For Srishti Biyani, the flute is a part of her identity and expression — “one of my many languages!” she exults. Known by her stage name Lasya, Srishti picked up the bansuri when she was 12. To practice, she narrates, she would sit cross-legged in front of a small temple in her house where Lord Krishna, his special flute, and Radha resided. “Just as Radha leaned into Krishna, mesmerised by the bansuri’s tranquility, I also admired his connection with the instrument through the stories I heard from my mother,” she gushes. But the fascination started when she had just returned from a month-long music tour “The 9 Seasons” in Belgium with the Gandharva choir and “Prima la Musica” chamber orchestra conducted by Dirk Brosse, which, she says, was an “enigmatic experience” at such a young age. “We would attend two-hour-long bansuri concerts before our choir performances and I think that’s where my fascination with the instrument began, subsequently also influencing my choice.”
A multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, producer, and engineer, Srishti fuses eclectic music styles and draws influences from genres spanning classical, Indian folk, experimental, hip-hop, and avant-garde. A graduate in Electronic Production and Design from Berklee College of Music, Boston, she grew up learning Hindustani classical vocals and the bansuri at Gandharva Mahavidyalaya, New Delhi.
Having worked with internationally-acclaimed award-winning artists such as Zakir Hussain, Shankar Mahadevan, Vijay Prakash, Nona Hendryx and Howard Shore at Boston Symphony Hall, she has also been a music production educator for Beats by Girlz, a non-profit organisation, designed to empower young women in music technology.
She is now a part of the Berklee Indian Ensemble, Dakshina, a world fusion Balkan band and The Kashti Project, an Indian contemporary music trio. She is currently making Indian Lofi music for her second EP and producing music for an electro-folk band Bero Koni.
Edited excerpts:
Tell us about lo-fi music and how are you going to blend it with flute in your next album?
Lo-fi comes from the term “low fidelity”, where fidelity means sound quality. It’s a musical aesthetic that captures the imperfections during recording and production. It’s often referred to as “bedroom pop” – music you listen to in the comfort of your own space, relaxing or in a state of meditation or concentration. You probably have seen lo-fi playlists pop up on your YouTube suggestions as music to relax to or study to. It’s the flawed beats and background hum of lo-fi that makes for that imperfect, complete sound and I’m excited to create a new sub-genre within lo-fi that features the serenity of the bansuri . A mix of electronica sounds from my natural surroundings and the bansuri is what I am calling ‘Indian lo-fi’!
Tell us about your gurus.
I first started learning flute from Shri Prakash Saxena ji and later, from Shri Kailash Sharma ji. Having a strong foundation in Hindustani classical vocals already, I had a tight grasp of ragas and could easily play them on the bansuri. At the time, I was the only female student in a class of 15, learning the instrument at Gandharva Mahavidyalaya.
Initially, while learning the techniques on the bansuri, my guruji let me freely express my musical ideas and encouraged me to compose and improvise; he even taught me some western flute techniques. A few months into my training, I was chosen to perform at Gandharva’s annual student showcase and performed in front of the whole university.
How do you see the surge in female instrumentalists in the country?
We shouldn’t forget that India has always had a wide range of world-renowned female classical musicians — in fact, now we have a new generation of names continuing the tradition such as Anupama Bhagwat who plays the sitar or Rajna Swaminathan who plays the mridangam among others.
So in the last decade, with the exposure of different music genres and access to a platform through the internet as well as the booming culture and business of independent music in India, the rise in the number of female musicians and instrumentalists, indie artists and producers, should not be surprising.
Tell us how your first album ‘Monsoon’ came into being...
I wanted to recreate the magical spell of rainfall in India as I experienced it during my childhood. Most of us remember and associate with this experience at home – the crack of thunder, paper boats, dewy petrichor – and I wanted to capture this nostalgia... this feeling, musically. The melodies were mostly improvised, supported by varied sonic layers that involved synthesising the soundscapes of the reverberating thunder, the gush of winds and the therapeutic sound of raindrops.
Having studied in Gandharva Mahavidyalaya and Berklee, how would you compare the two streams of music and education?
Having specialised in electronic production and sound design at Berklee and with an experimental attitude towards music, blending the two streams of music came naturally to me. My training at Gandharva played a crucial role in laying the foundation of swar and taal. It was quite similar to the guru-shishya tradition in terms of learning classical, traditional and folk melodies, all by ear.
On the other hand, at Berklee, it was completely contrasting music education. Over the course of four years, I learned jazz, western music concepts, music production, and technology. I was exposed to different cultures and their music, leading to collaborations with people from around the world. Many of these collaborations led to the formation of various inter-cultural bands that I am part of.
What are your aspirations, how do you see the role of traditional music in the globalised world?
I aspire to bring people together through music. As humans, it is the only common language that we all share as a community. It has unbelievable potential to mend as well as build bridges and I want to play a part in making that happen. I also want to create music I am proud of, that not only creates an impact but is also creatively satisfying personally.
As both a musician and an engineer, I have always strived to push boundaries and to be innovative and inventive. One such example is my collaboration with American pop icon Nona Hendryx and Grammy Award-winning hip hop producer Hank Shocklee. We worked on an Afro-futuristic project, where I contributed as a software developer which would monitor and respond to the dancer’s heartbeat and in tandem, manipulate the sound effects of the bansur i, which I played live. I am also working on my second album “Born in Fire” inspired by the novel “The Palace of Illusions” by Chitra Banerjee. The album is a juxtaposition of electronica and Indian classical melodies with the interpretation of the ancient Indian epic Mahabharata from the point of view of the female protagonist Draupadi.
The world is and has always been welcoming of traditional music not only from India but from across the world – I’ve experienced it first hand when I performed live in different countries, whether I am singing Turkish folk or playing a classical tune on the bansuri .
