Portfolio Update

Hello there! Updates to my work can be found here. Travelling now for four weeks across India to Jaipur, Bombay, Hyderabad, Badami, Hampi and Chennai. More soon.

little music

Our hearts will unite,

beyond this space and time

It's like I've been here before,

It's like I've met you in my dream. 

I’m at this cozy basement studio/theatre for a gig. It has a carpeted floor and cushions for seating, the walls of one end of the room are lined with strips of wood and its floor is raised slightly.  The room is filled with some of the finest musicians in the city of Delhi, who are pretty much performing for each other tonight. Towards the end, there is a point in the concert when almost half of the audience rises up to join the singers’ choir. They dedicate this last song to a very special person in the room.  There is a sense of warm excitement in the air. Just before starting, Chayan Adhikari (Advaita frontman and also the conductor of this choir) turns to the bassist (who is hidden behind this big bunch of singers) and says, “Zara saa toh doh!” (musician friends, help me translate this for the folks who are not familiar with Indian classical music!)

This is the Global Music Institute hosting their first Singers’ Night. Arguably, one of finest schools of music in Delhi, GMI also frequently turns into a venue that hosts spectacular music performances and jams usually with about forty people snugly sitting in as audience. Everyone in the room has come there pretty much just for good live music. However, what one experiences is much more than just music played live. There is the energy that emerges out of sincere playing and attentive, active listening.

The air that night was filled with little unspoken conversations happening on stage and in between, the exchanging of cues and glances, the changing body of language and expressions on when special moments were felt. And the air was filled with ease. I was happy to hear some of my most favourite musicians playing some of my favourite songs. But I was happier to have experienced live music the way I did that day, free of distractions, free of chatter and of food and drinks.

On little afterthought, I realized that even in the past, the gigs that I have absolutely loved the most have been free performances at public venues like the India Habitat Centre, especially the ones by the Balani brothers. Perhaps it was the comfortable scale of this GMI event that it took me a few weeks to completely get over that gig.

-------------

Last week, I went for the launch of singer song writer Shantanu Pandit’s EP, Skunk in the Cellar. Anyway in the heat of June, what one could safely assume as off season for the music scene in Delhi, I remember feeling a little repulsed with this whole deal about email pre registrations and this quiet (almost secretive) build up to the event. The gig started at 9 PM and there was a lady at the main entrance checking for registrations. In the narrow lobby were CDs and artwork posters but also a tray with glasses of water and a bowl of candy. Another polite lady at the door to the theatre told us at least 2 times to switch off our phones and remain very quiet.

The warnings, however, were well worth the final little walk through a dimly lit narrow passage into the heart of the very charming Akshara Theatre. One entered at the aisle between the steeply rising audience’s seating and the performers, who today were two lanky (for the lack of a better word) boys in their happy place (for the lack of a better phrase). I had heard the songs on the EP online for a couple of days before the event. But I remember having no memory of them once I heard them live. Of course, listening to them now takes me back to that rather tiny seat in the theatre and that good feeling.

Minimal but full sounding, the songs were melancholic but charming. And so was the tone of the night. The sound, the lighting, the setting seemed like they were all deliberately chosen to add to the experience of the music. One needed this setting for these songs to be heard. And one needed this audience.

------

Post gig conversations with musician friends tell me that more and more musicians have forever been craving for venues and event where they could be really heard and they could make conversation with their listeners. And it would also be true that this artiste-audience connection is easier to establish for singer songwriters, duos and trios whose music would sound better at venues of a smaller scale. What’s heartening is that Delhi is warming up to the idea of these intimate public performances, or perhaps just that I am waking up to them only now (and they’ve been happening all along, have they?).

On July 4, Delhi based artist, architect and singer-songwriter Aditi Veena will be sharing some of her work in progress on the her new solo project 'Mumblings on the impressioned interactions with four charming monsieurs in the life of ditty’. Through visuals and sound, her performance would explore the spatial and experiential relationships between the audience and artists. I am going because for this mostly because I am curious to know what this former sentence would mean in practice. You could find the details for the event here. 

Of songs and their names

Travel between work and home consumes about 3 hours of my life everyday. It also gives me about 3 hours everyday to listening to music actively. Active meaning, I play it to listen to it and do nothing else, only listen to that music with activities like walking or travelling on the side.  A lot of this active instrumental music has been much  fascinating me lately.  It makes me wonder, how do wordy names emerge for tunes that were created to escape from the burden of words and translation?

This piece by Tigran Hamasyan is a song that flows like a slow stream of water that smoothly begins to evaporate into nothingness. He’s done this with a faint vocal section that begins in a structured fashion but then transforms into a fading poly rhythmic form that dissolves into itself, soon enough, quite like vague memories that fade away to feel like dreams. He’s one of those artists I listen to without even looking at what each song is called, and I check out names only once in a while. I saw the name ‘A memory that became a dream’ today evening. The awareness of the name really transformed my experience of the song. There was joy in how closely I had sensed the artists’ vision, a success of his capacity to articulate an idea and my capacity to absorb (to some extent, maybe).

I heard Arjuna (the two part composition) by Tarun Balani for the first time at a small private concert in 2013. Tarun announced the name the piece and the band performed it. Then I went home and heard the song on the album again and again. And again. Upbeat music that changes gears between the two parts to charge at you more definitively; this is a great demonstration of building up focus with a change in time signature, rigorous and meditative repetition, and slowly revealing the true nature of something through its journey. To me, this song could be called nothing but Arjuna. I cannot imagine for it to have any other name now. How much would change if I would have not heard its name before listening to the song? It would still stand for focus, perhaps, but not in the context of its Mahabharata reference. Would the piece be different if Tarun had never read or heard about Arjuna or the Mahabharata?

I’m trying to resolve my feeling about the times where I have felt little connection with the artists’ intentions and found my experience of a song to be quite different from its intended meaning. This happened especially in the case of the riveting Piano Textures by Bruno Sanfillipo. The tracks are organized in an order and are called Piano Textures 1, Piano Textures 2, Piano Textures 3, Piano Textures 4, Piano Textures 5, Piano Textures 6, Piano Textures 7, Piano Textures 8. 

PS. Hunting for relevant pieces for this made me realize how live versions could often be diametrically different from studio versions. It is Jazz after all. It is all the energy in the improvisation.

PPS. Happy 2014.

200 words to writing

The past few months have been more eventful than ever before. I've lost sense of what normalcy really is and what goodness is. I've started acknowledging all the meta-thinking and internal battles of my little brain. Kriti calls this my mental masturbation, an inventive tool that helps substantiate all the importance that I want to give myself (remember the love letters?). I saw this thesis semester walking over in front of my eyes and I saw myself losing to time and work, swaying between procrastination and overkill. I've also realized that closure is one of my least favourite nouns. I have been forcing myself to think that thesis has only begun yet.  It will get more exciting from now on.

I've realized lately that there’s far too much that I think about and feel is worthy of blogging but I never end up doing it because I never get down to structuring it as an article/ post and never write so much that there’s enough to sieve a structure from it. This also comes out of a realization that very often; I fail to look at the larger picture of a situation without getting stuck in the parts.  So this is an attempt to at least initiate all the conversation by starting with 200 words and putting it up. You just read the first 200. 

-_____-

A restored mosque, New Delhi. 

These days have been interesting, as music has been transcending its lyrical and melodic boundaries to open up to me. I’ve been finding more meaning that what’s been served (or maybe not). Lately I’ve been seeing space in music.

I can possibly never thank my friend Firas enough for introducing me to Coke Studio Pakistan two years ago on an afternoon metro ride to college. While he was keen on the Persian Folk poetry, explaining to me the meanings and metaphors in each line, I remember being completely lost somewhere, in the music, thinking to me ‘this is really fresh stuff!’ Such a fresh contemporary take on folk tunes! It was Zeb and Haniya.

Then I heard their brilliant Coke studio collaboration with Javed Bashir. Downloading their album soon after, I heard the original version of the same song which I found to be far more compelling than the coke studio one. The song feels empty, almost like hints of ideas loosely strung together rather than a sound structure with gaping voids. For me this was just enough space to be listening and not be listening to the song at the same time. Much later Haniya also talked about it in their collaboration for the Dewarists.

Somewhere (14:26) in this brilliant documentary about their music, Icelandic post rock band Sigur Ros mention ‘Space is what we have here, in our personal life and in the land as well. [...] people are unconsciously aware of giving you space.’ You have to watch (or at least listen to) the whole movie to know what they really mean here.  My Norwegian friend from child hood Pål Moddi Knutsen now sings and writes music and performs all over Europe as ‘Moddi’. His music lingers in my head for much longer than it’s actually playing for. Sombre and spaced out. 

The post hasn't ended yet. 

रात के हमसफ़र, थक के घर को चले

The eve of Diwali, 2013 and the rickshaw ride back home from the Metro station did no difference.  My head feels dense. I can feel these grey clouds looming over my head. Work goes on just fine. There is finally some sense of progress with Urban Design and clearly the faint appearance of a finish line. Closure is good (I guess, sometimes). I just find it hard to come to terms with it. I don’t understand it. I dislike it. I would rather distract myself and/ or procrastinate. I love to concentrate on getting distracted all the time. The curiosity of the other, what joy!

This Sunday, on the I saw half of An evening in Paris on the flight from Bangalore to Delhi. I chose to only see half, and kept the other half for later. I don't know why. 

काम चोर

Google translate: drone, shirk

noun /drōn/ 


1. A low continuous humming sound
2. A monotonous speech
3. A continuous musical note, typically of low pitch
4. A musical instrument, or part of one, sounding such a continuous note, in particular (also drone pipe) a pipe in a bagpipe or (also drone string) a string in an instrument such as a hurdy-gurdy or a sitar
5. A male bee in a colony of social bees, which does no work but can fertilize a queen
6. A person who does no useful work and lives off others
7. A remote-controlled pilotless aircraft or missile



verb /SHərk/ 

1. Avoid or neglect (a duty or responsibility) 

Waiting on the world to change. 

My stupid mouth

How many times does it happen to you that you just realize after saying something that it was not appropriate/ needed/ crap? Regretting right after sending an email that you know would be read not as you had intended it to. When you really wished there was an undo button. But, of course, you can’t do shit. You try and fix it only to screw up further. It happens to me very frequently, say, once in 2-3 days. My friends call it my social dyslexia. And believe me, it’s not funny to sit back wishing you had just been a little more careful. And I die an inch every time it happens. It’s a pathetic feeling.

PS.  Even though I am not a lyrics person at all, I really connect with John Mayer’s writing; he was at his best in Continuum.   Excerpts from one of his songs, that couldn’t describe the situation better. I hope you are listening/ reading this.

Kaman se Nikla Hua Teer

My stupid mouth
Has got me in trouble
I said too much again....


Oh, another social casualty
Score one more for me
How could I forget?
Mama said "think before speaking"
No filter in my head
Oh, what's a boy to do
I guess he better find one soon....

And I could see clearly, An indelible line was drawn
Between what was good, what JUST slipped out and what went wrong...

I'm never speaking up again
It only hurts me
I'd rather be a mystery
Than she desert me


Oh I'm never speaking up again
Starting now... Starting now


One more thing
Why is it my fault?
So maybe I try too hard
But it's all because of this desire
I just wanna be liked
I just wanna be funny
Looks like the jokes on me
So call me captain backfire


I'm never speaking up again
it only hurts me
I'd rather be a mystery
than she desert me


oh i'm never speaking up again
i'm never speaking up again
i'm never speaking up again
Starting now, starting now...