The thought of combining Indian classical melodies with rock to create joyfully infectious music, had two guitarists, Geeth Vaz and Edward Rasquinha, from small Bengaluru-based bands, decide to create soulful yet preppy music.
And that’s how Lagori was born. The band features lead vocalist Tejas Shankar, electric guitarist and team manager Geeth Vazar, Edward Rasquinha on the guitar and backing vocals, bass guitarist Shalini Mohan, and Vinyl Kumar on the drums.
“We roped in the other guys. We got together this new line-up and it has been going great for four years now,” said Geeth, who performed along with his band, Lagori at the Phoenix Market City, on Saturday.
Why Lagori? “We were travelling to Mumbai to shoot for a TV show, which wasn’t aired because of some copyright issues. At that point of time, we had written around six songs but we still hadn’t got a good name. We kept pushing it to the last minute,” said Geeth. “We got all sorts of weird suggestions for names like Mrigakrishna, but finally Edward suggested Lagori and it worked for all of us.”
Lagori is the name of a game played with seven stones. Most of the band members’ lucky number is seven and a few of their songs have the time signature 7.
From their first song Aasma, and their first show at Gulmaarg Winter Festival in Kashmir, Lagori have done a number of shows in Chennai, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Pune. They also launched their very own beer brand in Bengaluru, recently.
“Our Hindi is not that great. So it was quite a challenge in the beginning when we began to write new songs in a language we were not entirely familiar with,” said Geeth.
Now, the band has composed and performed mash ups in five languages — Hindi, English, Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam. They are hoping to add other languages to their collection too. Fingers crossed.
“It does get hard at times because of the number of shows we keep doing. Sometimes, it is really difficult as our band members have multiple things to do apart from the band. Getting everyone to meet at the same time and figuring out our schedules becomes a challenge,” said Geeth, who himself is a financial advisor. “But at the end of the day, each of us knows our priorities and we try to accommodate each other and make compromises. That, I think, works and also, music inspires us to keep going.”
The band’s live performance witnessed an influx of people of all ages who got their hands together in rhythm over songs like Boom Shankar, Hadimba, 30 60 90 and Lagori.
Lead vocalist Tejas said, “We were really happy to be here. The audience was very receptive to different languages and appreciated our music really well!”
When CE asked if they had tried the city cuisine, Geeth said, “We love the food at Ponnaswamy Hotel. On all our road trips to Chennai, we never forget to stop by Ambur, where the biryani is amazing.”
With promises to return, Geeth said, “We are coming back to Chennai on the second of August. We will perform at the Music Festival at Museum Theatre along with the band Agam.”
