He is a loner when he is a writer but hardly takes time to croon Buri nazar wale tera muh kala. Well, that was This is not Fusion, six years ago, when the album hit the music stands amidst much fanfare. Cut to 2011 and the ace award-winning author Amit Chaudhuri unwraps his second experimental overture titled Found Music. The British Council in association with The Park Hotel in Kolkata and EMI Music recently played host to a ceremonious launch and an unplugged concert by Chaudhuri and his band at the city’s hip night-spot — Someplace Else.
Classically trained as a singer in Hindustani tradition, this wordsmith’s forte lies in seamlessly spinning a melange of Indian ragas, jazz, rock and blues in his compilations. “It’s like a proper Indian thali with different dishes. You will find a sumptuous spread of fare with varying aromas and flavours to tingle your taste buds or err earplugs with. Besides jazz, other musical genres like rhythm and blues, rock, ballads, soulful melodies and pop too pour in and percolate under our purview. We have attempted to stir up a melting pot of diverse tunes and traits, and all converge to a point of confluence at a certain point of time. This is how the project bore fruit which I had initiated a good seven years ago in 2004. It witnessed a slow but a steady shape-up process,” shares the multifaceted artiste about his second album Found Music. “You see, there is something about jazz called re-contextualising, that is, to place a literary piece or any creative/artistic work in a different context. You draw in different strains and interludes from a separate location and put the same in another zone to see what possibilities evolve from there. For instance, noted American jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane’s famous track My Favourite Things from his eponymous 1961 jazz album has been turned inside out in the popular kids’ movie Sound of Music in the peppy song with a lilting tune called Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens...,” he cites an example while dwelling on the grammatical nuances of jazz music.
The music-bed seems as fathomless as an ocean’s, which is like an oyster for somebody who wishes to indulge in it. “You take a plunge and the window to unending exploration opens before your eyes,” asserts the author-vocalist. To him, convergence of varied traditions is necessary. A surprise package indeed, the album startlingly features original versions of songs by John Lennon, Leonard Cohen and Brian Wilson alongside his own sly and refreshing new compositions. Plus a striking matrix of contemporary re-workings of age-old traditional Indian ragas also joins the fray. Boasting of such an eclectic mix, Found Music certainly falls as music to the ears. Unlike a conventional venture, this album defies stereotypical categorisations and promises to delight music fans of every persuasion.
Drawing influences from across the board and every probable corner of the music map, Chaudhuri has keenly assimilated a few outstanding classic gems to redefine and recelebrate the same. Norwegian Wood — the haunting number by The Beatles band which first appeared on the 1965 album Rubber Soul is a case in point. Another is Good Vibrations, a song by eminent American musician Brian Douglas Wilson, who is best known as the leader and chief songwriter of the group, The Beach Boys. Last but not the least, illustrious Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist Leonard Norman Cohen’s memorable track, Famous Blue Raincoat.
“When you embark upon a project, something spills out of nothing. It so happened one day that I was practising raag todi’s notes when I chanced upon hearing the Layla riff of Eric Clapton. Suddenly, it rang a bell in my mind to find a common intersection between the world renowned English guitarist, vocalist and lyricist’s Layla (which is considered one of the ultimate amorous songs within the rink of rock) and the raaga todi. That’s how the piece The Layla Riff to Todi emerged in my maiden album This is Not Fusion, he narrates the history behind the track’s birth.
Apart from the above-mentioned mishmash of both inspired and original components employed on Found Music, the CD inlay card of the title also incorporates desi Indian ragas like jog, todi, malkosh, kalavati, abhogi, et al. “The twisted version of malkosh, if am allowed to say so, consists of the pancham swar (note) which the raag is otherwise devoid of. The song Summertime from my first album This is not Fusion is one such example,” he reveals.
Having synthesised a plethora of interesting tunes on his single playlist, Chaudhuri emphasises that he gets fascinated by a mosaic of sights and sounds everyday.
“Being in a cosmopolitan jungle of concrete like Kolkata, our senses are indiscriminately confronted by noise hazards and a maddening din. But I enjoy the heat, dust and the deafening noise from a decent distance in my city. Be it the honking of vehicle horns, tram bell-sounds or tinkling of the rickshaw bells, I’m fond of sounds in varied hertz and frequencies. One of my transport songs called Trucker from my debut album is a clear reference to this point. Look, a careful listening or lending of one’s ears to a rigmarole of sounds with an uninterrupted focus always help in culling something exciting and worth collecting for the music shelf. So one shouldn’t keep one’s ears shut, lest something outstanding slips away. Your nerves and veins must absorb every single molecule spread around your bodily mass,” he says.
Currently writing a book on his hometown Kolkata, Chaudhuri mentions that his ongoing chronicle on the City of Joy will be a non-fiction composition. And ask him what’s cooking up on the bandfront, and the author says, “Come May, we’ll be off on a music tour. And the itinerary extends from England (UK) to further down in the Scandinavian nation of Denmark in Copenhagen.”
“See, I came to India from England way back in 1999 and discovered that the pop music scene in Kolkata was yet to bloom in full swing. It was just growing and emerging then, with a very few western music hubs like this one at Some Place Else nightclub. Also, reputed drummer-musician Nandan Bagchi played an instrumental role in resuscitating the Park Street culture of the bygone era which would come alive with the free-flowing English cadence in abundance,” he fondly reminisces further.
Noticeably, Chaudhuri corroborates the fact that “there are no financing or funding institutions in India as such to support an endeavour of experimental type. In Britain there is an organisation by the name Arts Council though, which prods and props up offbeat genres up on the music charts. I used to wonder, why can’t we have something on similar grounds back home then! Especially in the big cities where a Pink Floyd or an ABBA or a Bee Gees’ covers are lapped up with rapturous praise,” he says.