What happens when a dentist, a radio jockey and a music teacher get together? They create parody music, evidently. Meet Yohan Chacko, Sandeep John and Shilpa Natarajan, who make up the Beef Sapad Trio. For their performance at Bay 146 to kick-start The Mainstage — Festival of the Bands, Shilpa shows up in pyjamas and Yohan sports a pair of orange pants. Sandeep grins, “It’s important not to take ourselves too seriously.”
Yohan is a dentist who is rumoured to play Led Zeppelin in the background while doing a root canal. He says, however, that this isn’t entirely true. “I choose my playlist depending on the patient. I ask them what they want to listen to, and since I invariably have the song, I play that. While dentistry is my bread and butter, music is my jam,” he grins. Yohan is famed for composing the ‘I am a Malayalee’ song that went viral on the Internet.
Though the trio are bound by their love for music, it was theatre that brought them together. While Yohan and Sandeep have been acting together since 2009, Yohan and Shilpa sang together for a theatrical performance. In 2014, when Yohan decided to explore parody music, he roped in the two. A unifying factor, they say, was also their shared love for meat. Thus they named themselves Beef Sapad Trio, to also take a stand against the beef ban.
Their music, too, makes fun of bans that have been imposed on us. They also sing about biryanis, Indian cities, IT employees and the OROP. “There’s a message in every song. We are just putting it out there; you can make what you want of it,” says Sandeep. Set to the tunes of popular songs (like ‘I Would Walk 500 miles’, ‘What’s Going On’ and ‘I Want To Break Free’), their music is focused on the lyrics, and the performance, an interactive one, depends on the audience. “We are not too worried about people not getting the lyrics. We are three singers with one guitar and a few percussion instruments. There is nothing to drown us out,” says Yohan.
