Abhas Joshi first shot to fame when he won the Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Children Special nearly 10 years back. A slew of anchoring stints and playback songs later, the singer duo Abhas and Shreyas Joshi have carved a niche for themselves in the music industry.
The brothers, who will be performing in the city this weekend as part of the Chowmahalla Music and Dance Festival, talk about what keeps them going and their their Sufi Rock Band Indie Roots.
Initiated into music at a very young age by their parents, both Abhas and Shreyas are passionate about what they do and tend to lean towards Sufi music with a touch of Hindustani classical. “At the end of the day we want to make music that has meaning,” says 24-year-old Abhas adding, “Indie Roots focuses on Sufi Rock and that is the top priority right now. We’re working on releasing a single by the band in the coming months.”
Ever since their stints on television reality shows, both the brothers have performed at several shows in the country and abroad. Quiz them on what their newly formed band has in store for their debut performance in Hyderabad and Abhas says, “Being a Sufi band we will have a lot of songs from that genre. We will perform a good mix of originals and popular numbers by senior artistes like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, some old Bollywood numbers that have a Sufi influence to them and also some of our original numbers from our album Thagni .”
The brothers who have been singing together since childhood say that they share a good chemistry and there is a certain comfort level that brings out the best in them. “We are in sync with each other and that works really well when we work together. Shreyas has only recently begun singing; he was more focused on composing earlier. The good thing about working together is that despite our constant bickering over creative differences, we always come up with something good,” says Abhas.
Abhas believes in the power of social media when it comes to promoting music. “The market is quite unpredictable these days. Albums don’t work as such but you never know when something might click with the audience. These days, singles and videos released online are doing really well. So you never really know what will click.”
Both the brothers have worked with popular artistes like Shaan, Bappi Lahiri, Richa Sharma, Salim-Suleiman, Shankar Mahadevan etc. They now look forward to working with A.R. Rahman and Gulzar. “We met Gulzar Sahab a few months back and he really liked our work. Let’s hope an opportunity to work with him comes along. As of now we are in talks for some playback opportunities for a few films,” Abhas says.
