“... Mukt karo bhay, aapona-maajhe shakti dharo nijere karo jay” On odd days, at precisely 8:25 am, the school assembly hall was filled with these very words sung at the tops of our voices. Our music instructor, a tall and skinny Bengali gentleman, spectacles nearly…
“Which is the best collaboration you’ve come across?” An acquaintance casually asked me a few weeks ago. What could I say? Great artists have collaborated with one another since, well, the beginning of time. In music, one of the oldest examples would be Hexaméron from…
Just five minutes into my conversation with actor-singer-songwriter Alexx ONell, and I know this is going to be a masterclass of sorts... one with a bizarre title. Something along the lines of ‘Why I’m Ecstatic My Album Never Released, and Why It Never Will’. Yes,…
As I listened to Mumbai-based Alt-rock band Last Minute India's latest single Kaagaz Ki Naav, the first thing that popped into my head was Anurag Basu's critically acclaimed film Life In A Metro. In a nutshell, it's music made for montage sequences. Music that takes…
Two harpists from the United Kingdom play the lushest of tunes. A guitarist from Argentina shreds like nothing you’ve ever heard. A singer-songwriter from India with the most angelic voice sings gospel pieces that melt your soul. What they have in common is they’ve spent…
Ezra Pound defined poetry as a composition of words set to music, thus building on Aristotle’s early definition of poetry as the form of mimesis that utilises rhythm, language, and harmony. Harmony, he said, distinguished poetry from other language-based forms. With his latest single, composer…
When I tell Anoushka Maskey she sounds like Doris Day meets Bossa nova, she stops me right in my tracks. “Was that you in the comments who said that?” She probes. “There’s someone who said exactly that!” I assure her it wasn’t me. In fact, I…
A month ago, I had an interesting chat with Earl The Kid, a DJ and producer from London. Interesting because he, like I, held the opinion that great EDM artists always have this major Heavy Metal background, more so than any other genre of music.
A little over two decades ago, I first saw Neuman Pinto perform on stage at the St. Andrews College Auditorium. Many students from Andrews hail from choir-singing backgrounds and it's only natural that they end up forming or joining acappella groups. Though acappella was uncommon…
If you’re part of the indie music scene in India, as a musician or a listener of music, there’s a slim chance you’d have missed the name David Britto. Over the last five-odd years, Britto, the music journalist, has helped us discover new acts, many…