CHENNAI: Imagine Despacito (Luis Fonsi) or Hello (Adele) in Carnatic style with gamagas? Or contemporary world music played by fusing Indian classical elements along with genres like pop, rock, jazz? Bindu Subramaniam, Ambi Subramaniam (SubraMania band) and Mahesh Raghvan (independent musician), recently collaborated and created an Indian version of Coldplay’s Something Just Like This and it has already crossed 13,000 views on YouTube.
Coming from a family of musicians, Bindu and Ambi started learning music from a very young age. While Ambi was interested in the violin (he also learnt Carnatic vocals and the piano), Bindu went to Berklee College of Music and collaborated with musicians such as George Duke, M Balamuralikrishna, Remo Fernandes, Pankaj Udhas, Hariharan, AJ Jarreau, Larry Coryell, Corky Siegel, and Pandit Jasraj, among others.
“For a long time, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, but then second year of law school is when I realised I wanted to be a musician,” Bindu recalls.
Mahesh Raghvan too was introduced to Carnatic music early, and started with vocal music before he ventured out to play the keyboard and guitar. He also learned the western music theory and knows Hindustani classical music. Mahesh, who plays modern electronic musical instruments on his iPad, says that the shift was challenging as he had to figure out a lot of things by himself. “There really isn’t any curriculum or theory about using the iPad as a musical instrument. I was lucky to have been trained in multiple disciplines of music to be able to pick things quickly and also adapt to new ones,” he adds.
SubraMania was formed four years ago and has toured across Europe, USA and India. From musicians like Hubert Laws, Ernie Watts, Oystein Baadsvik, Blues harmonica legend Corky Siegel and Flamenco guitarist Carlos Blanco to Bollywood music director Aadesh Srivastav, Indie pop legend Lesle Lewis and American Idol drummer Russ Miller, they have collaborated and explored music with all of these legends.
“We were always surrounded by music. It was also scary because people expected a lot from us, and would want us to be like our parents. And if you do something different like I did, initially you get a bit of a push back, but that changed over time,” says Bindu.
Ask Ambi about his father (L Subramaniam) as a teacher and he says, “He is totally different. He is so chilled as a parent but as a guru he is very strict.”
Ambi says the shift was quite easy for him because his father would explain it to him well. “While I was learning Western music, I would be given examples or comparison in terms of Carnatic, which I had a strong base in. That made it a bit easier for me to understand the notes and nuances,” he adds.