Coming from the small town of Doimukh in Arunachal Pradesh, I first got to meet singer-songwriter Taba Chake live at the Ziro Festival of Music.
There, amidst the green, vast space and clouds cascading over the hills, Chake’s music seemed fittingly pastoral. He didn’t have the best command over English, but still chose to sing in the language, the broken poetry still sounding beautiful thanks to his soft voice and gentle guitars.
Turns out, Chake had studied at the Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music in Chennai and has been a fingerstyle guitarist for quite a few years.
Fingerstyle, as you know, is probably one of the underrated guitar techniques that can fill spaces effortlessly.
If you’ve heard the likes of Kaki King, Rodrigo Y Gabriela and Andy McKee, then you’ll be an instant fan of Delhi-based Taba Chake. Outside of that, he is a singer-songwriter still, choosing topics such as nature, solitude and family life on his debut EP Bond With Nature . It is just four tracks and clocks in at about 11 minutes, but Bond With Nature is the first step towards introducing anyone and everyone to his stirring yet simple tunes. He starts with ‘A Gentle Wind’ that is an upbeat opener, featuring guitar and ukulele.
‘Morning Sun’ picks up on the mood and features a full band backing him with guitarist Takar Nabam, bassist (and his producer) Ritwik De and drummer Nikhil Vasudevan. The song is reminiscent of pretty much the best folk/acoustic music around, but we’re talking about western folk. Chake doesn’t necessarily use any native Arunachal folk instruments or song patterns, but turns to his local language Nyishi for a song called ‘Ngo Akin’, which we would guess translates into “I’m on my own now”. The archetypical song for a singer-songwriter, Chake infuses his mother’s wisdom about life and hoping against hope. The EP closes with ‘A Family Get Together’, a joyful tune, probably for anyone who ever missed their family and stay far away from loved ones.
Chake has the hook “We all sing together/We’ll sing together tonight. Alone we are strong/But together we are stronger”.
It is just a tease for the most part, since Bond With Nature ends too quickly, but perhaps that is what will make you reach out and replay it – just to relate to Taba Chake’s sense of wonder, joy, sadness and hope.
