Indian music attains global flavour, wider appeal as it blends different strains

Bundu Khan's Langa Band And Divya: An amalgam of Rajasthani folk music and modern Indian jazzIt was an evening to remember for the performers and the crowd alike at the 1900s discotheque in Mumbai's Taj Mahal hotel.Just as Bundu Khan and his Langa band of colourful, turban-clad folk musicians from Rajasthan ended their lively performance came the Mumbai-based jazz group Divya with its catchy numbers. Finally, Khan's Langa boys jammed with Divya. The result was a blend of Rajasthani folk music and modern Indian jazz; the effect sheer magic.The audience could not have enough, nor could the participants. Says Dinshah Sanjana of Divya: "It was like love at first sight. I wanted to share those moments with a wider audience." Predictably enough, Divya, which won an award for the most original and innovative group at the Ninth International Jazz Competition at Belgium in 1997, is planning an album with Khan and his Langa musicians.Taufiq Qureshi, youngest son of tabla maestro Allah Rakha and founder of the fusion group Surya, has been extensively touring interior India in search of traditional folk instruments and tunes for his new international album. In fact, he has already tried out Rajasthani folk tunes in his Colour of Rajasthan album. .preferred-source-banner{ margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;}More recently, he recorded with Ram Yadav Saran, an Aalah or traditional Bundelkhandi folk musician, for a Shyam Benegal film. Says Qureshi: "It's an age of world music and this is the best time to exploit the opportunity."Indeed it is as Indian music attains new connotations - part new age, part global but Indian all the same. This repackaging of desi music is not new. Way back in the '60s when George Harrison of the Beatles teamed up with sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, it was called fusion. Today, the politically correct usage is world music and among its many famous practitioners is Madonna. Roughly categorised into pop, neo and serious fusion, world music is labelled and marketed as jazz-fusion, rock-fusion, ghazal-pop, techno-classic, ethnic-rock and Hindi rock. In fact anything goes. "It's like the dog chasing its own tail," says music critic Parag Trivedi. "A recent trend shows the audience in Asia wants more European or American influence in their music, while the audience in Europe and America demands more Asian music."Madonna's Shaivite avatar in her chartbusting albums Frozen and Ray of Light is proof of this influence. Back home the league of crossovers includes Alisha Chinai with her album Om, Lucky Ali and Colonial Cousins. Says Hariharan after the release of Colonial Cousins' second album The Way We Do It: "Ours is mainstream music with an ethnic soul. It has wider appeal than either western or Indian classical music." The commercial success of these albums has attracted many newcomers to this hybrid formula.There's Euphoria with Dhoom Pichuck - a mixture of pop, ghazal and folk. Earlier the Delhi-based band Silk Route used a combination of guitar, clarinet and piano with Indian classical and folk music in its first album Dooba Dooba. DJ Hussain's album Moksha is a funky, rhythmic amalgamation of techno and Indian classical music.Some of the Indian musicians who had tried out crossovers in the '80s and early '90s, which were labelled merely as experimental or alternate music, are now reviving their music groups. Like Fazal Hussain's Mynta and Louis Banks' Silk. In fact, over the past three years Banks' band has done over 30 shows and almost 2,000 CDs of his album Beyond Barriers with Hariprasad Chaurasia have been sold. Trilok Gurtu's compositions link subtle Indian rhythms and elements of modern jazz and rock. Colonial Cousins: Mainstream music with an ethnic soulAfter introducing Shobha Rock, in which he has used his mother Shobha Gurtu's thumri expertise, Trilok is planning a second album with her.Ranjit Barot is working on an album with classical singer Shubha Mudgal and also reworking the traditional compositions of his mother Sitara Devi for a live show.The serious fusion category has always seen experimentation by masters such as Ravi Shankar, L. Subramaniam, L. Shankar, Chaurasia, Zakir Hussain, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, R.A. Ramamani, Trilok Gurtu and others. Says violinist Subramaniam: "Improvisation is a continuous process and in a performance you cannot segregate the music from the other important factor, entertainment.However, it's not as if the unorthodox endeavours of classical musicians have earned only accolades. Says Mudgal: "Some purists accuse me of being money-minded and publicity crazy, but I believe in presenting classical music to the present generation in a more comprehensible manner."Flautist Ronu Majumdar, newly initiated into world music, is also in tune with this sentiment. He believes presenting music in a simple way helps him reach out to a larger audience.Finally, it all boils down to gaining a wider appeal. Says Uday Benegal of the rock group Indus Creed: "We see greater potential in experimenting with music today because we get a wider audience." Mehmood Curmally, director of Mumbai's oldest music store Rhythm House, agrees. His store now has a separate Indo-fusion music section. The commercial success of fusion albums has attracted many newcomers to this hybrid formula.Says Curmally: "Just six years ago, we hardly used to sell 200 to 300 cassettes but today we sell over 1,000 a month."In the Rs 1,056-crore organised Indian music market, Hindi film music dominates with 68 per cent and Indipop with 10 per cent. Others, including Indian and western classical and world music, have a 20 per cent share. Of this world music accounts for 10 per cent having climbed from a mere 2 per cent last year.Sony Music, Music Today, Times Music and Magnasound are already tapping this market. Music Today's Sound Scape and Elements series, Colour of Rajasthan, Seduction and Romance, Times Music's Sacred Chants of Shiva, Terracotta and Moksha, Sony Music's Colonial Cousins - the list is growing. S. Sridhar, Director (marketing), Sony Music, feels culture has crossed boundaries and what is happening to music today is a mere reflection of the times. "It's like if you are wearing dhoti in Uttar Pradesh you are a regular guy, but if you wear it in an upmarket or classy place then you are a cool guy with attitude. Presentation, promotion and packaging are important," he says. Music critic Parag Kamini feels the tastes of Indian youth are "heavily under western influences. Today when Indian-influenced music explodes into western culture we have completed the circle". Says Darshak Mehta, 25, who has over 1,000 titles of fusion music in his collection: "It's a good change."It definitely has been as people all over the world jive to Indian chants or Swedish vocals against African beats.All it requires is some marketing savvy from the captains of Indian music industry to attract the world's common minimum denominator and watch the megabucks pile in. That, undoubtedly, would be music to some ears.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Dec 21, 1998--- ENDS ---

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Indian music attains global flavour, wider appeal as it blends different strains

Indian music attains a global flavour and wider appeal as it is blended with different strains and packaged anew.

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