Parvaaz, where music flies

Young musicians spread cheer as they serenaded diners at a city restaurant.

October 26, 2015 05:08 pm | Updated 09:14 pm IST

Sachin Banandur, Khalid Ahmed, Kashifiqbal and Fidel D' Souza of  Parvaaz Music Band Photo:S. Siva Saravanan

Sachin Banandur, Khalid Ahmed, Kashifiqbal and Fidel D' Souza of Parvaaz Music Band Photo:S. Siva Saravanan

The founding members of Parvaaz Khalid Ahamed, on the vocals and Kashif Iqbal, on lead guitar, are from Srinagar.The other two, Fidel D’Souza on the bass Guitar and Sachin Banandur on the drums are from Bangalore and they joined the band a year after its inception.

The band started out on a quest to find their love for music. The search began in college and it soon became their passion. Kashif and Khalid were in the same school in Srinagar and Fidel and Sachin were in neighbouring areas. Love for music brought them together. Their music is indie rock with a tinge of Indian influence. The vocals of the band are mainly Urdu, Hindi and a little Kashmiri.

“Urdu comes naturally,” explains Khalid. He says the band felt they could not perform without Urdu. The language runs deep in their veins and it adds a new spectrum of emotions in their music, they say. Their journey is better lived when they perform and create music that comes inherently to them, they say.

Parvaaz started out experimenting with various genres, which included singers from the majestic Led Zeppelin to the euphonious Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan besides a lot of folk music. Now, with the constant unfolding of music their interests keep widening and that adds to the music they perform.

The band’s idea of making music is to enjoy the music. They love to make music that keeps them happy and that happiness keeps them inspired to do more, just like it says in the song DilKhush, their single which came out in 2011.

The musicians are self-taught. They say they learnt from their surroundings, the people in college, friends and most importantly from their mistakes. ‘Mistake’ were the biggest teachers! According to them they are part and parcel of one’s life and we all learn from them.

The band is currently in Bangalore from where it travels to other places to perform gigs and shows. They have performed in Bangalore, Chandigarh, Goa, Cochin, Nagpur, Ahmedabad. Not too distant in the future Parvaaz plans to climb up north to perform its first gig in Srinagar, hopefully on New Year’s. The band has also played in the Emerge festival where they opened for Alt-J, a band based in the United Kingdom.

Parvaaz has released two albums, EP and LP Baran. They’re working on another one which is releasing next year.

Notes & Flavours

Parvaaz performed at That’s Y On The Go. “Sorry to be intruding you dinner time, ” smiled Khalid. This was their first time in Coimbatore. They were on a tour and had a hectic schedule prior to coming into Coimbatore. They travelled from Bangalore to Goa then to Cochin and finally to Coimbatore. They were pleasantly surprised to find they were not completely unknown and people knew and enjoyed their music. Parvaaz was surprised when some of the audience knew their music. ‘Music has no boundaries no language barriers’, was the message Parvaaz wanted to convey. The highlight of the evening was easily the performance of Dil Khush and the breathtaking solos from bassist Fidel D’Souza and lead guitarist guitarist Kashif Iqbal got a huge reception from the audience. The quartet performed music that sounded happy and was filled with optimism. The concert concluded with Ab Ki Yeh Subah.

Ranjana Singhal of On The go Restaurant said she was happy to bring more musical events to her restaurants in the city. She said, “It is important to experiment. Our core business is food, and adding music to it transforms the experience of dining.”

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