When their mundane routine jobs began to get a tad ordinary and boring the old college gang from BITS Pilani got together and thought “Why not revive the old fun and do something in music”. It was the year 2004, the old college music club mates of BITS Pilani Ganesh and Harish who happened to be in the same city and shared the same interests started doing some experiments with music. Soon Seetharaman who worked with Ganesh showed interest and joined in as the lyricist and over the time other members joined in, among whom most were alumni of BITS, Pilani.
Agam the seven-member band was officially formed for a music reality show which was aired in Sun TV, in which they emerged winners. “The name Agam which means the ‘inner self ‘ was coined for the seven of us,” says Ganesh one of the founder members of the band.
The Bangalore-based carnatic progressive rock band was in the city recently to give a concert on the sidelines of a techno-cultural fest of a city college. Though a Bangalore-based band they have performed more in Kerala than in Bangalore. They literally ‘rocked’ the city with their carnatic music and had the city crowd in frenzy. Their carnatic music nicely grooved with rock music indeed creates a different feel altogether.
The current lineup has; Harish Sivaramakrishnan-vocals and violin, Ganesh Ram Nagarajan-drums and backing vocals, Swamy Seetharaman- keyboards and lyricist, T Praveen Kumar-lead guitar, Vignesh Lakshminarayanan-bass guitar and backing vocals, Sivakumar Nagarajan-ethnic percussions, and Jagadish Natarajan-rhythm guitar.
Interestingly the band has a Malayali connection too, for Harish the vocalist is from Kochi.
Agam which mostly sings in the South Indian tongues namely Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu also sings in Hindi but has still not tried an English song. “It is something that we soon would like to venture into,” says Ganesh.
Being full-time professionals asked how they manage in running the band Ganesh says, “We do all our practice and jam sessions during the evenings, weekends and holidays. Being a seven-member band there have been times when one of us wouldn’t be around and the rest of us will have to manage. But usually we plan all our programmes well ahead in time and we have a schedule so we rarely have a problem. We always plan our programmes in such a way that our professions are never affected. And most importantly our bosses and colleagues really support us.”
So asked about their choice of carnatic over other genres this is how Ganesh puts it. “Simply because that is what we know best and are trained in. To be honest we never had a genre when we started off. It is only when people kept asking what genre was our music that we even thought of it,” he quips.
“Harish is a trained carnatic singer who has years of experience. I myself listen to lot of Malayalam, Indie pop and Bollywood music. And as a kid I was exposed to a lot of carnatic music. And Jagadish and Praveen too found it interesting playing carnatic on their guitars and they picked it up too very quickly. So everything just fell into place,” says the drummer.
All their songs are an experiment. A song gets an approval only if all the seven agrees on it.
Though it was difficult to get a footing for the band with their new concept in the initial days, with many other bands such as the Raghu Dixit Project, Mrigya and other bands from North India propagating the folk rock genre people slowly started accepting Agam too.
So what prompted them to take up a Theyyam mask as the logo for their band? “When we started looking out for a logo one thing we were all sure about was the colour of the logo. We all wanted something in red. So that is when Harish suggested the Theyyam mask. And we felt even our music was like Theyyam with its carnatic divinity and aggressiveness of the rock. Somehow we could relate with Theyyam and hoped our listeners would accept it too. So far our Theyyam mascot has worked very well for us.”
Agam who is open to collaborating with other artists has collaborated with Shreya Ghoshal for one of their songs. Competition does not scare this team of seven, they feel it only healthy. “Only if we have competition would we also try to improve ourselves.”
About future plans they say making music is their only aim. They would also like to travel internationally with their band. “When we were on a trip to Singapore we felt the local crowd also picking up our music really well. So we are working on travelling internationally with our music.”