What a beautiful world is out there for me now to see it, the Beautiful world is out there for me now to know it.”
Indeed it’s a beautiful world when young brigades of talented musicians from God’s own country Kerala unite and compose music that makes you happy.
Formed in January 2015, “When Chai Met Toast” is one of the most scintillating and promising young bands in the country with their unique, fresh and peppy tunes that have music lovers go wild, especially with their debut extended play (EP) album ‘The Joy of Little Things’.
Ashwin Gopakumar, 26, the main vocalist of band, says, “My first exposure to singing was in 2007, when I was part of an experimental metal band Purple Blood at SCT Engineering College in Thiruvananthapuram. Now, we have a band of my own. It is a small box of joy with elements from different life perspectives, leading to something happy.”
The name of the band was derived from a cafe’s menu. Chai, being Indian, and toast, being western, depict the music they compose. The band initiated as a two-piece project by Gopakumar and 20-year-old Achyuth Jaigopal, one being the chai and the other the toast.
We started the project as we had similar tastes in music—country, neo-folk and acoustic.” says Jaigopal, who hails from Kochi. “I met Ashwin two years ago at a music studio in Kochi, and we decided to form Shen Chai Met Toast. But it was disbanded temporarily when Ashwin had to leave for studies in the US and when he came back in December 2015, we regrouped and brought in Palee Francis and Pai Sailesh.”
While Gopakumar and Jaigopal do most of the songwriting, Francis, 27, and Sailesh, 25, accompany them on keyboard and drum set. “Sailesh being India’s only standing drummer, and Francis, who is also our producer, add a lot to the arrangements and complete the band,” says Gopakumar.
When asked about the genre Happy, in which they perform, Gopakumar, who has studied Music Business at the McNally Smith College of Music, Minneapolis, acknowledged in his own poetic way, “Happiness flows in all of us while we make music. The feeling is universal–it’s an emotion that everyone can connect with. We find that this is something that comes naturally to us with the kind of music we make, and not forced in any way to be our genre.”
The band’s music has influences of bands such as Mumford and Sons, The Lumineers, Bear’s Den, The Alabama Shakes and Coldplay.
Band manager Kishan John says crowd interaction is very important for a band while performing live. “To connect more with our audience, we give out exclusive free merchandise such as fridge magnets, stickers and a tea bag in DIY origami chai bags with a QR code on it—scanning the code will take you to our music,” he says.
While Gopakumar made his debut as a playback singer with the track ‘Home’ in movie Jacobinte Swargarajyam, Jaigopal’s debut track was ‘Sound of Memory’ for the yet to release movie Humans of Someone. The group feels music transcends age, language and genre, and these youngsters are trying to master the altitudes of music by just being happy.