Name Shakes

If Bombay drummed up an upbeat fervour,Calcutta was a tribute to the classical. Thirty years ago,when three Hungarian musicians formed an ensemble with their sitar,tabla and tanpura,they looked east of India for inspiration. “Indian classical musicians never give themselves fancy names. But,we wanted a kind of strong identification. Calcutta has long been considered to be the music capital of north Indian classical music so we became the Calcutta Trio,” says Andras Kozma. Kozma was considered to be among the best guitar players in Hungary when,at 20,he turned to the sitar. Today,he is a sitar maestro in his own right and the only European disciple of Pt Ravi Shankar.

Shankar also influenced a Frenchman,Pierre-Jean Duffour,who would have been screaming Baby! Baby! to the French fans had he never heard Pt Ravi Shankar in the 1990s. India exploded his brain. In 1997,he did the obvious,made a trip to Varanasi carrying a sitar. On the banks of the Ganga,the guitarist from Évian-les-Bains,(the Alpine region where the world’s most expensive water bottles are packed),fed his soul a new chow,the dosa. “Crisp and soft,full of aroma and flavour,hot and spicy in the middle,” he remembers. Every few years,he kept returning to Varanasi; his kid brother Brice followed him and then childhood friend Franck Lemoine. All these Frenchmen survived on the dosa.

So,when their band was born in 2002,it had to be—Masaladosa. Sitarist Duffour kept up the mystical oscillations of India while drummer and bassist Lemoine and Brice respectively kept pace with the ragas,Jamaican grooves,World,dub and drum ‘n’ bass,all sprinkled with dollops of electro. They’ve also taped the tea vendor’s cry in a song called Chai Masala. A number where Western rhythms are packed in an Indian rhythm wrap was titled Samosa and Biryani takes off on a mélange of spicy notes. “The album Chilli Aum,released in 2004 won the national music prize in France,” says Brice,during their recent five-week tour of India to promote their new dish called Electro World Curry.

“India has been musically hot for ages. Ever since the Beatles made that trek,Western musicians have just kept coming,” says Arjun Vaghale of the Delhi-based electronic dance music act,Jalebee Cartel,which played with Lychee Lassi when they first visited India in 2007. “When the announcer said ‘presenting Lychee Lassi and Jalebee Cartel’,it sounded like a dessert trolley,” he laughs. Electro is more their scene in the West,he feels. “Their instruments are the latest and the funkiest. I salivated over Lychee Lassi’s processors and equipment. It would take ages for those machines to come to India.” There are other things he recalls about the gig: “In India,we generally have live vocals and recorded instruments. Lychee Lassi did it the other way round,live instruments and recorded vocals. They passed the vocals through crazy processors and the effect blew my brain.”

While the names shake things up for these firang bands,the acid test is the sound for any band. “The magic only begins with the name. After that,the music’s gotta move,” says Naf of Bombay Rockers. He must be right. Their debut album hit platinum five times and even the DJs in Canada,US,Greece and Germany were impressed enough to pump up their club singles Sexy Mama and Ari Ari to fill up dance floors. Lately,he’s been visiting Delhi way too often for gigs. “Maybe,we’ll start calling ourselves Delhi Rockers,” he laughs. The rest of them,however,will stick to their names.