BAND OF THE MONTH
Non Violinist Project
Why the band is called Non Violinist Project?
Is there a story behind it?
A friend of ours after seeing Shravan's
very peaceful demeanour compared it to
Gandhi's, in the context of a rather rather
silly joke, where Shravan was a violinist
and Gandhiji being a non-violinist! (Feel
free to not use this answer haha!)
How would you describe your band's sound?
All of us bring in each of our sounds and
inspirations and that's why its a little
hard to pigeon-hole the sound/genre of the
band. But if we had to use a term it'd be
Neo-Indian Classical-Fusion.
Tell us a little bit about your tech set up while
recording music
Our guitarist Naveen Samson, has an
extremely well equipped home studio
setup where we lay down the initial ideas.
From there we go to bigger studios and
execute them!
What's your take on social media and
YouTube taking over how music is shared and
received by audience?
Social media may be the biggest boon and
bane of the current musical landscape.
The obvious advantage being that,
anyone has the power to compose/record/
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release any song/piece of music from the
comfort of their own bedrooms, while the
disadvantage is EXACTLY the same thing.
With literally anyone being able to do this,
you obviously have a massive dilution of
quality content taking place and thereby it
becomes much more of a challenge to cut
through the noise. We believe at the end of
the day that good music speaks for itself!
What are the challenges you face as a band
while putting music together?
Right from the outset, to get 5 individuals
who are already musicians in high
demand playing for various different
bands/projects was definitely a challenge.
But the commitment towards pushing the
boundaries of what was possible is what is
driving us everyday.
Tell us about your best performance and why
do you choose it?
We've been fortunate to play at some
astounding venues in the last year since
the inception of the band. We've played
some great concerts to thousands of people
at different colleges around India, but
in a way the most special concert is still
the VERY first one, where we performed
at Kamaraj Arangam Auditorium for
Isaignani Ilayaraja Sir's birthday, in front
of the genius himself! To actually watch
him sit in the front row and appreciate
our interpretations of his musical
masterpieces was a blessing indeed!
Your influences from the music space
Like we mentioned before, all of us have
drastically different musical inspirations
and thats what we feel makes the band
unique. Right from Raja & Rahman to
Snarky Puppy & Bruno Mars to Ganesh &
Kumaresh, its quite a journey of sounds!
An artist you would love to collaborate with
and why?
We would love to work with someone
like Karsh Kale, who's in fact a pioneer
in taking Indian Classical music and
putting a super-modern spin on it. There
are thousands of artists who play "fusion"
music but very few do justice to the roots
of each respective genre like Karsh.
Upcoming projects
We recently concluded a tour of various
cities, playing some of the biggest college
festivals in South India. We plan to release
a series of concert videos from those
shows in the coming months. Aside from
that we're also working on a ton of original
material, an album may on the horizon
very soon!