The Score Magazine - Archive February 2015 issue! | Page 13

When did your interest in playback singing begin?
Who were some of the music directors that you were
inspired by initially as a youngster?
Difficult to say when exactly I may have gotten interested in
music. From all the tales that I have been told about years of
growing up in the mountain state of Himachal, where my parents
lived, I was always singing. From age 3, maybe even younger, my
parents remember they would always find me singing and always
see me walking around with a stick. I can’t explain the stick now
but I surely can explain the singing from back then.
Beyond that, I would believe, music was an interest right from
childhood because of my grandfather, Rana Krishna Singh, who
was an acclaimed thumri singer of his times. In fact, his singing
was legendary and people in my native place, Nahan (Himachal
Pradesh) still remember his robust gayaki. As a child I would
hear him sing at mehfils at home meant strictly-for-like-minded-
friends. My grandfather was a proud Rajput zamindar and would
not have any outsider hear him sing ever. It was too much for
his Rajputi pride to bear, considering those were the days when
singing wasn’t exactly considered the right thing to do. Singing
was confined to people who di d it for a living. And macho Rajput
men from the hilly region weren’t supposed to do it. These private
sessions of my grandfather were what I as a child of the family
was privy to. Perhaps that sub-consciously left a mark on me. It
imprinted my soul and mind in manner that I was possessed for
life. I couldn’t resist music no matter where I went. I would find
myself especially attracted to folk musicians I would encounter
on my travels through Himachal with my parents. My father was
employed with the government and would be posted in remote
corners of the state. That gave me an opportunity to travel
throughout Himachal Pradesh and catch nuances of Himachali
folk music. As a child, these glorious sounds caught and gripped
my imagination. The crispy folk notes of the upper Himachal
region is hard to forget. They have stayed with me for life. And I
believe that’s where my interest in music began.
On a later stage, the same interest was honed by the spool tapes
that my Uncle, who worked as a Pilot with Air India in the early
70s, brought home from the world over. As a school going boy,
spool tapes of Beatles, Simon Garfunkel, J J Cale, Frank
Sinatara and others fired my imagination.
I’ve had huge musical influences in terms of composers but if
we are strictly talking about Indian film composers then, S D
Burman, R D Burman, Shankar Jaikishen, Laxmikant
Pyarelal, Salil Chaudhary, Naushad saheb have been terrific.
What's the story
behind Silk Route?
Story behind Silk Route
is simply put a chance
meeting of travellers who
loved music, discovered
they were like-minded,
met up for impromptu jam
sessions and then stuck
around together to make
music that each one of us
loved individually and
collectively.
A little after I finished
college, an MSc in Geology
from Dharamshala, I
set out with my guitar
to travel all over the
mountain state. On a night
stop in Mandi, someone
told me that a guy in town
called Atul Mittal played
the guitar and could be
found at a petrol station
run by his family in the
town. So, for the heck of
Story behind Silk Route is
it, one morning I went to
the petrol pump to meet
simply put a chance meeting
Atul who said he’d be able
of travellers who loved music,
to see me in the evening
discovered they were like-
for a jam sessions after
minded, met up for impromptu
the station shut. We met
that evening, jammed and
jam sessions and then stuck
loved it and did not stop
around together.
playing together for as
long as the band existed.
It helped that both Atul and I were from Himachal and that gave
us enough reasons to travel to distant places in the state and
stay there for days, just jamming. A whole lot of music
happened on those travels.
In mid 90s when I came down to Delhi and started
work on some advertising, jingle assignments,
someone introduced me to Kem Trivedi, another
brilliant musician who had trained himself in
London. Kem’s sense of music was crazy and
though very different from Atul and my music, it
melted and mingled into ours, making it a sound
that had never been heard before in the Indian
music scene. So Kem hopped on and we formed
Silk Route. It was name suggested by the wife
of our first manager, Paramjit Singh, inspired
from some reading she was doing while we were
debating about what the band should be named.
Kenny Puri, our drummer with Silk Route was
the last one to join. The group stayed that way for
a long long time before as thinking individuals,
everyone thought of going there separate ways.
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