On a dark Thursday night, diyas in the garden of Adishakti Laboratory for Theatre Arts Research were lit up to lead the audience to the theatre hall. A little while later, they were soaking in the music of independent musicians Lail Arad and JF Robitaille from the U.K. and Canada.
From hearing each other’s music online and sharing them from across different continents to performing together at festivals, the duo has now ventured into a 40-day tour across eight countries. They reached the coastal town on Tuesday as part of the 13th edition of The Hindu’s November Fest .
For those huddled inside the theatre in Adishakti and at the open space in Aurodhan, it was a musical journey for an hour and a half, beginning with The Sound of Silence . Inspired by the coffee house scene of the 1960s New York City and recreating the magic of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, Lail Arad and JF Robitaille said that they have designed the concept of the tour keeping the basic structure same. “We start together, end together and have sections of solo in the middle,” they said.
The duo has brought in a mix of more covers of all the songs specific to India. “We selected a big pool of songs. People in Europe know our music because they would have heard us on radio or bought our albums. We assume that people here in India would not know our names and after the promotion they would listen. When we go to concerts it is very difficult to listen to music for an hour and a half that you have not heard before. That is one of the reasons why we have selected a mix of more covers of all the songs that people know here unlike we do in Europe or Canada,” said Lail Arad.
Strumming their guitar, the singer-songwriter duo crooned We Got it Coming before singing the song they wrote together Rosy . They belted out solo songs, duo songs and folk covers of Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen.
JF Robitaille, a native of Montreal who began as a song writer, sang Morning after Morning , which he wrote when he was trapped in a seven feet snow in his apartment. “Snow covered my apartment windows and doors and I had to wait for the street cleaners for nine hours without electricity and that’s when I wrote this song,” he said.
Lail Arad too sang the songs she had written. The audience applauded her EU song, which she wrote during Brexit - I was riddled with guilt and one song for the French I miss you Milo .
After entertaining the audience with more than 20 songs, the duo brought the curtains down with Leonard Cohen’s Like a bird on the wire .
