LAST week we introduced Jhankaar the Band — a contemporary Indian band founded by percussionist Samresh Rao who dreams of bringing a modern spin to classic Indian folk songs.
The band has been playing gigs around Fiji taking on their different personas of laid back and ultra formal playing classical music heavily mixed with Bollywood hits and a sprinkling of English songs.
Rao says the inspiration behind their band championing classical Indian songs for the modern generation, comes from a deep-rooted belief of protecting their origins and heritage.
“Our founding member and mentor is Mr Viveka Nand who is a teacher at the Indian High Commission, and he had been teaching for about 40 years.
“He trained a lot of musicians, and he was also a lecturer at the USP.
“He was a really huge influence not only to me but to a lot of local Indian musicians around Fiji and of the things he always encouraged us to do was tell the stories of our people through songs.”
He says their mentor was instrumental in the production and release of their albums – Girmit Gatha Volume I and Girmit Gatha Volume II.
“That album had traditional lyrics from the writers, but we sung them using modern sounds and tried to recreate some Bollywood songs in Fiji.
“That is one way to reach out to the new generation of Indian music lovers.”
He said the release of the two albums also offered an opportunity to draw in younger listeners.
“We can’t keep using the old instruments like the tabla and the harmonium because if we keep doing that in new compositions because in the era of TikTok and Facebook they want to hear something new.
“So besides Bollywood covers we also trying to keep our old folk songs alive by making them appealing to our younger generations.
“We are trying to create these original songs in a modern era.”
Looking at the current demographic of this niche musical taste, Rao believes Fiji has a lot to learn.
“In Fiji, the biggest problem with the Indian market is that we are only doing covers of Bollywood songs and hits and we are not doing original songs.
“So we are trying to change that by putting out our own albums for the next generation of listeners and also help them understand that we also have original Indian songs.
“Indian music is not just Bollywood songs and show that we can also compose original songs.”
As they continue to make head waves in local music scene, one thing is certain about this contemporary band, they want to make an impact.
“For our concerts we try and do justice to the songs that we composed from our albums and also other folk songs.
“We have a wide genre of music.
“The main content is Bollywood covers but when you look at our videos of gigs at restaurants and hotels we also play some English songs, and we might probably be the only band that plays a couple of iTaukei songs as well just to make it inclusive.
“In these kind of events we cant go full on Indian music so we also do Bollywood covers and we want to try to add in some classic English songs with some Elton John, Celine Dion in there just to get into that market and also prove that we are able to play in from a diverse crowd of people and it also displays our versatility.”
