The 21st Guru Kelucharan Award Festival 2015 that was recently hosted by Srjan at Bhubaneswar offered a classical surprise to the connoisseurs of music in the form of Samarpan—an Indian classical fusion band.
Six young members of the band created music from the rich tradition of Indian classical ‘raagas’, which appealed to people across generations at the festival. Retaining the purity of complex rhythm structures, they presented seven compositions beginning with ‘Raaga Bachaspati’ in a modern soundscape using saxophone, keyboard and drums as accompaniment in five to 10 minute-long capsules. Although deeply rooted in the Indian classical tradition, their music was global in every sense of the word.
The line-up is also quite interesting. Ojas Adhiya plays the tabla, Vishal Dhumal is on the keyboards, Ninad Mulaokar on the flute, Manas Kumar on the violin, I D Rao aka ID creates noise with the saxophone and Gautam Sharma takes charge of the percussions. All of them are in the age group of 20 to 25.
Ojas, Vishal, Ninad and Manas are Grade A artistes of the All India Radio (AIR) while, ID and Gautam have played for shows like Indian Idol and MTV Coke Studio at regular intervals. All six of them have been associated with the Bollywood music industry for many years.
Samarpan was formed five years back by Ojas, Vishal, Ninad and Manas, while Gautam and ID joined in 2011. “Four of us are childhood friends. As musicians, we were accompanying different artistes and used to meet often for programmes. One day, we decided to form a band, which would take a contemporary approach to Indian classical music while retaining its purity,” says Ojas, who finds a mention in the Limca Book of Records as the youngest tabla player in the country.
The band was named Samarpan as the young musicians wanted to offer gratitude to their respective music gurus. “We did not start with a commercial motive. Our aim is to take Indian classical music to the youth and celebrate the great glory,” says Ninad, a gifted flutist who has played with eminent singers like Ustad Rashid Khan, Hariharan, Pankaj Udhas and Talat Aziz.
So far, they have come up with 10 original compositions and an album, which goes by the name of the band. So how is Samarpan different from others in the Indian band scene?
“We will not say that we are different from others or we are doing something very different. We are just trying to present traditional Indian music in a new format so that it appeals to the youth. In fact, our gurus have created so much of music that we cannot accomplish half of the work that they have done in their lifetime,” answers violinist Manas.
Although each of them has a different style, the musicians make sure they perform within the parameters of the ‘taal’ and ‘raaga’. This was evident in their instrumental fusion of the timeless Sambalpuri folk song Rangabati with Irish music, an impromptu
‘jugalbandi’ of tabla and drums besides one of their compositions Rasiya, which is another ‘jugalbandi’ between ID on saxophone and Ninad on the flute that they played at the festival.
“Playing Rangabati was an instantaneous decision that we took moments before the show for all the Odias who attended the cultural festival. Since Rangabati is a folk song, we decided to perform it with saxophone in a bid to give it an Irish touch,” says ID.
The Rangabati fusion fetched them a standing ovation.
For them, purity of classical music matters the most. “For example, I could be playing raaga Bheempalasi with the accompaniment of saxophone and drums but the raaga is performed in all its purity,” explains Ojas.
Through their endeavour, the band of boys wants to take classical music to the younger generation.