Singing in different tongues

A Kolkata-based multilingual band swings to an Arabic number as swiftly as to a Rajasthani folk tune.

Ask the members of quartet Dhwani what genre of music they subscribe to, and you are unlikely to get a straight answer. One can’t blame them, really, for they are after all a multilingual band who like to dabble in a range of genres. They sing in both Indian and Western styles, classical as well as contemporary, and their repertoire is longer than what can be rattled off in a single conversation.

The group, based in Kolkata, comprises vocalists Navin, Diti, Sarita and Sriram (they like to go by their first names), who met in school, went their separate ways, and reunited to form Dhwani six years ago. Since then, the group has put together a host of shows, regional and foreign, depending on the audience that awaits them. In their latest avatar for organisers Samagam, the quartet went into khaadi mode for a patriotic performance in the capital this weekend, to usher in Independence Day.

How do four vocalists, adept in different languages and styles, manage to hold a tune in tandem? “To cite an example, I’ll tell you about a popular show of ours called Reflections, which we have performed more than 40 times across the country. The theme was Indian film numbers which have been inspired from Western tracks. So we sang both the versions in one song, and divided the lyrics between us,” explains one of the band members, Navin, who also plays the guitar.

There is, therefore, a perfect blend of languages in a synchronisation that now comes easily to them. A large share of their audience, adds Navin, is Anglo-Indian, and keeping that in mind, the group often performs covers of retro Western groups such as Boney M, and The Mcguire Sisters, the latter being a band “people hardly get to hear anymore”.

While all the members sing with ease in English and Hindi, when it comes to regional languages, they sing what comes to them naturally. “Sarita and I, being Marwari, are comfortable in Rajasthani, Gujarati and Marathi, while Sriram is better at south Indian languages and also plays the mridangam. Diti is Bengali, so she sings in her language.” A Gujarati folk song comes off sounding as authentic as a bhajan. Dhwani tries its hand at foreign languages too.

“We have sung in Latin, Arabic and Spanish and tried bringing in African beats as well. We take time to understand a song, if it’s in a language we don’t speak, we work on the diction,” says Navin. Having travelled extensively within India, South-east Asia and UK, Dhwani members are happy they left their cushy bank/business/IT careers to pursue what was a childhood dream. We will wait for their album now, which we’re sure will be quite an ensemble.