Post-Colonial Cousins

Indian Ocean have no youthful angst to feed their audiences, indulge in no rockstar strutting to induce 1960s nostalgia, and have no slick music video to thank for their first album sales. Instead they resolutely play only their own version of new Indian music, and somehow manage to draw the faithful and the willing to their rather infrequent concerts.

This band has attitude, but its terribly laidback. Maybe its because were quite old, suggests band percussionist Asheem Chakravarty, only half-jokingly. Well, now, two albums old. And for three of the four band members, the thirties is where theyre at adolescence played itself out several nightmares ago.

The band itself is of uncertain vintage. They date their beginnings to 1985, when Chakravarty met Susmit Sen, currently lead guitarist, and they began jamming together. Sen serious, almost earnest is very firm that he has never felt the slightest desire to play other peoples music. To date, he never has. And rock, as Western music, never held much attraction for Chakravarty, who was born into a musical family virtually with a tabla in his lap. So naturally, they made music together, and as the band never tires of telling you, a new kind of music not rock, not blues, not jazz, nothing that smelt of a label.

That might have cost us some popularity, says a slightly rueful Sen. People seem to need to know what they are listening to, to really enjoy it. And our music was like nothing they had heard before. Audiences may not have heard their music before, but they have been listening for a while now. Their first album Indian Ocean, released in 1993 by HMV, has so far sold 45,000 copies, making Indian Ocean the largest selling band in India. (Yeah, Nusrat sells a lot more, but then he comes from Pakistan, remember?)

More might have been sold, if only HMV had been a little more interested, says bassist Rahul Ram with feeling. Some of that feeling transferred to the bands decision to seek another record label for their second, and most recent, album Desert Rain. The happy event of having made a friend of Naresh Bhatia, who until recently was north Indias biggest distributor and the sole distributor for Music Today, meant that they had inside information on what he has secretly wanted to do for many years now start a new record label. Sen gently played devils advocate. As a result, March 1997 saw the birth of Independent Music, and the release of Desert Rain as its first album.

Desert Rain is a recording of the bands performance at the Sahmat concert played at New Delhis Mandi House, on the first of January 1997. They came on just after Shubha Mudgal, and wowed everyone in the audience including Bhisham Sahni, the author of Tamas! We believe strongly in live performance, and we always had a vague plan of coming out with a live album. This time everything went right, says Ram. We played very well, the recording quality was excellent, and the concert had new pieces as well as some from the first album.

The bands music is, in the main, an acknowledgment of the mixed heritage of the current generation of urban Indians electric guitar and tabla share the same stage quite harmoniously. None of this Beatles-Sixties electric sitar hodge-podge either for this group, Jimi Hendrix and the blues have only as much meaning as Bhimsen Joshi, Manna De, baul singers or even, jagraata bands. At first listening, the bands music has an element of what is popularly known as Fusion.

Ram explains why it isnt, though. Fusion music would usually mean that you take a piece of western music and a piece of Indian music and find a way to put them together. We use both western and Indian instruments, but compose the music around them.

There are rather too few successful Indian bands who actually make their own music, most engage themselves in the commercially fruitful activity of imitating rock or blues greats. Chakravarty speaks for the band when he says, There is little of the creative in that kind of imitation. And if you understand where youre coming from, theres a degree of dishonesty in just doing covers. Their music, as Ram puts it, could have come from nowhere but India, and at no time but now. A track like Traffic Jam at ITO probably says it all.

Context is a word used often by this gang of four. Says Ram somewhat defiantly, I quite like Baba Sehgal and Daler Mehndi. Of course, their music is derivative, but it at least has a background and a contemporary context. It makes a lot more sense to Indians than rehashed rock.

The boys in the band have got the score right, so how come they arent a bigger act in the Indian music circus? Well, they dont believe in the star-spangled music video with Ken Ghoshs fingerprints all over it; their music (sans covers), doesnt exactly get people on the dance floor at a Pepsi-sponsored college fest, and theyre not into ripping off major hits ala Anu Malik.

But they do have something going for them, except that they refuse to capitalise on it. They could probably sell albums on their coolness quotient alone if they believed in labels, their work would be the musical equivalent of the post-colonial, subaltern answer to the western Modernist hangover. But since they come across as neither pretentious nor greedy, they have thus far resisted the impulse to take the surer road to greater material happiness.

The band admits that the bulk of their earnings comes from their commercial work, that is, the time they take off from the band to make music for television, documentaries and ad jingles. The fourth constituent of the band, 23-year-old Amit Kilam, also plays drums for Delhi-based pop/rock band Euphoria. Why? For money, he says expressionlessly.

All four are clear that their commercial work is merely a means to sustain Indian Ocean, themselves and their families. They express a grudging acceptance of the fact that in the day of the M and the V, musicians cannot live by music alone. Video, after all, killed the audio star a long while ago. Just ask the Spice Girls take away those bouncy clips, and all that youre left with is a handful of rehashed beats and intelligence-challenged lyrics.

So after four abortive attempts at making the music video of their dreams, the band awaits the preparation of the fifth. This time they are hopeful, but cagey. Wait for April-end, is all they are willing to say.

The band will soon be going places, never mind how long its taken them to find their suitcases. Chakravarty coyly reveals that come November, it will be Atlantas turn to sample some of the new nineties Indian music. They hope to follow their American passage with a grand tour of the Continent. What can we say -- roll over, Ravishankar?

In the meanwhile, Indian Ocean is still luxuriating in the lovely situation of having completed and released an album they are very happy with, on a label they are excited to be associated with, and all between people who still like each other. Is Sen happy with where the band is now, more than ten years post a fortuitous meeting with a like-minded soul? Of course, he says, looking up in surprise.