The Score Magazine - Archive October 2016 issue! | Page 41

SOUVIK CHAKRABORT Y
host of world events like the International Jazz Festival.
From picking up animal sounds, to picking at slapstick
banters, they deliver everything in the book that you call
‘entertainment’.
AFLATUNS
Did you know,
there is music in
bad coughs and
sore throats! Well,
with the Aflatuns
it is always about
finding chaos in
order and creating
harmonies out of
sheer noise. They
say, the best
ingredient of adventure stuffs is in its adrenaline kick,
and every time they are on stage, the Aflatuns have made
it a habit to set them hearts racing! The ‘The Cough
Beatbox Medley’ was a promising head start to a career
which they have made large with the Rolling Stone Stage
performances.
OCTET CANTABILE
This Chennai
based group
started their
journey way back
in 1994. Over the
years they have
forayed into
different domains
and sung in
languages like
Malayalam, Tamil,
Latin, German and English. The fun part about the
Cantabiles is that, though they are an ‘octet’ they sing
‘together’ as one voice! And, it is just not the acapella that
they have mastered, there is the gospel, the classical as
well as the country music which their glory had touched
upon!
HARMONIZE PROJEKT
‘Kandukondein’
by Harmonize
Projekt has been
one of the most
sensational
rendition of all the
Rahman classics
of all times. The
harmonic sound-
scape of this
acapella group
from Chennai had stolen many hearts at various national
and international festivals. Their unique texture and
matchless approach to music has made them successful in
a very short span. They come in like a waft of fresh air
amidst a bunch of bands focussing primarily on Bollywood
music.
Where earlier the bands first
dedicated themselves to a whole crop
of instrumentalists and then resorted
to a host of other sound samplers and
beat breakers; today there are these
independent and largely indigenous
group of musicians who are shaking up
the industry with only their thoracic
vibrations. Yet, the ground is not that
solid for these musicians to build upon
a castle for the ages to come. Most of
the artistes have been a by-product of
a large scale information consumption
or in other words blind video searches.
Though, today most acapella groups are
a prized selling proposition of smaller
college fests or semi-grand film-fests,
most young and admittedly informed
group of people are largely unaware of the
movement they are actually living within.
There is plenty to be experimented and
innovated than what already has been
done, people are still largely prejudiced
and hibernated. Acapella groups are still
part of an ‘unique or weird breed of bands’
that best suits a platform which can never
be mainstream. It is largely unfortunate,
that despite the humongous craze in the
genre, there seems to be almost little or
no push from our cultural stigmas to
welcome the artistes and give them their
due share of respect and acceptance. Beat
boxing is a physically taxing art where
the artistes cannot stay silent for a bit in
their elaborate performances and besides,
there is always the fear of rejection from
the mainstream audience or the threat of
digital trolling by those who are waiting
to pick on their innocent satires and
vines.
On the brighter side, the musical
movement of acapella is revving up
to cater the diasporas of the migrant
communities across the globe. The
intrinsic quality of today’s acapella is
necessarily being fusion based. And,
this particular quality has been used by
the young artists to bridge a distance
that can perhaps never be travelled.
Stanford based bands like Ragapella,
consists of students of the Chinese and
the Korean descent. They specialize in
connecting thematically similar songs
like the Persian dirge “Ek Karevan” and
the western “Hallelujah” and letting the
audience reminisce in their haunting yet
sweet past.
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