The Leopold Café, Mumbai, October 2008
A young Indian rock group, Medusa, celebrate the end of a recording session
for a unique musical project organised by the British Council, called
Soundpad. Over three weeks, four talented bands — chosen from auditions by
the super-producer John Leckie — have been playing their hearts out in the
studio for an album that will be released in the UK and in India this May.
With a tour of the Barfly venues in Britain to coincide with the record and a
slot at the Great Escape festival, it is hoped that this project will shine
a light on India’s growing alternative rock scene, giving these bands a
chance to be heard internationally. In this sense, Leo’s is the perfect
place to celebrate Soundpad.
A shabby, buzzy nightspot, Leo’s is packed to the rafters with, well,
everyone. With tourists who’ve read about the café in the bestselling novel Shantaram,
with businessmen unwinding,and cool kids like Medusa — who, at this moment,
are midway through their second yard of beer, explaining how cosmopolitan
Mumbai has become. “And this project,” says Raxit, the singer, “it gives us
a chance to work with people you wouldn’t ever work with here.”
A month later, two gunmen — the same age as Medusa — opened fire in the
Leopold Café, killing ten people. The series of synchronised attacks that
took place in Mumbai in November targeted financial trading sites (the
city’s big hotels have become international business hubs), but also places
of cultural trade. “It feels like an attempt to stop the progressive outlook
that we’re trying to achieve,” says Tasneem Vahanvaty a Mumbai-based project
manager with the British Council, and this, she says, makes Soundpad’s
success even more important.
Leckie, who has worked with Radiohead, George Harrison and Pink Floyd, agrees.
“The project represents the youth of India,” he says, “and in a kind of
perverse way, I’d like to think that what’s happened is going to draw
attention to Soundpad, and to where they are coming from.”
In October, weeks before the attacks, The Times joined Leckie and the
bands in Mumbai; to witness the artists at work, and discover something
about Indian youth culture.
Sitting on Bhandra seafront at midnight, Leckie and his co-producer Dan Austin
have just finished today’s studio session. Exhausted from the day’s work,
Leckie explains how the project began. “I wanted to find rock music that
felt distinctly Indian,” he says, “that I could take back to the UK and take
back a flavour of India with the music.” So, early last year, the British
Council started talking to its music contacts — movers and shakers with
grassroots knowledge of India’s rock scene, such as the indie label Counter
Culture. The plan was to find bands with limited experience but a lot of
potential, and get them to audition for Leckie.
The auditions did not go quite as planned, however. Of the 40 or so bands who
played, most were either screechy metal groups, immaculately groomed
Bollywood boybands (complete with dance routines), or ploddy pub-rockers; “I
felt guilty about not choosing them, because I felt that was patronising,”
Leckie sighs, “because they were trying their hardest to be un-Indian.”
While India’s visual arts scene has a huge international reputation — as shows
at the Serpentine and Saatchi Galleries attest — it has been harder for
India’s young musicians to find an authentic voice. With radio stations
playing round-the-clock retro pop or Bollywood and devotional music, there’s
little sense that being musically original might be valid. Were there
moments during the auditions when Leckie felt it was going horribly wrong?
“Yes!” he laughs, “all the time!”
But at the end of a dispiriting afternoon in Mumbai, Medusa came onstage. “And
they were great,” says Leckie, who perked up visibly at their tuneful fuzz
of skittering electro beats. Then, in Delhi, in a tiny basement studio,
Leckie saw Indigo Children (“They made a racket, and I like that”), and the
classically tinged Advaita (“That was the fusion I was looking for”).
Finally, Bangalore revealed the jangling charms of Swarathma.
Advaita are the most traditional of all the bands, fusing breathtaking
classical musicianship with soft-rock. The singer sounds a little like Seal.
Sitting on the steps outside the state-of-the-art Yash Raj studio in the
muzzy heat of the day, their seranghi player explains that in India, you
don’t just choose to learn classical music at school — you are born into it.
“We’re very strict in these families,” he says. “If you pick up an
instrument you’re trained very seriously, it’s a 24/7 musical environment.”
Advaita hit some transcendent moments merging jazz-rock into Pink Floyd.
These might seem surprising choices given that some members are as young as
19. “India loves classic rock,” says Bobin James of Rolling
Stone India. He has travelled from Delhi to watch Leckie and co at work.
India’s conservative tastes are reflected in the international bands that
tend to play here, he says — people like Iron Maiden, Scorpions and Bryan
Adams. And until five years ago, any band playing live had to play covers
for fear of being booed off-stage — “because people wanted to hear Hotel
California”.
Two days later, Indigo Children are in the studio, a complete contrast to
Advaita. Bullish and full of bluster, they turn up late and red-eyed, flirt
with the girls and flop over the sofas.
“People in the West don’t realise how similar our lives and social
environments are to elsewhere,” says Sanchal, the singer. “They expect a kid
from India to be into Indian folk music. It’s the same as people thinking
that India still has elephants walking in the street,” says the guitarist
Rahul. “But that is true actually,” says Sanchal. “But we also have cars!
And GPS!” he roars, laughing.
Indigo Children are the most Brit-sounding band of the bunch, their muscular
guitars and petulant vocals a match for Arctic Monkeys. But, says Sanchal,
the band’s Indian-ness comes through their love of psychedelia, the kind you
can trace back to the ancient poets.
When Advaita and Indigo Children play a Soundpad showcase together, it’s a bit
of a weird pairing. But what is really awkward is the venue. Blue Frog is —
like the posh music studio, and like so much of new Mumbai — sparklingly
modern. It serves gourmet food and everyone looks gorgeous. From a British
gig-goer’s view, it seems just too nice.
Venues — or rather, the lack of them — is a huge problem for local rock bands.
Mumbai has a population of 18 million — and a handful of live music venues.
This is one of them. “People like us don’t go to places like this,” says
Sanchal. “When people ask what can we do to improve the gig scene, I say
make the beer fifty bucks [rupees] and people will come.”
He adds: “There’s a lot of music but there’s just no culture as such
happening.” Leckie agrees. “What the cities are crying out for is free clubs
— not upmarket yuppie places. Because rock’n’roll is about dirty, sweaty
cellars. That’s where it comes from.”
It is thanks to the internet that musicians connect and why Medusa — who work
in the day as Bollywood bloggers — are into obscure bands such as
Squarepusher. And thanks to laptops and their own curiosity, that Medusa got
into electronica and what Raxit refers to dreamily as “beautiful little
sounds”.
But what about going out, getting drunk — all those things that British kids
take for granted, and that it’s assumed, are key in making music? House
parties are not an option for socialising, says Raxit. “You can’t do it,
because you’re living at your parents’ house,” he shrugs. “There are some
stupid laws here. You can’t have a house party with drinks, you can’t do a
live gig in the open unless it’s some really clichéd, acceptable form of
making noise.” “Whatever you’re doing,” says the drummer Vinayek, “drinking,
partying — you need permission to do it.”
All the same, Medusa know how to have a good time. The band begin an
alternative guided tour of Mumbai at a guitar shop called Musician’s Mall,
where the shelves heave with harmoniums, serangis and tablas, as well as
standard rock kit. Pretty soon, everyone (including staff) is strumming
along to the band’s version of the Gorillaz song Feel Good Inc.
The boys stop in at an all-night ice-cream parlour, sing songs on the
seafront — and then, of course, there’s the Leopold Café. Tonight, it’s
humming with life. Just as it would be a month later on November 26.
How badly the terrorist attacks may have dented the Soundpad project — and the
development of India’s rock scene — is not yet clear. Tasneem Vahanvaty
says: “A lot of artists and entrepreneurs are now thinking twice about
coming into the city.” And because of global recession, many of this year’s
big Indian rock festivals have been postponed after sponsors pulled out. But
Medusa agree that if anything, these attacks will provoke young musicians to
work even harder at being heard. “Music is a better way to express yourself
than attempting to blow up hotels,” says the guitarist Rahul, “so it’s
really important for Soundpad to go on.”
Four days after the attacks, the Leopold Café opened its doors again – bullet
holes still in the walls. “There’s nothing that’s going to hold us back,”
says Vahanvaty. It is very tempting to believe her.
http://radioverve.com/britishcouncilsoundpad
