BENGALURU: Taking the YouTube scene by storm the Indigenous Fakirs are a three-man band that aims to blur the lines between genres of music.
Starting out as a school band at St Joseph’s, Parag, Adrian and Sidarth have always been in tune with each other. “We used to participate in various interclass competitions but after graduation we went our different ways,” says Parag. After six years, they regrouped.
The idea behind the name stems from their united effort to transcend the boundaries of music. Parag says, “Our songs are not based on a particular genre. Instead we are indigenous to music. The term Fakir refers to being nomadic and we aim to incorporate different languages to form a creative blend.”
All the members are involved in the arrangement of the songs. “We just sit together and jam. We add whatever music fits, irrespective of the language and this is how we come up with new medleys,” says Parag.
On the success of Pishta, the video that put them on the music map, Parag says that they were not expecting it.
“The idea of Pishta was to keep our Facebook page up and running. Our videographer was not available that day so we decided to make do with a selfie stick,” he laughs.
The band boasts of an impressive set of instruments ranging from Indian to African percussion which are used to back their powerful vocal harmonies.
“We do not use electrical instruments and prefer acoustic ones as the sound is more raw,” says Parag.
Some of the instruments they play include the Kazoo, the Udu and the Morchang which is also called the Jew’s Harp.
At all their live events, the Indigenous Fakirs have always been received by an excited audience Parag recalls their most memorable performance which was in UB City.
“We had to perform for one hour at the food festival in UB City but we ended up performing for over three hours because of the amazing crowd response,” he says. This was a turning point for the band as that was when they realised they were very much in tune with each other and they planned to their pursuit of music seriously.
Being an upcoming band that aims to think outside the box while trying to be inclusive, there are challenges that the music industry poses.
“The music scene has a lot of politics and most of the time money gets recognised instead of talent,” says Parag.
The Indigenous Fakirs plan on starting a channel similar to CokeStudio where they collaborate with different artists to create alternative sounds.
“We also have two separate channels for our medleys and originals,” he says.