He is a performer and does not like labels like ‘member of a band’. It’s one of the reasons he can perform in, and with, any band in cities all across India, doing pretty much anything from playing the guitar to doing the vocals.
Meet Uday Benegal: the man of many talents, who is on the vocals, guitar and even percussion with the multiple-award-winning band from MTV and VH1, Whirling Kalapas, and is also the frontman for the band, Indus Creed. He has also crooned some Bollywood numbers like ‘Life is Crazy’ for Wake Up Sid (2009) and is also a writer, having written a few articles for publications like The Village Voice, Mid Day, Rolling Stone India, Time Out New York, Asian Age and Tehelka.
CE caught up with Uday during his recent visit to Chennai with Whirling Kalapas, which gave a joint performance with Frame, another city-based band, at Phoenix Marketcity.
Uday, a regular performer in the city, does not seem to recall the number of times he has performed here. “It’s hard to say how many gigs I’ve done in Chennai because over the years I’ve come with two bands — Indus Creed and Whirling Kalapas,” says the musician who has been performing for 30-odd years. “With Indus Creed, and in the band’s earlier avatar, Rock Machine, I’ve been coming for many years. With Whirling Kalapas, I think it has been just three times.”
He vividly recalls his first performance in January 1985 with Rock Machine, about a month before his Class 12 board exams. “I was super excited and a bit nervous too. I was the newest and youngest guy in the band. The audience, students of the Farmagudi College of Engineering in Goa, had fortified themselves quite liberally with cheap liquor; so anything we played would’ve gone down incredibly well – and it did,” he chuckles.
Uday has been performing for over 30 years, and he says that unlike his early days, the youth’s preference in music is evolving.
“These days, youngsters have a much wider selection of artists, sounds and styles to choose from. The best thing about their attitude is their insistence on originality and their openness to breaking genre barriers,” he explains.
And that’s where Whirling Kalapas stands out, he claims. “As an acoustic pop band, our sound is pretty quirky and distinctive. We sound like no one else, and in this highly saturated world, freshness goes a really long way. Also, we don’t calculate or quantify the breakup of instrumentation against vocalisation. The voice is as much an instrument as a guitar or a mandolin, so it’s part of the palette of music-making,” he adds.
Despite being in the industry for almost three decades, Uday looks forward to making more music. In fact, he calls his musical journey a map of his life, which continues keep him happy.
“As far as I am concerned, it’s all about the music. The journey has been absolutely amazing. I wouldn’t trade it for anything at all — the ups, the downs, the middle levels. And I’m still having a blast through it all,” he says.