In the summer of 2014, Indian Ocean, pioneers of indigenous indie music, dropped a brand new album that took even their loyalists by surprise. On this, their seventh outing on record, the band had overcome the struggle of several line-up revamps to put out a new, definitive sound that even made room for several unexpected collaborations. From singers Vishal Dadlani and Shubha Mudgal to composer Karsh Kale, violinist Kumaresh Rajagopalan and percussionist V. Selva Ganesh, the album Tandanu made an art of beautifully blending musical geniuses into Ocean’s texture, while retaining whole their original spirits.
In Chennai, fresh from their concert of Tandanu ’s music at Phoenix Market City, Ocean is onto their next big collaboration — this time with ghatam maestro Vikku Vinayakram. The ties were sown in October this year, at a concert by Kumaresh in Delhi featuring Vinayakram. Ocean went backstage to meet with the band after the concert, and Vinayakram called them aside and said, “You’ve collaborated with my son (Selva Ganesh); now I want you to play along with me as well!” “We thought he was joking then,” laughs Ocean’s bassist Rahul Ram. Turns out Vinayakram was dead serious.
Seated in the evening in Selva Ganesh’s Chennai studio, listening to the latest tracks by Selva Ganesh’s new band Arka, Rahul speaks about the experience of working with Vinayakram all that morning. After their concert here, Ocean had gone over to Vinayakram’s pad with a few soundtracks, one of which they were quite sure he would like. “It was just a half-idea of a track,” says Rahul. But in the six-hour jam with Vinayakram, the track fleshed out into a full song, that will formally be recorded in Mumbai over the next month or so, and released soon as a solo track.
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Just as in their collaboration with Selva Ganesh (‘Cheetu’), which featured some complex time-signature hopping, Ocean’s track with Vinayakram too prioritises rhythm gymnastics. “Right when we came up with this, we made it keeping in mind the sound of the ghatam and how it could possibly fit into our dynamics. The song also features what Vinayakram is now increasingly known for — sloka korvai — where he speaks slokas in intricately fast rhythms,” says Rahul. As each hour of working on this track passed by, Ocean says Vinayakram kept encouraging them to play further, for with each repeat, newer ideas would drop into his head.
As yet unnamed, Rahul prefers to call the song a “mystery track”, and says Ocean’s greatest takeaway from the chance to collaborate with Vinayakram was working with “such a fantastic human being with boundless musical ability”. “He is so soft-spoken, and at this age, has that child-like enthusiasm for music, with that twinkle in his eye which makes you fall in love with him. He’s like the coolest thatha you could ever find!”