Around the time of Brighton's excellent Great Escape festival this May, I was working on two global orientated musical articles. This was the first one. A bit of background before you read. The India Soundpad album project was dreamt up by The British Council with the intention of using a renowned British producer to choose four Indian bands to expose to the UK public via a download compilation. This meant interviewing the four bands involved (Swarathma, Advaitar, Indigo Children and Medusa) and the well-respected John Leckie, a personal bonus for me as he is the man who produced on of my favourite albums ever, Radiohead's The Bends. The article is meant to capture the spirit of the project as well as the inspiring attitudes of bands from another part of the world, another culture yet also influenced by western musical domination.
You could fill a magazine four times the size of the one you’re feverishly pouring over now with the benefits gathered from artists absorbing influences from different cultures. It’s incredibly important to keep these creative links open and continuously expanding in order for musicians and listeners alike to hear the freshest and most honest sounds being crafted by our global community. No matter what style of music you listen to, it has been doused in liberal amounts of cross-cultural knowledge, either by proxy or intention.
Perhaps the most exciting examples of this willingness to keep such channels open and responsive are overseas. Without a doubt, Western music (or if you prefer, American and British music) has become a massive part of many other nations’ young musical innovators.
The British Council, an organisation dedicated to educational opportunities and cultural relations, recognises this and so the India Soundpad project has been conceived. The premise is they’ve taken four bands from India’s emerging alternative scene and brought them together with renowned British producer John Leckie – responsible for production on such important records as Radiohead’s The Bends, The Stone Roses’ debut, The Fall’s This Nation’s Saving Grace and XTC’s White Music, as well as work with diverse acts like PiL, Be-Bop Deluxe and Kula Shaker. The result is a sampler showcasing the depths of wonderful music inspired by the collision of their own heritage and outside influence.
One of those bands, Swarathma, explain why they think this collision of West and East has resulted in such strong unions. “Our take on this is that the spirit of rebellion appealed to the Indian youth. The rebellion that a whole generation in the West embraced was articulated in various forms, one of them being rock music.”
Advaita have an even more articulate analysis of the Western influence on their country’s rich musical heritage: “Western music has had a huge influence on Indian music and culture for a long time. From a classical perspective, India has not really evolved its own ensemble music, barring some forms like qawali in the Islamic music culture. Indian classical music is extremely sophisticated in melodic movement and rhythmic intricacy but there is very little use of harmony. All the popular music, derived from classical roots, that has developed for the last 70 or 80 years - first through theater and then films and other popular music - has had a western influence be it in terms of orchestration or more contemporary band music. This can be seen clearly in how hindi film music has always picked up the trends popular in the west through the last five or six decades and worked them into an indianised sound.”
The point is that Westernised sounds are no stranger to India than, say, their music is to ours – although no one can ever claim that Indian music, scales, structures and themes have been assimilated in quite the same way ours have in India. John Leckie can’t help but detail this when explaining how the project evolved from his being invited by the British Council to take part.
“We did a lot of research on the internet and myspace to see what was happening, what the buzz was and what gigs were being played. Then I went out to Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore and auditioned about 36 different bands who had all submitted things. So, 12 bands across three cities in a two day period. It was pretty full on!” he admits. “When I went through the audition process, it was difficult because I was looking for something that had an Indian element to it, because, obviously you wanna hear some Indian-ness about them, (but) all the bands I auditioned were doing all they could to get rid of their Indian-ness. They were trying to be Western; singing in English, playing electric guitars and although they wrote all their own songs, they were playing covers too.”
Nevertheless, and upon whittling down 36 to four, John gives his reasons for choosing those that appear on the India Soundpad album:
“One is Advaitar which is kind of a fusion band with electric guitars, drums, keyboards but also tabla and sarangi, which is like an Indian violin - a very ancient instrument, and they have two singers: a singer who sings English, like Crosby, Stills and Nash harmonies and that’s contrasted with Indian classical singing.. Swarathma, who are from Bangalore; they don’t speak English at all. You have to remember there are about 150 different languages in India. They’re a party, celebration band, very energetic, a bit theatrical and use tabla, electric violin, bass, drums and guitar. They’re great and what won me over was their energy, really. Indigo Children are much more a western rock band, like a British guitar band. They’ve got rid of all the Indian elements in their music and that’s the contrast. They come from New Delhi. They were the only band who really rocked out, made a noise and really meant it, they weren’t just putting it on. The last band Medusa, similarly, I really liked their naturalness. They really seemed at ease they were just trying to be themselves.”
The key thing that brings these bands together, apart from their country – which isn’t half as important as the place they come from – is their attitude. Listening to each of the bands, they are diverse in approach, energy and genre. Yet, brilliantly, they are entirely distinctive from Western sounds. It’s exhilarating to hear that influence does not have to become imitation.
“To be honest, we do not believe that music has a native territory. Musicians do, but the expression, or artistic expression of any form, does not “belong” to any place or time. Our music, and music anywhere for that matter, can crossover, only if we create it with courage, honesty and conviction.” – Swarathma
“For us, music is most definitely a way of enriching life. I do find the dreariness of a lot of the popular music in the west a bit strange at times)” – Advaita
“We were a band before we were musicians. So, the start was an entire process of trying out ideas as they came to us. Somehow, in the process of giving those ideas a shape, we discovered that we liked a whole range of sounds, artists and musicians.” – Medusa
“We escape the monotony of life by doing what we love the most and simultaneously enrich our lives with it through the personal satisfaction we get by playing music.” – Indigo Children
Perhaps what also threads these bands together is their struggles with being taken seriously in their native country, let alone their willingness to get to as wide an audience as possible. “In India there’s no real infrastructure for gigs; there’s no college circuit there’s no Barfly circuit,” explains John. “They have a lot of major outdoor festivala, a lot of metal festivals: metal in India is huge! A lot of international bands tour, of course. Other problems are that in India, TV is Bollywood driven. It’s very difficult to get anywhere whithout their music in Bollywood films. So, they play wherever they can. They tend to have talent competitions often, battle of the bands, that sort of thing. The same names kept cropping up. In a way, the Soundpad project was a battle of the bands, but at least it’s an opportunity to play. They will jump at any opportunity.”
Swarathma confirm the difficulties of the past, but highlight the hope that seems to have spilled over as a result of progress: “Over the past few years there has been a decisive shift in the way the Indian music listener has treated music coming out of India. Indian independent music - non-Bollywood if you like - relegated to the back burner for years has now started to be recognized. This has probably happened because more Indian bands have started to write music fearlessly, honestly and with conviction. When you do that, it’s hard not to get noticed.”
“It seems people only want art which is escapist and we have to really work extra hard to spread our more thought provoking brand of music,” explain the collective members of Advaita. “Having said that, due to the inherent ‘Indian-ness’ of our sound we have had a bit of success, we released our first album on EMI, a major label, though not a mainstream label in India.”
The overall opinion seems to be that things are improving, and the results of the India Soundpad project have been extremely positive. As well as Advaita, Swarathma have also released music on a major label, Virgin, in India. This is despite each of the bands recognizing that rock music is not a popular genre in India. As John points out: “The development is that there are young people with disposable income. For once there’s a population with money to spend beyond surviving.” This surely bodes well for the growing discontentment with Bollywood superiority.
More than anything, quite apart from the exotic confines of our imaginations, India Soundpad represents four great bands making music they all believe in, each doing it against the odds of being discovered, making a living and being heard. One can’t help but be cynical about British bands and their approach, while the refreshing slant that Swarathma, Indigo Children, Advaita and Medusa lend to real passion and commitment to music makes this even more transparent in UK counterparts. Not to criticise the efforts made and the obstacles we face here in the West, but India Soundpad proves to be a window into how music can be the driving force without sacrificing ambition. As much as they’ve learned from us, we can learn just as much, if not more from them. In the end, Indigo Children say it best: “Good music will be appreciated anywhere, whether coming from India or Mars.”
Brad Barrett
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