CHENNAI: Krishna Kishor and Navin Iyer, both freelance musicians who work with other bands, performed at the Earth, Wind and Fire concert recently. Calling themselves Wandering Artists, the duo was all smiles while chatting with CE after their show. Navin (a fl autist) and Kishor (a percussionist) have a classical music background. “My father was a mridangam player, and as the instrument was already at home, I started learning it,” says Kishor. While Navin’s father wanted him to be an engineer, he chose music, his passion.
Ask them about the name for their concerts and Navin says, “Imagine fusing Alaipayuthey Kanna and Urvasi Urvasi. Every musician has own version of Alaipayuthey, but we wanted to do something different. Just as the elements of the earth co-exist, we wanted to bring in the elements of music together on stage. We kept it simple, with a fi lmy twist.” Having travelled across countries to make music and faced different kinds of audiences, they prefer coming back to their hometown — Chennai! “Whenever we have performed in Chennai, we have always had that connect with the audience; we don’t fi nd it anywhere else,” smiles Kishor. Naturally, For both, making music is a stress-buster.
“We don’t call it rehearsal, but a process. We meet for 10 days at a stretch, sit together and jam, put together random ideas…it’s truly refreshing,” quips Navin. We ask these artistes about their most memorable experience. For Navin, it was recording Luka Chuppi from Rang de Basanti (2006) for AR Rahman. “He doesn’t talk much. All that he said after I fi nished playing, ‘You play well, thank you!’ The recording was done in 30 minutes but he asked me to play more.” Kishor remembers playing for the underprivileged kids. “After one such performance, a kid came up to me and said, ‘I am always sad and pretend to be happy. But today after listening to your music, I was naturally happy’. I was overwhelmed… and it also felt satisfying,” grins Kishor.