Indian Ocean: Swirling Sounds

Photographs courtesy of IndianOceanMusic.com

Date: November 12, 2006 | Venue: Music Academy, Madras

What struck me most about the last Indian Ocean concert I went to was how their music always hits you in a swirl, as if there are multiple sound beams of tabla and bass and drums bouncing about all over the place and you’re standing at the point where it all fuses. As I made my way to this venue, very different from the outdoor airspace of the previous show I watched, I had a niggling question about how the band’s sound would hold up in the much smaller indoor space.

The stuffiness inside the crowded Music Academy wasn’t helped at all by the overstaying emcee, who asked of his audience before the curtain went up, “What is this fusion thing, any way? I can’t understand the term.” I don’t know if the supposed old-schoolism was an attempt to appease the Carnatic-purist demographic that one assumes populates the front rows of the Music Academy (a place much venerated as a Carnatic music venue), but he certainly managed to sound supercilious doing it.

The curtain did finally go up, and the band opened with “From The Ruins”. Their sound over those next few songs seemed a little tempered down. The usually strong tabla and snare backbone, which can really give their music that bite on another day, sounded a little flat. Indian Ocean at a live concert (and this is a band best listened to live) is at its most potent when the music has space to breathe, when it can travel and jump around. Clearly, the band that evening hadn’t hit the groove that could set off that kind of acoustic kaleidoscopy yet. Before you knew it, they’d rushed through an adequate but unremarkable “Kya Maloom”, followed in quick succession by “Melancholic Ecstasy” and “Jhini”.

They looked only at their instruments and at each other, almost as if they had forgotten (or didn’t care) that they were on stage. An exuberant four-man jam resulted. And you wondered if this was a bit of a sneak peek, if this was how it was when it was just the four of them playing together, in a room in one of their homes maybe, jamming, making music.

The general propah-ness of the venue didn’t stop Rahul Ram, bassist and front man, from being his bantering self between songs, although I did get the feeling that he held back even there: while references to “Shivji” were still made, accompanying ruminations on what he might have smoked were not. Before the folksy, up-tempo “Hille Re”, he asked people, no doubt like he does at every show, to get up off their chairs and dance. He then added, in a lowered voice with a quick look to the sides of the hall (where, one imagines, slink about the minders of the Academy’s decorum and austerity, keeping a watchful eye on the proceedings), and tongue only partially in cheek, “… if they wouldn’t mind you dancing, that is.”

“Hille Le” closed the first set on a high note, and the slap in Ram’s bass had begun to assert itself. What transpired backstage during the break is not something we’re privy to, but it certainly seemed to have helped. The band looked much more at ease, starting off the second set with a strong “Bandeh” that had Susmit Sen, their guitarist, stand out with a couple of well-articulated solos. This period of euphony built up quite nicely to what turned out to be their two strongest performances that evening. “Boll Weevil” and its very funky bass intro actually got Sen off his seat for the first time. I wondered if this turned out to be the harbinger of a change in the band’s demeanour from that point on. They were finally getting as loose as they should be, and the exhale was almost palpable: there were smiles all around as they played and watched each other play. Their cues to each other, stiff and a little staccato until then, now seemed more spontaneous and in the flow. They all moved easier (and I’m not sure how better to put that).

A brilliant “Ma Rewa” followed. It had a five-minute interlude where Amit Kilam, their drummer, stepped down from his throne to play the gabgubi, a two-stringed percussive instrument. Over Asheem Chakravarty’s now-persuasive tabla, Ram, plucking then caressing his bass guitar, alternated with Kilam playing the gabgubi, in the kind of savaal-javaab that a crowd loves to get into. The entire sequence, as these kinds of sequences can be, was showy, but I got the feeling that it was also, for the band, intimate. For these few minutes, none of the four looked at the crowd. They looked only at their instruments and at each other, almost as if they had forgotten (or didn’t care) that they were on stage. An exuberant four-man jam resulted. And you wondered if this was a bit of a sneak peek, if this was how it was when it was just the four of them playing together, in a room in one of their homes maybe, jamming, making music.

This was them at their most comfortable, their most free. Not coincidentally, this was also when they played their best music (A soulful rendition of “Kandisa” capped the night). For me, that Indian Ocean is a brilliant, brilliant band is beyond doubt: I did see why, but I could only wish they’d started to sense this freedom when they were playing a little earlier on in the evening.