“We all used to meet at the same bar and for us the glass that we were having was obviously half full. The essence to us was the love for music and our story has always been about friendship and music and the opportunity to live new experiences,” said Sharif D Rangnekar, one of the voices of the band Friends of Linger.
The band performed at Hard Rock Cafe, Saket, recently. They have always shared the common dream of performing live on stage, a desire that has become real thanks to their tenacity and due to the help of the renowned professional guitarist Adhir Ghosh.
As the band is new, they play mostly covers, and they do it in a very democratic way. The experience of this group, in fact, is quite unusual since there are five amateurs singers – Sharif, Craig Cranenburgh, Deepak Sharma, Devyani Shankar and Varun Kapoor – and none of them is the leading voice: while performing they switch from one genre to another according to the skills or the feelings of every member. Asked about the difficulties arising from the vocal limitations of the members and to the criticism they make about each other without quarrelling, they in unison commented: “Once in the studio, the larger part of our egos is left outside the door.” All of them have very different working experiences and, as the only female voice Devyani said: “We sing because we love singing. Our experience is purely fun based.”
The band is also working on self-produced songs and one of those, titled “Head held high”, is nearly at the end of the creative process. While having fun with covers, the group wants also to spread messages through their music. They would like to play a role in building a tolerant society willing to accept and making the people aware on how they can contribute.
“Head held high” has a human rights approach and it is about the LGBT community which has been in the limelight in recent times and the problems faced by them currently in the Indian society. The message, as Craig said is, “At the end of the day it does not matter if a couple is made by a man and a woman, by a man and a man or by a woman and a woman. The only thing that matters is that there are two human beings who love each other.”
