A maverick by default than by design, this multifaceted musician is a vocalist and bassist par excellence. And he commands the stage space in his own right, punctuated with flamboyant styles and scintillating performances. One of the key members of the cult Indian Ocean band, Rahul Ram is a man to watch out for at all the gigs the band belts out their anthemic numbers for. Full of joie de vivre and some unalloyed mirthful energy, Ram had commenced his musical journey way back in 1984. And over the expansive 26 years down the line, the band burgeoned to greater strength and capacity bit by bit with other members like Susmit Sen, late Aseem Chakravarty, Amit Kilam, Himanshu Joshi and Tuhin Chakravarty (on the tabla and percussion beats), stepping in to forge an unbreakable bond.
While the untimely sad demise of Chakravarty is unforgettable and the genius himself is irreplaceable with his extraordinary creative calibre, yet the band moved on with his fond memories and signature contributions to scale new heights up the musical cliff. “He has left a void behind him which cannot be filled in so easily. But as they say, the show must go on. Even Aseem would have wanted it that way. And he’s watching us from above there. We got to carry forth his legacy as well as this historical band’s tradition which is a replica of our deep-rooted bonhomie and friendship. So, we just can’t afford to sit back. It’s jamming time for us, always,” he shares in a pensive tone.
Tracing the change in trends of bandmusic over two decades or so, Ram concedes with a grouse: “Back then in our prime, we would witness a chunk of bands stemming up from nowhere to blindly ape the widely propagated western music. They were merely copycats without any solid credentials to boast of. In fact at all college fests and stage shows, rockaholics would even present guitar solos, that ditto resonated the imports of the Occident.”
“But now there’s been a marked positive change prevalent in the music circuit. Noticeably, more and more bands are resorting to home-grown, indigenous flavours to create a melange of east-west sounds. Peppered with pure desi beats and ethnic diction, the expression of internationally acclaimed Indian bands has altered far and wide. It’s a sign of satisfactory improvement and a resurgence of inbuilt confidence within the dynamics of band basics to me. Besides, it enhances a band’s originality factor to a greater degree,” he adds. Hailing from Delhi as a contemporary fusion music band, the illustrious Indian Ocean’s music has been famously depicted as “Indo-rock fusion with jazz-spiced rhythms that integrates shlokas, Sufism, environmentalism, mythology and revolution” by the sagacious critics. The popular album labels kick-starting with Desert Rain, Kandisa, Jhini, Black Friday to finally 16/330 Khajoor Road clearly vouch for this attribution.
Incidentally, at Indian Ocean’s live concerts, Ram’s much-touted renditions elicit high-voltage power punches and add that extra edge to his vibrating guitar-licks. His presentation also lends a greater emphasis to their folk roots that the band evokes its soul-stirring strains from.
Although the age and experience have seasoned the bandwallahs, yet as a band, Indian Ocean is still basking under the continual phase of its halcyon moments by scripting one success story after another. Having scored two songs for Aamir Khan Productions’ critically acclaimed and India’s Oscar entrant of 2010 — Peepli Live, Ram informs that “the tracks were seven years old.” But talented director Anusha Rizvi loved the pieces and tipped them off to be used in the film for good. “Only the lyrics were changed with a mishmash of Urdu to align with the verses, which the songs are based upon,” he reveals. As a reminder, Indian Ocean rose to popularity charts a couple of autumns ago with their much-hummed Bandeh number, that got incorporated in Anurag Kashyap’s hard-hitting film, Black Friday. “The song was extensively recorded over three months in Delhi and it was the first full-length Bollywood film that fell into our kitty,” he adds the dope. For the uninitiated listeners, Ram alongwith Aseem had also sung Yaara Maula in Kashyap’s much-touted political saga, Gulaal. “It’s not that we randomly pick up whatever film projects come to us. It’s rather the other way round. The maker or the production house in fact chooses us. Look, I feel it’s the director’s vision to think out of the box and cull some funky bandmusic to add much more verve and vim to a film’s audio-release. Bands always fetch in that quality of a live music milieu, you know. And these days, more than lip-synchronised versions, songs are being crafted out of situations and played in the background to reflect the respective characters’ moods. This enables the film to be more realistic, rather than remaining confined to a larger-than-life canvas on the 70 mm celluloid,” he asserts, adding that initially, it was the path-breaking efforts of ace filmmakers namely Nagesh Kukunoor and Pakistani bands like Jal and Strings to induce bandcovers in mainstream commercial flicks. And Bollywood has been lapping up this trend over the past 10 years or so.
Dabbling in a plethora of different genres, Ram seeks his inspiration from people, life, the surrounding environment, et al to compile songs for his band’s albums. Having gradually evolved with time, the band has of late used the cyberspace to promote and sell their latest fare in music. He says, “The purpose was to keep abreast with the winds of change. Yes, we did make our album titled 16/330 Khajoor Road available through the Internet and the response has been more than overwhelming to say the least. Droves of enthusiasts have logged onto the tracks to check out what we have on offer.
The cyberspace gives you an unlimited storage capacity and ample connectivity with your listeners through personal portals or the social networking sites. Some of our band members are gadget freaks too. So, they are pretty much tuned in with the hip happenings, both in and outside the circuit,” he adds.