Bengaluru as a city is known for its incessant preoccupation with speed and innovation. For decades, especially following the tech boom, India’s IT capital has prided itself for its ‘the future is now’ attitude, which has since proliferated across industries beyond. It is to be noted however, that the city’s patronage towards the arts sees better days than most of its metropolitan counterparts, extending its warmth to ‘organic’ forms like jazz and Carnatic (almost) as conspicuously as to a form like techno, which seems more up its alley. Led by vocalist Koyel Mukherjee, three-member band Ruh_Voyage, who just performed at Medai, Koramangala, is one of many such acts in the city that try to eke out loyal and appreciative listenerships.
With an ever-evolving musical landscape which has pushed craft towards marketability, especially since the dawn of streaming, it has become increasingly rare to come across musicians – and listeners – who still seek classical roots. For Mukherjee, her inspiration has familial origins. “I was very young when I started loving ghazals, because my family loved Hindustani classical music. Ghazals are beautiful as well as difficult; I slowly started enjoying them,” she says, continuing, “When I was in Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, I met Ghulam Ali sahab, and he guided me.”
Although her stint at Sa Re Ga Ma Pa in the 2007 season was pivotal in Mukherjee’s career, the journey has been far from easy. Beneath her craft and presence in the music circuit of a metropolis like Bengaluru, lies the story of a girl from a small town – Dhanbad in Jharkhand – who had to earn her bread. As she reveals, “I was in Sa Re Ga Ma Pa 2007, where I was placed in Bappi Lahiri’s gharana. The journey was not easy for me afterwards, especially as a woman from a small town. I continued but I was doing shows mostly in the USA.”
Despite Bengaluru still having a relatively better field in terms of patronage towards classical music, according to Mukherjee, the audience is untrained. This is somewhat unsurprising, given the median age for the city’s live music audience, and its shifting palate. “Bengaluru has a narrow understanding of ghazals; the attendees mostly enjoy Bollywood ghazals. Language is definitely a barrier. With shayari and ghazals, I have to explain with a lot of conviction to give them a contextual sense of the ambience of the evening. Response has been good and it’s getting better, but there is still a long way to go,” she rues.
Mukherjee leaves room for hardly anything besides praise about the rest of the band – percussionist Shreyash Vishwaroop and pianist Rishabh Chauhan. As she says, “We take up instruments according to demand, but Shreyash and Rishabh are constants. They are like my brothers; chemistry is vital when one is executing ghazals. We speak and learn through music, making playing live a divine experience.”