Will it ever cloy to be romancing music by the seaside on moon-lit nights?
With its offer of a musical experience as eclectic as they come, ranging from ragamuffin to hard rock and fusion to hiphop, and the Bay of Bengal serving as an enchanting backdrop for performance stage, the recently-concluded Freedom Jam festival could one day be the city’s answer to Goa’s much younger Sunburn party.
The 12th edition of the Freedom Jam-Pondy Music Festival 2015, which was returning to the city after a break of a couple of years, had its share of seasoned performers, young prodigies and international acts.
The Tourism Department-supported event was off to a flyer with a spicy act by Tamil band Oorka.
Looking every bit the quintessential rock band with the ensemble of guitars, drumsets and keyboard, but with their novelty in the Tamil lyrics, Oorka made an instant connection with the local youth.
Prodigies V Take Off demonstrated why they are hot property on television shows. The group, whose members are between 7 and 13 years old, are ‘goosebump material’ and put on a show that could well make them entertainment regulars in this city.
V Take Off essayed a couple of Yanni numbers — ‘Reflection of Passion’ and ‘Marching Seasons,’ apart from the songs, “Give me Freedom” and “Tamila Tamila” and their own compositions in both Indian and Western classical styles.
“This band has a very bright future. Music lovers in this city are lucky to have witnessed them early in their career,” said Siddhartha Patnaik, musician and prime mover behind the Freedom Jam concept.
A rap-and-hip hop session with Bengaluru based XStacy Sash-Sash rolled off his popular numbers, ‘Do What U Gotta Do,’ ‘Fly away’ and ‘Can’t Stop My Melody’ followed by Bizmarc (Chennai) whose beatboxing vocal effects drove excitement in the crowds a few notches higher.
Among performers on Day 2, Bengaluru-based Morbidence enlarged its fan base with their distinct style while Jhanu, Chennai’s premier Tamil rock outfit, triggered a mass sing-along to many of their staples such as Arakkan, Odi Po, Acham Illai and Sihdhantham.
Local orchestra Dayal featuring versatile crooner Faritha rendered covers of popular film and folk numbers.
Meanwhile, on the other stage near the Gandhi Thidal, renowned Carnatic and Hindustani vocalist Mahesh Vinayakram, son of ghatam vidwan Vikku Vinayakram, presented electro classic fusion in the company of Australian DJ Astro Black.
Mahesh sang songs composed by James Asher from his “Bravado Masala” album and also from his African collaboration album with Lamine Cissokho.
Arul Mani, one of the rising stars of the local folk music scene, had the audience swinging to his modern Tamil folk music tunes accompanied by folk percussion players on the thavil and tabla as well as an electric keyboard and rhythm pads.
King Jassim, the Bengaluru dancehall style reggae and raggamuffin singer, chose a stop-over in this city in the midst of a nationwide tour. A surprise guest was Mahesh V who got onstage adding his classical vocal prowess to KJ’s songs and producing an impromptu jugalbandi very much in the spirit of Freedom Jam.
There were also performances from NS Production, a production company of musically minded Indipop artists from Chennai, homegrown classic rockers H2O Live and Lucid Dreams, who have the reputation as one of India’s finest hard rock groups with a decades-long reputation for high energy onstage pyrotechnics.
A standout session was led by Prakash Sontakke, one of the few Hindustani slide guitar players in south India.
The fusion exponent, who has collaborated with several well-known international musicians, and is also a co-composer of the 2015 Grammy award winning album, “Winds of Samsara,” started out with Kalyani Blues before putting out a diverse music spread---Dhuns in ragas Bhairavi, Charukesi and Desh, the hymnal “Krishna Ni Begane Baro” and “Heart Sky.”
If there was a peak among the musical highs, it was the rendition of a song called “Dhyana at Daybreak in Varanasi” dedicated to the city’s own late Sarod exponent, Pandit Debiprasad Ghosh who passed away last year.
Music lovers here remember Pandit Ghosh as a staunch supporter of The Freedom Jam movement, performing several times at the festivals, not only in Puducherry but also Goa and Chennai.
The Freedom Jam is a festival that wears the international tag on its sleeve with a lightness that symbolises the pre-eminence of music over name and fame — there is no headline act at these concerts.
This year, Manon Guerin led a band from Montreal, Quebec in Canada which played solid jazz and blues standards such as Summertime, Wonderful World, St. James Infirmary and Sheik of Araby.
Ms. Guerin had illustrious support acts in Mishko M’Ba from the Reunion Islands on bass guitar, Daniele Di Pentima from Italy on the drums and young Indian guitarist Abhisheka.
