Explain what Maati Baani is all about. What's the
story behind the name? You've collaborated with different people. Anything
specific you'd like to share?
Kartik: Maati Baani literally means the language of the earth.
"Maati " ki "Baani". What it also means to us is the modern sound
of traditional India. We celebrate multiculturalism, where race,
sex, geography do not matter. We create music with different
musicians from across the world, and our music has traces of
different cultures. Its a place where India meets the world and the
world meets India. Kartik: Musicians as a community across the world is a broad
- minded community owing to the amount of time they spend
travelling! When we collaborate with a musician from any part of
the world we dont have to make any efforts to get in a comfortable
zone to create music - the comfort levels already exists because our
common language is music! Our latest song Jao Piya had western
classical musicians playing Indian classical- that was indeed
special.
Nirali: Kartik and me are both from different musical backgrounds.
I am trained in Hindustani classical and Kartik is completely self
taught. He is more fascinated by sounds while I am more fascinated
by melodies. So we combined both to form Maati Baani.
What's your take on music and culture going together?
Nirali: Music and culture are two sides of a coin. But right now we
see that the musical trends are same in every country. If you hear
the top 10 songs in Japan, or India or any other place, you will find
a common palette of urban sounds. They will not be mirroring
the culture or the tradition of the country. Most of the times
the traditional music of the place will not be reflected in the top
trends. With Maati Baani we incorporate the cultural sounds in a
contemporary form and try to minimise the gap.
Kartik: We believe technology should be used to connect cultures,
and that led birth to our new series "The Music Yantra". Its where
we connect with artistes from across the globe via internet. It is a
platform to showcase different and most amazing traditions of the
world in harmony with Indian music.
40
The
Score Magazine
www.thescoremagazine.com
How do you make music?
Kartik: Nirali and I first create the basic melody of the song and
format it. This basic format goes out to the musicians we have
shortlisted for the song. Once they have the basic song structure,
we discuss with them over a couple of skype sessions, how we
imagine their parts to sound like. This is where the beauty of
remote collaborations is. Here, you not only get to know a totally
different kind of a music genre but also its subtleties! After the
skype sessions, the collaborating musician records the parts in
his/ her own country and sends us the audio files. Once we have
all the audio files from different musicians, we stitch in one song!
This process used to take many months before, now we can manage
it in a few days time! Owing to our body of work, more musicians
are willing to collaborate with us than ever before! At times, We
get requests from artistes to feature in our tracks now, without us
asking which we consider to be a substantial achievement.