“Purring kitten,” is Stefan Kaye's reply to the question: what is music to your ears. And his fellow band mate Ritwik asserts that it is nothing but “noise” to him. Raghav from Ska Vengers describes it as being “soulful”.
“Stupid Ditties 4: Awesome Foursome”, the fourth edition of the annual compilation of 10 original non-metal bands in India was launched at Café Morrison in New Delhi recently. The event witnessed performances by three bands including Ska Vengers, Emperor Minge and Lazy River who have been inducted into the “Stupid ditties” compilation for the fourth edition of the album.
In a conversation with Raghav Dang, the guitarist for Ska Vengers, he takes us back to how the band was formed. He says, “It started with Reggae Rhajas which is a community for popularising reggae music in India. It is a collective of three guys who are the founding members. We used to have regular performances every Thursday while we were beginning to generate the reggae scene here. It started with a bunch of musicians whom we invited to our regular Reggae Rhajas sessions. From the many jam sessions we used to have, we formed Ska Vengers with Stefan and other members.”
Raghav, Marketing Manager with a magazine firm, who took two years off to pursue his “passion” for music makes an attempt to express his experience of playing live which he describes as the paramount feeling for him. He says, “There is nothing compared to playing live seeing people's reaction and the adrenaline rush that you get from playing live.”
Ska, a style of fast popular music of 1960s having a strong offbeat originating in Jamaica, generally considered the forerunner of reggae remains the genre for the band along with several influences of punk-rock and hip-hop. When questioned about the genre, Raghav says, “It is very uplifting music. Good for your soul. Very positive. I feel it even spreads good message. It's about peace, love and unity.”
A rapper since the age of fourteen, Raghav, while explaining about the various influences in their music, says, “We definitely have influences in original hip-hop and punk-rock music.” Delving deeper, he candidly expresses, “Hip-hop music has also become adulterated now and tries to show only materialistic things like naked women in videos. Similarly, with punk-rock which was started by blue collar working class, has now been commercialised.” He feels reggae is the genre which has still kept its “essence” and remains majorly “untouched” with some bit of commercial aspect to it.
“Our concept to put together the band was to try and play challenging music and for people to understand it. Hopefully, something which is fun”, says Nikihil Vasudevan, the drummer for Emperor Minge. A band famous for its groovy beats, avant-garde classical leanings contrasting with gentle folk along with the use of theatrical devices like live-wire burlesque dancing.
On the use of theatrical devices, Nikhil explains, “We believe the way we have approached these devices is very different. Main reason is at the end of the day we look at Emperor Minge as a band which hopefully and eventually will end up pushing boundaries. Boundaries of entertainment and boundaries of what people might think as “right” in the society.” The band's influences particularly lie in Middle-eastern music, tribal music, and original punk music along with Jazz that they listen to.
