute Incident cycle and then we take a small 10-minute break. After that we come back and play a selection of songs from the past records. I can’t guarantee that we will do exactly that when we play in India — it doesn’t always work well in a festival situation and as it’s our first time, we might play some more PT ‘classics’ instead.

For The Incident, were shorter interludes worked on and then woven together?

Yes, we had The Incident split into five different sections that we all knew would be woven together in the mix. Some of the sections were written after the initial piece that Steve presented us with.

While writing a concept album, how do you ensure that parts of it don’t become contrived?

You can’t really. When you work on something so much you can’t see the wood for the trees. We’re confident that the chemistry between the four of us will steer us in a good direction. A PT direction.

Do you ever pen lyrics?

Not for PT. I have tried with other projects but it’s not something I’ve really spent much time doing.

What plans for your solo projects? Do you plan to come out with a percussion/drumming record in the future?

I’ve been very happy with my most recent collaboration with 05Ric. We’ve made two great records and I think it’s the most advanced rhythmical stuff I’ve ever played.

PT POINTS

• Porcupine Tree: (l-r) Richard Barbieri, Steven Wilson, Gavin Harrison and Colin Edwin

  Porcupine Tree was formed by singer/producer Steven Wilson in 1987 in Hertfordshire, England. Initially, Wilson created PT as a “legendary fictional band” as a prank, with a complete discography, fictional band members, and a ‘history’ that included members doing jail time.
• In order to back it up, Wilson created the first 80-minute long PT music piece, showcased in the album Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm. Asked to contribute to a collection of British underground psychedelic bands, Wilson worked on the rare EP Love, Death & Mussolini, followed by The Nostalgia Factory. The band still carried on the charade of being ’70s rock legends.
• The first ‘official’ PT record On The Sunday Of Life was released in 1991. PT’s music grew even more experimental, seen in the 30-minute long single Voyage 34, melding ambient trance with what came to be known as “liquid rock” guitar solos.
• Wilson finally ‘formed’ the band in December 1993, with himself on lead vocals/guitar, Colin Edwin on bass, Chris Maitland on drums and Richard Barbieri on keyboards. Released in 1995, PT’s third album, The Sky Moves Sideways, was hailed as a progressive rock masterpiece and PT was dubbed the Pink Floyd of the Nineties.
• Gavin Harrison joined PT after Maitland’s departure in 2002. The band’s 2004 record, In Absentia, went on to become its best selling record.
• During the tours to promote In Absentia, the visual element of the band’s performance was taken to new heights with the involvement of Dutch photographer/filmmaker Lasse Hoile, who created a dark and surreal visual counterpoint to the music.
  
  Arka Das 
  
  What is your favourite Porcupine Tree song? Tell t2@abpmail.com
  
  Published in t2, The Telegraph, November 5 , 2009

PLAY ON!

Music stores strike the revamp chord

MUSIC EQUIPMENT SHOWROOMS in town are reinventing themselves to woo customers. t2 takes A LOOK AT the booming business of ROCK’N’ROLL

For every professional musician lighting up a pub stage in town, there are a hundred teenagers waiting in the wings to take up music as a serious career. And these aspirants know their equipment — a thousand websites have taught them all about every make and model of guitar, every drumhead, every customised amplifier, every effects rack. And even in Calcutta, they are going in search of the best in global gear.

And music stores around town are playing their tune. They have taken the revamp route, updating their offering, bringing the best equipment and service to the city. A far cry from the dusty stack of violins, guitars or unkempt drums that have long marked Calcutta shops, they are now adopting swanky displays in the style of stores such as Musicians Mall in Mumbai or OnStage, New Delhi.

Revamp road
Even the 101-year-old J. Reynold & Co on Mirza Ghalib Street is looking to change its offering. “We plan to redesign the entire upper floor of the present store area and turn it into a 1,200sqft rehearsal space/testing room. For that, we need to find an alternative storage space for much of the equipment that is shipped to us from Mumbai, but we’ll be converting soon,” says Peter Remedios, chairman of J. Reynold & Co.

Reynolds has already updated itself with the plush Roland Planet adjacent to its existing store. It was an expansion from Roland’s lone showroom in Kankurgachhi. Both the outlets stock choice single-unit guitar effects from the Boss line, professional amplifiers, the hot-seller all-in-one wonder electronic drum, the HandSonic, Roland V-Drums and top-of-the-line Roland workstation keyboards.

Braganza & Co. off Mirza Ghalib Street, long known for its excellent post-sales service in violin and piano repairs, has also pumped up the jam, transforming its dusty storefront to an air-conditioned area with neatly stacked guitars, drumsets and keyboards. The shop is also looking to expand to another outlet soon.

The extent to which the business of music has grown in the city can be gauged by the more recent entrant Guitar Center @ Tolly, a property owned by Iqbal Ahmed. The group owns two more stores — Roland Pro Music Shoppe at Kidderpore and Music Messe at Esplanade, both fairly recent additions to the music store roster.

Guitar Center @ Tolly is the newest venture by Ahmed, which opened doors in February. The SP Mukherjee Road address (near the Tollygunge Phari crossing) has already acquired an adjacent space to accommodate a Plexiglass-built guitar/amp testing room, more rack space and even a drummer’s pedestal to test new arrivals. The display is a musician’s delight, not to mention the readily available top-of-the-line equipment and good after-sales service.

“In this business, investment equals profit. It’s very simple: if you keep a wider range of options for your customer, you are bound to sell more equipment,” explains Ahmed.

But the display and design aspects are equally important and both Remedios and Ahmed visit equipment expos abroad, particularly Musicmesse Frankfurt and other fairs in Japan and Hong Kong. “You really get a very good idea about delivering the goods from these expos,” says Remedios. Translating these concepts to a Calcutta storefront is the next step.

Professional musicians and those aspiring to take up a career in music are happy at the greater availability of gear. While the younger lot would like better stocks, more options — and “better prices”, they emphasise — most pros in town welcome the post-sales service offered and the availability of basics like drumheads, guitar strings, cables, sticks and stands. “The fact that new shops are coming up and the older ones are sprucing themselves up is a definite sign of improvement on music in the city,” says drummer Chiradeep Lahiri.

Guitarist Amyt Dutta (Skinny Alley/Pink Noise) feels there really cannot be any comparison between the equipment market three decades back, when he was starting out, and now. “We had next to nothing in terms of equipment and had to make do with whatever was locally available. Now, the market has opened up manifold,” he says. With the influx of imported equipment now available, Amyt feels that local brands should up the ante about the quality of manufacturing. He also suggests stocking up on accessories and improved after-sales service.

The younger lot is ready for more: “There should be jam pads, like in stores abroad!” suggests Yudhajit Biswas, bassist for the budding band Black Rose.

The downturn has not really turned the volume down on sales. “Things may have changed in Delhi and Mumbai, but shows keep happening in Calcutta. And as long as musicians are playing regularly, the recession doesn’t really affect our business,” says Ahmed.

Spread the music
There are also plans to widen the scope of these musical instrument retailers. While Guitar Center @ Tolly often organises performances by up-and-coming bands, J. Reynold & Co. has plans to promote music through an academy. Among other things, the chain wants to start a music school which will teach how to play instruments as well as related arts like DJing, and dancing, host workshops and roadshows by professionals to highlight product capabilities, offer live performances and tie up with schools for musical education programmes involving small wind instruments like flute and clarinet, along with percussion.

Youngsters get an opportunity to showcase their talent, the stores get to flaunt their equipment, professional musicians acquire endorsement deals — it’s a win-win situation for all.

GETTING GEAR

ELECTRIC GUITARS: The big names include Fender, Ibanez, Epiphone, ESP/LTD and Washburn. Starter prices at Rs 9,000, while on-demand orders for particular models can see the price exceed Rs 1 lakh.
ACOUSTIC GUITARS: Fender and Ibanez are the more common brands. Of late, some stores are also bringing in more expensive brands like Taylor and Takamine. And most shops manufacture their own brands of acoustic guitars, Reynolds and Braganza being the pioneers in the field. Prices start at Rs 1,200. Once again, special orders can cost Rs 1 lakh-plus.
KEYBOARDS: The Roland stores have cornered a chunk of keyboard sales. Other brands include Yamaha, Korg and even the ubiquitous Casio. Prices start at
Rs 25,000 approximately.
DRUMS AND CYMBALS: Tama, Mapex and Basix had been dominant drum brands till this year, when Japanese heavyweight Pearl also entered the Indian market with its full line. Prices for acoustic drums begin at Rs 20,000. American and Canadian cymbal majors Zildjian and Sabian are more prevalent than the Swiss brand Paiste. Starter packs (of four cymbals) come for Rs 15,000. The electronic drums market is more or less a Roland monopoly, with its V-Drums line starting from Rs 50,000.

WHERE TO SHOP

J. Reynold & Co. (Mirza Ghalib Street)
Roland Planet (Mirza Ghalib Street and Kankurgachhi)
Roland Pro Music Shoppe (Kidderpore)
Music Messe (Esplanade, near Chandni Chowk)
Guitar Center @ Tolly (SP Mukherjee-Tollygunge Phari crossing)
Braganza & Co. (off Mirza Ghalib Street)

Arka Das

Published in t2, The Telegraph, September 2, 2009 

MOON OVER MEHRANGARH

Scales are grand in Rajasthan. The weather is extreme and so are ways of life: the royalty on one end of the spectrum; tribal farmers living hand-to-mouth on the other. But the Maharajahs of this desert state have been legendary patrons of the arts. Every October since 2007, that lineage is reflected at the Jodhpur Rajasthan International Folk Festival (J-RIFF), hosted at the breathtaking Mehrangarh Fort looming high above in Jodhpur city. An initiative of the Jaipur Virasat Foundation (JVF) and the Mehrangarh Museum Trust, the five-day festival is aimed at preserving Rajasthan’s heritage and its rich folk culture. 
With collaborations between Rajasthani folk musicians and international artistes being the focal point — this year’s big names were British-Tamil neo-soul diva Susheela Raman, world percussion maestro Pete Lockett and Brazilian DJ Maga Bo, along with local legends like manganiyar singers Chanan Khan and Pempe Khan, Gulam Hussain’s qawwali troupe, percussionists Chugge Khan and Nathu Solanki, among others — J-RIFF 2010, held from October 21-25, offered an exciting blend of sounds in a stunning setting.

Day 1

The mood of the first day leaned towards the traditional, with Maand artistes Ali Mohammad, Pt. Chirenji Lal, Moinuddin Khan and Zaffar Khan opening the 2010 festival and a soul-stirring performance from Jaipur-Atrauli khayal exponent Ashwini Bhide. A colourful polka dance by the Warszawianka dancers of Poland concluded the evening.

Day 2

While a silver moon set behind the royal crematorium at Jaswant Thada, the golden glow of the dawn sun slowly stirred the Blue City into life with bhajans and spiritual poetry by Jamuna Devi and Mali Devi, from Charanwasi village, Shekhawati. Called the Dawn Devotional, these 5.45am recitals offered a fitting start to the day; a magical witching hour of music that set the mood for all that followed.
Daylong activities included fort festivities where one caught glimpses of folk music and performing arts at the Mehrangarh fort. Percussion plays a pivotal role in the Rajasthani folk music and the festivities showcased the hourglass-shaped derun (akin to a talking drum with similar pitch modulating principles), the bhapang (akin to a khamak but double-barelled), the chang, usually played on Holi in Shekhawati, the large clay pot-like maante, the nagara (played with sticks) and of course, the ubiquitous dholak. The fort festivities also showcased artistes performing on the rare mashak, the Rajasthani counterpart of the bagpipe, while performing arts like the ger martial art dance, the balancing act called the chhatar kotli, the bahurupiya and the kachhi ghodi (which literally translates into ‘false-horse rider’) bloomed in a riot of colours, movements and music. The Kalbeliya, followers of Lord Krishna and wandering performers known as snake-charmers and jugglers, added excitement to the festive mood.
The Meghwals of Marwar ushered in the dusk with the Sunset Devotional at Jaswant Thada – yet another performance that set the tone for the moon-soaked evening. At Moti Mahal in the fort, in the first of the Living Legends series of recitals, Manganiyar ladies Rukma, Akla and Dariya sang to a small audience. Manganiyar women are barred from performing in front of men or in public; Rukma Devi was expelled from the community when she flouted that tradition. When she began to receive acclaim from all over Rajasthan, she was joined by her sister Akla and their childhood friend Dariya Manganiyar. The stained glass doors of Moti Mahal were thrown open to the audience to witness a performance that seeped soul in every note sung and played.
With Pakistani draw Mekal Hasan Band’s participation cancelled at RIFF 2010, it was left to Susheela Raman to light up the main stage at the Old Zenana courtyard. With hubby Sam Mills on guitar, Georgie Pope on harp and a band of Rajasthani folk musicians including Rana Ram on narh, Gopal Ram on the algoza flute, Chanan Khan on the folk sarangi called kamayacha and Nathu Solanki on nagara, Susheela – dressed in black and flaunting a cape with a blood-red inlay – was in her element from the word go. She started with two devotional songs that did justice to her raspy husk of a voice before launching into the raucous chorus of Murguan vail, joined by the vocalist/percussionist duo of Chugge Khan and Kutle Khan. Under the silver moon, the chant in Tamil to Lord Murugan – sung with surprising conviction by Susheela’s Rajasthani band – underlined the collaborations that RIFF 2010 was all about. Kutle Khan was exceptional on the bhapang; Chugge Khan sang his heart out and both played the morchang and wooden kartal (akin to Spanish castanets) with a fluid brilliance. The surprises didn’t end there: Susheela was joined on stage with the eight-member qawwal party of Gulam Hussain. Rendering songs in praise of Allah and Lord Murugan on the same platform with equal soul, the groove got a seated audience up close to the stage to dance in no time. There couldn’t have been a more apt set-closer than the funky Raise Up Your Hands, bringing the house down in a unique rendition.

Day 3

The new morning offered Baul and fakiri music at the Dawn Devotional, with Khejmat and Khaibur Fakir, Shasthi Das Baul and Nikhil Biswas on percussion. With the moon setting on one horizon – the festival is scheduled to coincide with the brightest full moon of the year in north India (sharad purnima) – and Mehrangarh fort in the distance bathed by the first light of the day, it was surreal listening to the ektara and khamak accompanying Lalan Fakir’s songs. Being the devotional recital, the wandering minstrels only offered songs based on the atmatatwa philosophy, like Barir pashey aarshi nagar.
A visit to the uppermost room of the fort, watching and listening to multi-percussionist Pete Lockett rehearse with 28 Rajasthani folk musicians, was a rare delight. If views were fascinating from various points within, the top offered a vantage point that displayed the Blue City in all its sunny splendour. At 5pm, it was time to witness Manganiyar magic in Moti Mahal again as Pempe Khan Manganiyar and Patashi Bhopi sung about life and loss at the second Living Legends recital.
Later, there was promise of more magic with Sona Mohapatra’s “desi soul” sound at the main stage. RIFF 2010 brought Sona’s partner Ram Sampath – variously known as ace producer/experimental songwriter/Colourblind frontman – on stage with her band for the first time, manning laptop and keys. With a broken ankle and irksome technical glitches, the Oriya lass still delivered her pop-tinted set and got the audience on their feet, singing songs by Bulle Shah to Amir Khusrau to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s Piya re. Singer Bhanwari Devi and her entourage joining Sona’s band was the high point of the evening. With the morchang, dhol and sarangi adding flavours of the soil to Sona’s sound and Bhanwari Devi’s voice that seemed to reach out to the fort’s ramparts, the repertoire’s rendition of Dum mast qulandar closed the set.
Next up was perhaps the most scintillating performance of J-RIFF 2010. Roots Reunion brought together flamenco guitarist Augustin Carbonell “Bola” and his quintet (Antonio “El Negro” on vocals, Pedro “Brekon” on percussion, traditional flamenco dancers Tamar Gonzalez and Karen Lugo) with Abdul Rashid Khan Langa (vocals), Zakir Khan Langa (kartal), Eklash Khan Langa (sarangi), Sadiq Khan Langa (dholak) and Kalbeliya dancer Aasha Sapera. Augustin – who has collaborated on several albums with flamenco legend Paco de Lucia – and his band rendered flamenco standards with élan. As the set rolled, they were joined by the dancer duo of Gonzalez and Lugo, offering a blend of sensual music with grace, poise and passion in movement. As the local folk artistes took stage to add layers to the music and Asha Sapera joined the dance, the choreography turned more colourful, more joyous. Under the bright full moon, sitting near the fort ramparts, this was an experience in itself; the first RIFF 2010 performance that brought His Highness the Maharajah Gaj Singh II of Marwar-Jodhpur up on stage to shake a leg.  
The party continued till the wee hours with Club Mehran at Chokelao Mahal, with the street beats of DJ/producer Maga Bo from Rio de Janeiro. A percussionist himself, the man with the turntables got the exclusive crowd swinging within the spacious open-air courtyard with his street beats and quirky remixes, fusing traditional samba and hip-hop with local voices and strains of folk instruments. Even wallflowers danced.  

Day 4

Partying late the night before, those who did catch the next morning’s Dawn Devotional were offered a rare opportunity to listen to Ustad Bahauddin Khan Dagar usher in the new day with his rudra veena. The morning devotional recital remains a personal favourite, given the ambience and the setting of Jaswant Thada.
Later in the evening, the third and last of the Living Legends recitals brought the two legendary singers of the same name – Chanan Khan Manganiyar – artistes who have elevated the status of their art within their community and inspired generations to follow in their footsteps. At 8pm, the main stage was lit up for the Italian Festa, featuring Francesca Cassio on vocals and Giuliano Modarelli on classical guitar, collaborating with local artistes playing the sarangi, kartal and other percussion. Trained both in Western and Indian classical music, Cassio offered a unique performance with her take on traditional compositions, based on a combination of Italian folk tunes and Rajasthani melodies. It was a delight to witness the collaboration: where one knew the other’s language and thus wove an eloquent story or two in song. 
The final, formal set at the main stage was Pete Lockett’s Percussion Party. With a team of 28 folk musicians, vocalists and dancers to lead – including Gopal Geela’s change troupe and Manphula Ram’s derun brigade – it seemed like quite a task for the Academy Award-winning mutli-percussionist/producer to manage. Once the performance began though, it was all about textures seamlessly flowing from one to the other: the Japanese taiko drum to the Carnatic kanjira to Latin bongos and cajun to the Rajasthani bhapang, morchang and derun, ably supported by vocal segments. Moods swayed from the reflective to the exhilarating in accordance to the music on offer; the tunes offered enough scope for individual brilliance yet were sewn as a whole with invisible hands. Things got funkier with Pete and his troupe being joined by the flamboyant Murali (a multi-percussionist from Chennai), Ram Sampath and DJ Maga Bo at RIFF Rustle – the closing jam of the 2010 festival. 
RIFF 2010 truly ended the dawn next, with the Haveli Sangeet Sankirtan presented by Pandit Chandra Prakash of Ajmer, offering temple music from the Nathdwara tradition.

ARKA DAS

PAINT A SCROLL, STRING A TUNE, TELL A TALE

Luminescent yellows come from powdered saffron. Vivid blues arise from the aparajita flower; the fruit of the lotkom plant offers crimson that literally leaps out of the page. Burnt paddy grains and charcoal provide black and shades of grey, ground atop chaal (plain rice) and ghusum clay make white; seempata (bean plant) offers shades of green and diluted cowdung creates a shade of brown.

As the world screams organic, Swarna Chitrakar and her family — including her husband and five daughters — paint ancient tales and their take on the here-and-now using pigments that are 100 per cent natural.

The pigments are mixed with bel glue to retain their adhesive quality and also to protect the scroll from insects. The paper that creates these scrolls gets a protective back cover of cotton saris dipped in indigo to keep insects at bay.

Working from her West Midnapore village home, Swarna is one of a handful of patuas (pat painters or scroll painters) who continue a centuries-old family trade — creating scroll paintings using traditional methods before moving from village to village, adding tunes to the tales that the pictures tell.

Swarna’s scrolls are not limited to traditional content, though; her art offers a unique perspective on the urban milieu and the trappings of a world outside her idyllic setting, but always with a touch of tolerant humour. Even city kitsch emerges fresh through this approach.

Swarna stands out because of her dynamic expression, which seamlessly straddles the modern and the traditional. Suffused with a rare sensibility, her work is at the cutting-edge of contemporary art in the country. She has broken the mould of being just a folk artist with several successful shows to her credit within the country and abroad. One of the most-sought after contemporary artists from Bengal on the CIMA Gallery (Centre for International Modern Art) roster, this 40-something artist continues to infuse modern elements into her work and thus find new expression within a traditional style.

As we make ourselves comfortable on the small courtyard at Swarna’s residence, she spreads out a handful of scrolls. There are tales from the Puranas, the age-old Manasamangal Kabya, a humorous prachalita (traditional) gaan on the hierarchy of fishes, and an episode from the Ramayan. Simultaneously, there are scrolls on a monkey in a zoo discovering a camera and its experiments with the gadget in the company of its jungle brethren — and finally, setting up an exhibition with his newly found passion of photography! Relevant social issues also feature in her work: the ecological dangers of deforestation, the harassment of women as well as HIV/AIDS.

Articulate lines and vibrant tones characterise Swarna’s style; a mesh of rural pat painting, Kalighat pat traditions and Madhubani motifs. A large portion of her subjects are essentially from the Hindu pantheon, although Swarna and her family are Muslims. It’s a fascinating overlap of socio-religious boundaries, one where art subjugates everything.

“The history of scroll painting in my family goes back to Tagore’s times,” says Swarna.

She also claims that the Kalighat patuas were her ancestors. While that remains debatable, stylistic similarities are apparent between the present-day patuas and their 19th century counterparts. The Kalighat pats were not scroll art — those were smaller in size, and songs didn’t accompany the paintings. In Swarna’s tradition, the ditty and the display are almost inseparable.

As we settle down for a lunch of fish, rice and vegetables, Swarna talks of the beginnings. “I was the first daughter after a son. As my father would paint, I would hold the end of his scrolls and also mix colours for him,” she recalls. “Girls were not allowed to paint pats at that time. The trend was broken by our mentors Gauri Chitrakar and Dukhushyam Chitrakar, my maternal uncle.”

“The tradition of women patuas painting is relatively new. They were all trained by Dukhushyam Chitrakar, who took the initiative in the 1970s,” says Frank J. Korom, associate professor of religion and anthropology at Boston University and an authority on the patuas of Bengal.

Swarna travelled to Sweden in 2003 along with her brother to participate in a folk art festival. “He painted on 9/11; I did a piece on the Titanic,” smiles the artist.

She has also exhibited at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Brown University. Swarna’s art was also featured in a 2008 Sotheby’s auction. “What makes Swarna unique is that she is one of the few who can both sing and paint. But she has also moved beyond traditions. So aesthetically, she is a cut above most of the rest,” says Korom. 

Arka Das

As appeared in The Telegraph Metro, April 16, 2010

PORTRAITS WITH PAPER

Shakila Sheikh with her mentor Bal Raj Panesar. Picture by Sanat Kr Sinha Usual questions about style, subject or contextual references in her art do not draw stock answers from Shakila Sheikh. Technicalities — even the process of creation — play a minimal role in the larger picture of Shakila’s stunningly individual visual language. “I create images, I do not understand the ‘meaning’ of art,” she offers with characteristic reticence. This simplicity defines Shakila, one of the finest collage artists of her generation, in life as much as in art. While her creations have been showcased in every major gallery in the country and abroad, Shakila still works out of her home in the hamlet of Nurgram, near Lakshmikantapur in South 24-Parganas. Like every rural homemaker, her home and hearth take up much of her time. And then there is her art, usually created at night once the day’s chores are done. Like other everyday supplies, paper is precious in the Sheikh household; every bit of scrap is neatly stored should it serve a purpose in the layered collages that portray life as the 40-plus mother of two knows and interprets it. Often, that interpretation morphs into startling revelations on the world around her. Recognition is appreciated, but never striven for. And recognition has come her way in due time: the 2005 Charukala Award by the Academy of Dance, Music and Visual Art in West Bengal; the Lalit Kala Akademi felicitation in 2003; the Sanskriti Award in 2002; the honour of a Special Commission for the Gramin Bank installation for the International Trade Fair at Hanover, Germany, in 2000 and the national scholarship of the human resource development ministry from 1993 to 1995. On July 9, Shakila was honoured with the STAR Ananda Shera Bangali 2010 award. On the eve of STAR Ananda’s glittering awards ceremony at Science City auditorium, Shakila was her usual calm self, at home in the dining room of the YMCA’s Taltola branch. This is where her mentor, artist Bal Raj Panesar, has been in permanent residence since the Sixties. Shakila calls the octogenarian artist, a landscape and collage pioneer, “baba”. “She is my daughter,” says Panesar. The veteran artist first saw Shakila as a seven-year-old in the late 70s, when she would accompany her mother to Calcutta to sell vegetables. Panesar would walk down SN Banerjee Road, distributing chocolates to neighbourhood children, and also pencils and pieces of paper to encourage them to draw. Most doodles didn’t catch his eye, but Shakila’s stood out. “Even at that age, there was a spark in her works,” recalls Panesar. Well-respected as a teacher, Panesar took Shakila under his wings, taking her to exhibitions in various art galleries around town. While the drawings were mainly pencil-on-paper and thus in monochrome, the exhibitions were an eye-opener for her. “The first time I saw paintings, I was overwhelmed by colours. I had no idea that these many shades even existed,” smiles Shakila. Getting married to Akbar Sheikh at 16, Shakila continued to vend vegetables with her husband. Making ends meet was difficult, so Panesar offered the couple paper to make thongas and earn some more. Shakila used the paper to make collages, which “came naturally”, creating images from her everyday rural life. Soon after, Panesar gave her coloured paper which she started incorporating in her collages. The introduction to colours and their varied tonalities transformed Shakila’s works. Panesar’s layered approach to landscape also left a marked influence on Shakila’s earlier oeuvre; his collage-like oils and acrylic-on-canvas works mirrored in earlier pastoral works by his protégé. The early works were all done on cardboard; it was only in the late 90s that Shakila starting working on smaller canvases. The size of works gradually increased; by the time her first solo exhibition was organised at the CIMA Gallery in 2008, Shakila was working with 8’x12’ canvases. Her subjects, too, underwent a change. Shakila’s early works reflected her rural reality; later on, the pastoral images gave way to darker interpretations, of looking at the larger world outside while expressing the emotive responses from within. The recurrence of the goddess Kali as a metaphor for strength, of a basket full of eggs that are bombs, of women being harassed — these were images that looked inwards. “Her evolution as an artist has been this process of looking into her heart, unlike, say, Dayanita Singh’s, who explores the inner spaces of her mind,” says Pratiti Sarkar of CIMA. Her technique changed to incorporate watercolour-like chiaroscuro; each torn fragment of paper was meticulously chosen to give rise to a new whole. “None of the paper pieces that she chooses are selected at random; Shakila literally hunts for the perfect piece for each work,” says Pratiti. Her vibrant tonal palette apart, Shakila also moved away from Panesar’s influence, shaping her individualist style, especially in regard to forms and lines. In more recent times, Shakila has been experimenting with papier mache as a collage medium, creating her own material with soaked paper mixed with glue. At present, she is working on a solo exhibition. “The mark of a true artist is creating every day, no matter what. For Shakila, a day’s work done is past, awards et al. It’s tomorrow that remains a constant,” says Panesar. As appeared in The Telegraph Metro, July 14, 2010

Dream-kit makers drum up a storm

A bylane off Sitaram Ghosh Street would generally be considered a bookworm’s haunt. A typical north Calcutta neighbourhood close to the College Street book hub, the para exudes old-world, with its narrow alleys, buildings conjoined like Siamese twins and a million different publishing and printing factories. Not exactly a rock’n’roll environment.

The milieu, however, doesn’t deter Gautam Das, 43, from building one drumkit after another, tirelessly working in his tiny 12ftx10ft factory-workshop at the end of a blind lane, with just three assistants.

He’s been at it for the past 15 years. In all this while, the “expansion” has meant moving the “store” to a similar-sized room atop the main workshop. And, in a little over a decade, Gautam Drums, as his brand of instruments is better known, has become one of the first-call choices for budding drummers in the city, without burning a deep hole in the pocket.

Das’s store is not the only address in town for the drumming greenhorn looking for that budget kit. Over the past four decades, two shops in yet another bustling central city district, a stone’s throw from Lalbazar, have been the hub of locally manufactured drums.

Bapy Music, on Sunayat Sen Street across Rabindra Sarani, started it in 1971, building the first locally made drumkit. BCM Music Palace followed in a few years, specialising in fibreglass sets that became a rage in the mid-’80s and early ’90s.

In the US, independent drum-makers like this trio would be respected artisan-entrepreneurs, with adequate government support to help their businesses flourish. Custom drum-builders like Pork Pie Percussion, Dunette & Lang and Jeff Ocheltree are known the world over. All of them started in backyard garages.

The picture isn’t that rosy in this city, but our local heroes shine on. The reasons are simple: you can get stuff custom-made, not to mention the price. A decent imported drumkit comes for Rs 20,000, but the hardware may be rickety. And then there’s always the issue of after-sales services, accessories and repair.

In contrast, kits from our local drum-makers range from as little as Rs 2,500 to over Rs 15,000 for a full-blown, six or seven-piece set.

Mahadev Chakraborty, the owner of Bapy Music, started off with a gramophone retail and repair shop at the Sunyat Sen Street address in the late ’50s. “I was always interested in how drums are made. A Goanese drummer named Victor who often visited my gramophone store taught me what drumset design is all about,” says Chakraborty.

Das’s knowhow didn’t come from a very different source: he assisted a music instrument maker and was a master at operating the lathe machine. Once he knew the way drum hardware was built, switching to making drums was smooth. Setting up his own store was the next, natural step.

Bapy Music started rolling out the first locally-made drums in 1971: the first ones to be manufactured in Calcutta. Everything except the hardware — which Chakraborty imported — was built at his Lalbazar address.

Bapy Music’s drums caught on immediately, so much so that by the late ’70s, Chakraborty started sending out kits to Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai. By the mid-80s, he expanded his workshop. “I started off with two assistants. Today, there are over 30 workers in our company,” smiles a proud Chakraborty.

BCM Music Palace on Rabindra Sarani was founded in the 50s by Bhimchandra Mondal — thus the name BCM. Grandson Tapas now mans the Lalbazar store, while his father Ashoke, 55, visits the store’s Howrah factory every working day.

BCM started manufacturing its sets from the early ’80s. “We had been in the music instruments business for over two decades before we started manufacturing our drums. We did enough research to find out what sort of materials we would need in order to make quality drumkits,” says Ashoke. In the turn of the decade, the company’s fibreglass shell model became an instant hit with city drummers.

Then Chiradeep Lahiri, former drummer for Krosswindz, Span and Bickram Ghosh’s fusion outfit Rhythmscape started off playing the drums in the mid-’80s.

“The very first kit I owned was a second-hand BCM make, which lasted me a long time. Gautam’s drums came in the early ’90s, and they were very decent kits,” recalls Lahiri.

Monojit ‘Kochu’ Datta of the Orient Express recalls playing BCM and Bapy Music drums “for almost a decade” before actually laying his hands on an imported drumkit. Even then, Datta still gets most of his stuff custom-made from Das’s store.

Ditto for Ritoban Das, drummer for Cassini’s Division and Debapratim Bakshi, drummer with Span and the Saturday Night Blues Band. Hip Pocket drummer and t2 columnist Nondon Bagchi — who owns a vintage Ludwig drumset that dates back to the ’70s — relies on Das’s shop for hardware-related problems and his drum cases.

ARKA DAS

Published in The Telegraph Metro, Saturday , April 24 , 2010

Musical nook where records rule

The Free School Street neighbourhood is a nostalgic nook of the city where firaangs still touch down to get a feel of what was once a bustling hub of hippie culture.

Just before the corner where the road takes a turn into the upmarket bustle of Lindsay Street, a series of quaint gramophone record-players lure passers-by.

Often, when the MTV-friendly trash on the CD systems run their daily course, the 76s circle out interesting tunes: jazz and blues standards, screechy Motown, the odd Elvis, sometimes Marley, Dylan or The Meters. Anyone who has ever had a record player knows the sound of a well-oiled one, and these shops maintained theirs well enough.

A stone’s throw from the intersection of Sudder Street and Free School Street, rechristened Mirza Ghalib Street, stands Record Prince, better known as Chacha’s shop.

Chacha —Anis Ashraf, 65 – hardly visits the store these days; it is manned by his two sons, Danish and Abid. This is the Mecca of vinyl records in town, not to mention a few well-maintained gramophone players, some of which are even up for sale.

The racks on display on the pavement with cassette tapes — yes, some of these still exist — and CDs of the latest Bollywood remixes are a facade that throws off all but the genuine vinyl aficionado.

The real gems are kept in a room, rather a musty hole in the wall, behind the shop. Stacked up in racks, the records are alphabetically arranged according to the artistes’ names. Each one goes right back to its place after a record-to-tape, or now record-to-CD, capture.

While he had sold off a large part of his collection a decade back, there are still over 5,000 records at Ashraf’s store. His collection is a Flower-Power music lover’s haven, a jazz aficionado’s well-kept secret and a roomful of rarities for the classical music devotee.

In the tiny backroom, Santana’s eponymous debut album from 1969, a bunch of albums by the Southern Rock legends Allman Brothers Band and Charlie Daniels Band, records from the Seventies by British progressive rock pioneers King Crimson and jam band pioneers like the Grateful Dead share shelves with jazz must-haves like Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, live albums by the Bill Evans Trio and Weather Report classics.

Then there are records of everyone from Pandit Ravi Shankar to Debussy, Rabindrasangeet renditions by Hemanta Mukhopadhyay, not to mention a nostalgic 80s throwback with everyone from Jackson to Kraftwerk on offer.

Ashraf “inherited” the gems from their previous owner, Bakhtiar Jaan. As an employee of the nameless record store that Bakhtiar ran, Ashraf came to learn not just the technical details of how a 78rpm is supposed to run smooth but also about genres and artistes that were worlds apart from his upbringing.

Setting up Record Prince in 1965, he still keeps up with practices that he learned on the job. To this day, he maintains worn-out diaries that detail track names and artistes on a particular LP, year of publication and total length of the recording. Details like these were prized titbits that customers would lap up while getting “transfers” done, mostly to cassette tapes.

The music is one thing. Then there’s the artwork on these vinyls: imagine the excitement of laying your hands on original LPs from The Beatles’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, with its sleeve after sleeve of sheer psychedelia, the paranoid face that reflects King Crimson’s alien soundscapes on In The Court Of The Crimson King or Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, designed by British graphic designer/photographer Storm Thorgerson.

“While a number of vinyl records from my collection are broken, there are a few that are over five or six decades old. The charm of the vinyl is that even with years of repeated playing, these do not lose their warm, rich sound. The same cannot be said about cassettes or even CDs,” Ashraf smiles.

And while he’s officially “retired” from the business, the magic of the vinyl hasn’t quite left him.

“I’ve handed over most of the duties to my sons now, but I still keep track of a rare LP being sold from Record Prince’s collection,” says Ashraf.

ARKA DAS

Published in The Telegraph Metro on May 19, 2010

Parallel universe of figure & form

Three young minds, three radical expressions, three visions, as it were. The Other Vision, the ongoing show at Studio 21, offers viewers a parallel universe of figure, form and lineation, a glimpse of the creative impulses of those at the up-and-coming fringe of the city’s art spectrum.

Sambaran Das, Goutam Khamaru and Anup Mondal, all in their late 20s, collectively conjure up images of urban disconnect. While the artists may not know one another or may not be very familiar with the other’s work, their conjoined milieu shares themes of abandonment and despair, giving shape to “other” images, of not just what the eyes see, but what it perceives.

The Expressionist lines of Sambaran, primarily using a tonal palette heavy in shadowy, muted browns and black, offer a deconstructed torso of an Everyman, an office-goer, replete with his leather portmanteau, sighing up without a head in Hole; an insect eye sits atop a figure lying head down on a taktaposh, transformed perhaps during a siesta on a lazy Sunday afternoon in Metamorphosis. Elsewhere, Sambaran handles a chaotic passenger compartment in Main Line Dailies; his vision of the entire jamboree presented in a surreal light, bathed in warmer tones of ochre, occasionally emphasised. Everyone’s present: the fruit seller, the ubiquitous newspaper reader, the card players, a bored standing throng, the gutkha-seller. The panorama is disturbed, and metamorphoses occur here as well. Sambaran’s strength, however, lies in his inanimate studies, the charcoal drawing-like quality of dry brush acrylic-on-canvas offering infinite interpretations of loneliness as its essence.

Goutam works with his sense of humour in place. His six works, called Animal Series I to VI, are in mixed media, tempera and acrylic. In each, magical creatures animate frames, not as one particular being, but as expressions. A composite of eyes, body colour, legs, tails and horns, these are figurative abstracts, his creations familiar yet not easily recognisable. His is an ornate style that fixes the gaze with its vibrant tonal palette, primarily warm in nature. In Animal Series V, the fanged hunter that pounces upon its prey actually flaunts a peacock-like plumage on its physical shape, whereas the hunted is done in black-and-gold reticulates. Functional opposites collide to question the Natural world.

Anup, whose twin works are both in aluminium wire and wood, offers details only when required. Both expressions of suffering, Blake’s Lamb and Persistence of Becoming Numb, are agonised figurations that perhaps needed more company to fit into context. Typically without a cognitive face, his aluminium figures are distorted, disjointed shapes that seem to haunt dreams of despair.

The show is on at the Dover Terrace address till February 12.

As appeared in The Telegraph Metro, January 30, 2010

BORN TO PLAY

INTERNATIONAL BASS STALWART VICTOR WOOTEN SAYS THAT MUSIC IS JUST ANOTHER LANGUAGE THAT CAME TO HIM NATURALLY

US-based Grammy-winning bass player Victor Wooten will be performing at GD Birla Sabhagar on April 7, as part of a four-city tour of India with a fusion ensemble. He speaks to t2 about his expectations from the trip, finding a place for bass in Indian classical sound and being born into a musical family.

What are you looking forward to on your India tour?

This will be my first trip to India, so I am really looking forward to visiting your country. I’ve heard many wonderful things and am excited to experience them for myself. I love the music, food, culture, and people, and am looking forward to making some new friends.

What are your expectations from Calcutta listeners?

So far, I have no expectations from the audience. I will just do my best and hope to make them happy.

You have been working with Indian classical musicians for a while now. Your maiden India tour is primarily with a fusion set-up, with classical percussionists along with (Chennai-based guitarist) Prasanna. How did this project come about?

I have Prasanna to thank for this visit. He has been trying to get me to India for many years now. I’m very happy that it is finally happening. He put the musicians together for the concerts. I hope I can keep up.

How do you approach the bass in an Indian classical context?

From my understanding, there is not usually any bass in Indian classical music. So, I just use my understanding and experience of listening to tell what to play. I also know that the other musicians will let me know if I am playing something that doesn’t work. But, because this is a blend of cultures, I expect to add something a bit different to the mixture of sounds.

What inspired you to pick up the bass as an instrument?

I am the youngest of five musical brothers. When I was born, they realised that they needed a bass player in the family to complete the band. That became my role immediately.

Was there any defining moment when you knew that you would be playing music for the rest of your life?

No, not really. I’ve been playing for so long that it has always felt natural. I can’t really remember when I knew I would never have to do anything else to make a living. I don’t think that I ever thought of it that way. Music, to me, is a language, and speaking it is a natural part of my life, just like speaking English. I’m fortunate to be able to travel the world making people happy with my music.

Who are your biggest influences?

My parents and brother have always been my biggest influences in music and life.

What is the secret of your signature tone?

Like our speaking voice, there is no secret to it except that we didn’t have to try to get it. We’ve always had our voice and have developed it over time — without much effort. Music is the same. Just play naturally and eventually everyone will realise his or her natural voice. Play well and everyone else will appreciate it and ask how you got it.

What is the most important quality a bass player should possess?

A good groove!

What do you look for in musicians you’re playing with?

I like playing with any musician who is a good listener. That is what is needed to make other musicians feel comfortable. I also like a drummer who doesn’t over play, has good time and plays tastefully.

Who are your favourite bass players and drummers in contemporary music?
There are many, many wonderful bass players on the scene. Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller, Oteil Burbridge, Carles Benavant, Janek Gwizdala, and many more. Dennis Chambers, J.D. Blair, Derico Watson, Will Kennedy, Steve Smith, and Roy Wooten are just a few of the many drummers that I like.

What projects do you have planned?

I recently finished an audio version of my book The Music Lesson. I hope to release it in the very near future. It was a very big project to complete with lots of readers and musicians. And yes, I also hope to record another solo project in the near future as well as continue teaching, sharing, and running camps in Tennessee.

ARKA DAS 
As appeared in t2, The Telegraph, March 26, 2010

Sigmar Polke at CIMA

Polke’s eclectic vision

It’s a fortunate proposition for the Calcutta viewer to witness a comprehensive sequence of Sigmar Polke’s works.
The Cologne-based artist/ photographer is a central figure in post-war German art and has been at the cutting-edge of moderne kunste (the modern art movement from 1968 which is “credited with irony, parody and…is audaciously poster-like in style”) with a constantly mutating style, with a marked irreverence for the conventional.
The series of Polke’s 40 gouaches on show at CIMA Gallery, titled Music From An Unknown Source, offers a glimpse into this eclectic artist’s vision. The exhibition, in association with Max Mueller Bhavan Kolkata, was inaugurated last Friday by film-maker Gautam Ghose, who spoke of Polke’s art as “explaining the inner soul”.
A biting, sardonic wit has always underscore Polke’s work, often hailed as an anarchist trait. He had been one of the founders of the Capitalistic Realism, the anti-art movement which started in Germany in 1963.
The works on display all date back to 1996; much later than the period in which Polke was still discovering his visual language. These gouaches offer a glimpse into the fluid evolution of that idiom; the art surpasses boundaries of a language to morph into symphonic music; of tone, texture, form and figure. The title of the display warrants this process.
Comic strip-like drawings and digitised photograph-like images share wall space with splashes and tonal swirls in this mid-90s series, replete with titles that are often snatches of conversation; perhaps a nod to Dadaist influences. In his curatorial note on the display, Bice Curiger points out Polke setting “traps” that “some interpretations would appear to walk straight into”.
“There, Have A Bit More Caviar, It’s Delicious With The Vodka”, reads one. The corresponding image is of a street scene, a situation which can give rise to a hundred interpretations. The ambiguity of image and title — the latter obviously a lead-in from the artist to coax the viewer into the game of analysis — is deliberate; perhaps a hint at encouraging freedom of thought, from convention, as it were.
Vibrant colours, especially crimson and lilac, a latter-day obsession with the artist, invade some of the “figurative” poster-like works: a family portrait in According To Statistics Every German Owns 10,000 Things.
The figurations are almost surreal, dream-like. The geometry often veers to the chaotic, but converges on a harmonious whole. The social commentary is all-pervasive, albeit always with the humour in place. Even on blatantly sexual themes, like the Sphinx of Sigmund Freud, with a nude man and woman lolling in the foreground, presents a nebula of papercut cards with pop-artesque baby figures on them. The elemental is another recurring motif.
Polke is known to use everyday objects in his work — paint, lacquers, pigments, screen print and transparent sheeting in a single frame. Music From An Unknown Source presents gouaches, where the unique rhythm of Polke’s art finds new expression in a molten, disintegrated cadence.
Given the analogy of music, it is fitting to quote one of Polke’s titles to define this show: “What’s it actually about?” “What do you find in your mouth?” “I find the inside.” “And in the inside?” “In the inside I find the morning”. “Listen, your mouth is made for your ears. Listen.”

ARKA DAS
As appeared in The Telegraph Metro, April 19, 2010

Root Sounds

Root sounds

THE UNIQUE LAYA PROJECT BRINGS TOGETHER ARTISTES FROM COASTAL BELTS OF SOUTH-EAST ASIA TO HELP TSUNAMI VICTIMS.

A unique project that followed the path of the devastating December 26, 2004 tsunami along coastal and surrounding villages in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, India, Myanmar and Maldives, the Laya Project brings together music from all these regions. It’s music of and by the people of these coastal communities. Envisioned by the Chennai-based world music label/film production house EarthSync, the Laya Project is dedicated to the tsunami survivors. t2 speaks to Yotam Agam, CTO, EarthSync. How was this huge project conceived? What was the prime impetus? The Laya Project was conceived right after the 2004 tsunami. The prime objective of this project was to explore the music and beauty of these communities. The Laya Project is a personal and collective musical tribute to the resilience of the human spirit, a celebration of the spirit of sound. What does the music on this twin-CD collection reflect? The production creates a composition that mixes and enhances the original recordings and embarks on an inspirational visual and musical journey crossing borders, while preserving the music of the people. It essentially reflects roots music — folk, tribal and native forms of music. How is this project going to help the tsunami survivors? We have tried to address the cultural aspect of these communities. Laya Project provides a platform for music forms and musicians of these communities. Finance is a necessity, but these cultures need to be nurtured as well. Capturing the flavour of the people and region was an important part of this recording. How did you go about it? The international EarthSync team travelled for two years through the folk communities in the tsunami-affected regions. The musicians are the people of coastal and surrounding communities, recorded on-location. The recordings were then mastered and enhanced at our in-house studio. The entire production took two-and-a-half years to complete. Was it difficult keeping the non-mainstream approach steady all through the production? We took a conscious decision not to use popular artistes for publicity. Most of our artistes are common fishermen from coastal areas affected by the tsunami, where music is a part of life. Who were the Indian artistes you featured? Sufi singers from south India, tribal percussionists like the Tappatam and Tudumbattam groups from Tamil Nadu and a few Carnatic classical musicians. What has been the reaction from listeners? We have had a very good response; people really enjoy the experience and the blend of folk, classical, electronica and high-energy percussion. Are there any plans to showcase this music live? Yes, in fact, we have a live show which has flowed out of the Laya Project. We call it Laya Project Live, which features over 20 artistes on stage. The team has travelled and performed in over five shows both nationally and internationally. We also have an annual world music festival in Chennai that stages both national and international folk artistes.  ARKA DAS   As appeared in t2, The Telegraph, July 2008

Twisted; Del Amitri

TWISTED
Del Amitri
A&M; 1995

What would you get if you merged the clean guitar rock of the early Stones with the lyrical magic and melodic maturity of Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles? Del Amitri fans will vote for their favourite band — and with respect to Twisted, they wouldn’t miss the mark. This is as straight-up as blues-laced, melody driven pop-rock ever got in 1995. About 15 years on, this Glasgow band’s record still sounds fresh — even with its hits like Driving With The Brakes On and Roll To Me.

But Twisted runs deeper. Del Amitri’s recalcitrant, tongue-in-cheek humour was too much for sustainable mainstream success, while the junk-addled, balloon-bursting images of disturbia that accompanied some of its most memorable ballads were at best an acquired taste. But then, mainstream never made a cult classic, and that is what Twisted was destined to be, rather than ever really making it as a “breakthrough” project.

It’s a bittersweet subject, for Twisted plays on contrasts; the contrast between what’s been sung and the music that swathes it — which gave rise to the record’s title. Dark and ambient in one tune; sparkly sunshine in the next, Del Amitri — singer-songwriter-bass player Justin Currie and guitarist-songwriter-composer Iain Harvie, along with David Cummings on guitar, Andy Alston on keys and Chris Sharrock on drums and percussion — never fail to connect on a personal level on Twisted. The narratives are everyday; the emotions everyman. Thus, given all its cynicism, Twisted turns up as an uplifting record.

With a twin guitar attack, Twisted marked a shift in the band’s sound from it’s last outing, Change Everything, which bordered on folk-pop. But instead of rocking per se, the band also took time with acoustic arrangements and turned more introspective, thereby offering up gems like Here & Now and Tell Her This. Perhaps to emphasise that shift, the album opens strong, with the straight-faced rocker Food For Song. Currie’s voice, a nicotine-drenched tenor, wraps around a personal quality that’s immediately effective and you’re led through the stompy, brisk-paced Start With Me to Here & Now. This is where the introspection kicks in; Harvie’s jangly acoustic hook careening a Hammond organ line to kick up a situational classic.

While the shiny Roll To Me was a “standout” according to Hollywood — the tune was featured on the Flipper soundtrack — gems like It Might As Well Be You, dedicated to celebrating and regretting one-night stands and the funky Never Enough offer far more substance.

The hits do not make this album a must-have contender. It’s the band’s collective psyche that does it, translated in luminous harmonies and lyrics that deal with the ordinary with an extraordinary passion.

Published in t2, March 2009

Los Amigos

For listeners trooping to Someplace Else to catch Orient Express in the early 2000s, the pull factor was jazz. Over the years, with a revolving line-up of musicians, the one-of-a-kind, big-band Latin jazz ensemble of the country lead by multi-instrumentalist Monojit Dutta lost its ‘jazz’ edge. Somewhere down the line, the band started reverting to a more commercial set-list and sound tailor-made for the party crowd.
As they say, you can take the man out of jazz, but not the other way round. Dutta’s back with a bang. On Tuesday, July 17, his 6-month-old Latin jazz outfit Los Amigos launched their debut album Coleccion Privada (Private Collection), playing a sizzling set of original compositions and a few standards over coffee and cookies at Melange, a newly-opened coffee lounge at New Alipore. And guess what? This one comes free.
On Tuesday, the groove ruled as the band ran through its repertoire of standards and a few original compositions. Dutta — ‘Kochuda’ to his students — on congas, Sanjay Gupta on drums, Mainak ‘Bumpy’ Nagchowdhury on bass and Paddy on keyboards smiled through the songs and at each other, revelling in this music of the moment. Mumbai-based guitar player Binoy Rai (formerly of the jazz-funk band Groove Suppa) wasn’t around with his signature lines, but the foursome more than made up for Rai’s absence. The spacious coffee lounge — a Coffee Pai venture — was brimful with jazz aficionados and Dutta’s students, lapping up the excellent improvisation from the band up close.
“I had been thinking of forming an outfit that would focus on improvisational music,” Dutta says. In January this year, with his long-time percussion student and Orient Express alumnus Sanjay Gupta getting back in town, that seed of a plan started taking shape. “I talked about a full-fledged Latin jazz band to Sanjay and he immediately agreed. Mainak and Paddy joined the fold soon and within a week’s time, we were rehearsing some great music. Binoy came in a little later and the line-up was complete,” Dutta recalls.
The band’s initial gigs were much-anticipated affairs; very well-received by an audience eager to witness some homegrown jazz.
A couple of months down the line, Los Amigos went in for a two-day recording session. Opting for an old-school, live tracking process, the band came up with what would be the seven-song Coleccion Privada; with three originals (written by Dutta) and three standards, including Mongo Santamaria’s Afro Blue and Blue Bossa by Kelly Dorham. The album’s minimalist cover art compliments its music, with the occasional surprise element (a dhol on Blue Bossa). The live feel provides a warmth to the album that’s intrinsic to this music.
While ‘units sold’ seem to be the sole concern of everyone — from artistes to label execs to music stores — Coleccion Privada will be distributed free from Coffee Pai outlets around the city. Why distribute it free? “It’s a movement against record companies and labels, so to speak. Just because you are not ‘saleable’ as defined by a label doesn’t mean that you have to change or stop making the music that you love to play,” says Dutta, “We’ve had enough of that. This is a new beginning.”

Published in t2, The Telegraph, sometime in 2007

Nothing Like The Sun; Sting; 1986

…Nothing Like The Sun was the first taste many of us had of the Policeman’s solo outing. The first single from the album was Englishman In New York. To put it simply, it had us hooked. The slippery jazz-inflected reggae would reveal its true self much later, as would saxophonist Branford Marsalis.
Nothing Like The Sun also served as a passing introduction to Afro-Cuban music, especially with They Dance Alone (Cueca Solo) — not to mention the uniquely personal school of songwriting that characterises Sting.
The album was dedicated to Sting’s mother, who had passed away months before it’s release. Always the troubled son, a brooding sense of loss pervades his sophomore record.
Achieving the melancholia was only half the task — with someone like Gil Evans on board, it wasn’t too hard to achieve as well. The other half was creating a sound that would straddle jazz and mainstream pop, without alienating the so-called serious listener. Given its strong political subtext, this is as serious as mainstream pop can get.
As a parallel to the pop-jazz analogy, the album also strides the political and the personal; being written following Sting’s Latin American sojourns. As much as there’s They Dance Alone and Fragile, there’s also Be Still My Beating Heart and Sister Moon.They Dance Alone is a direct commentary on Chilean dictator Augustus Pinochet’s rule, written on the tragic Mothers of The Disappeared. These were women who lost their sons, lovers, husbands and brothers to the Pinochet regime. The fugue here steps on the Latin influences, while Straight To My Heart completes that cycle.
One of the most intriguing tracks of the album is Be Still My Beating Heart. You can literally peel the layers one after another off this track, each one revealing the genius of arrangement.
Years later, a whole new generation would revel in the arrangements of A Thousand Years, Desert Rose and Ghost Story. Quite like his former bandmate, Andy Summers’ surreal guitar-work on Be Still My Beating Heart is evocative of his solo direction.
Then of course, there’s Fragile — still a potent commentary on man and his politics and a great nylon-string piece by itself. Even the sprightly Englishman traces the tribulations of the gay fiction writer Quentin Crisp, forced to move to New York from the homophobic Britain of the Twenties and Thirties — a “ legal alien” in the country of his asylum.
The brilliant version of Little Wing, to which the Gil Evans Orchestra provides a different facet altogether, is arguably one of the best versions of the Hendrix classic.
Sister Moon — where Shakespeare’s sonnet #130 (“My mistress’s eyes are nothing like the sun”) is quoted — is where the album gets its name from. The other treasure that this track reveals is Branford Marsalis — whose inimitable saxophone would go on to play a defining melodic role in much of Sting’s later music.
The records dedicated to his parents — …Nothing Like The Sun to his mother, The Soul Cages to his father — are Sting’s darkest yet. While the latter is more layered and complex, quite like his lifelong troubled relationship with his father, …Nothing Like The Sun can succinctly be described in his own words about his mother: beautiful but sad.

Superunknown; Soundgarden, A&M; 1994

What does it take for an album to be declared a classic within a decade-and-a-half of its release? Let’s see: over 10 brilliant songs with hooks that are part of an alt-rocker generation’s psyche; a sound that marries heaviness with psychedelia in one of the most poignant manners possible — and a band that broke up at the height of its worldwide success.
Soundgarden’s Superunknown was out in a year that saw, among others, massive albums from the Stone Temple Pilots (Purple), The Prodigy (Music For The Jilted Generation), Alice In Chains (Jar Of Flies), Greenday (Dookie), Toad The Wet Sprocket (Dulcinea), the Dave Matthews Band (Under The Table & Dreaming) and Blues Traveler (Four). Nonetheless, the record — Soundgarden’s fourth studio cut — went on to become one of the best-selling albums of 1994; going platinum five times over in America and notching up two Grammy Awards in 1995. Black Hole Sun won for Best Hard Rock Performance, while Spoonman scooped up the surprise statuette for Best Metal Performance.
The accolades, though, are not enough pointers to a deeply emotional record. With lyrical themes that are an entry point to the dark realms of suicide, depression and substance abuse — perils of a band finding fame, according to some interpretations — Superunknown related stories of alienation and despair, talking of the world’s end and etching protagonists on the brink of the social circle. While despair at that state of things is relentless, on Superunknown, the band gladly finds a meeting point between its words and its layered, complex instrumentation — the latter far more mature and technically solid than its usual “grunge” peers — to finally celebrate the music it creates.
Superunknown doesn’t open: it leaps at you with Let Me Drown, buckles up with My Wave and releases the tension with the brooding junkie-journal Fell On Black Days.

In spite of its subjects and a sound that oscillates between hyper-paranoid odd-time and brooding, Superunknown possessed a surprisingly healthy strand of hope underlying its sledgehammer sound, the real subject of classics like Fell On Black Days and Black Hole Sun.
Chris Cornell may have gone on to form Audioslave and Matt Cameron may have bucked up with friends in Pearl Jam, the world still needs the band named after a Seattle sculpture. There aren’t too many out there.

Published in t2, The Telegraph, sometime in 2008