By Malini Nair
Even if you can get your tongue around those twisters, it does not sound like the stuff rock music is made of. But when Avial’s vocalist hollers Nada nada nada it seems as though Malayalam was meant for headbanging.
Lovers of rock music suddenly cannot have enough of Avial and it does not seem to matter that few of their fans outside Kerala can sing along or even understand what Chekele, Adupambe or Nada nada nada mean.
In Karbi Anglong district of Assam, if you love heavy metal but do not know any English, you needn’t despair. There is Warklung, headed by a 30-something freespirit, Rocky Baba, and it even has a few hit albums to its credit.
Makes sense
Why rock in the vernacular? “Because it makes sense,” is Avial vocalist Tony John’s simple answer to why the band chose to sing in the mother tongue of its members. Various band members in their earlier avatars had been doing some desultory stuff in English — some covers, some original —when it struck them as a group that the most natural thing was to sing in Malayalam.
“We all thought that something was missing in our music when we sang in English. That music is not really yours. Singing in Malayalam brings us closer to the time and place we live in, it just makes us much happier,” says John, who was once part of an English band, Karizma. As it turned out their music made listeners very happy too.
Of course, there is no denying that Avial is reaping the benefits of being the first ever Malayalam rock band: because their music is a novelty, it gets many curious listeners and first-timers who don’t really care for rock otherwise.
Queat for identity
Avial is not the only vernacular band to shed the English baggage. Raghu Dixit Project and Swarathma both take pride in singing in Kannada. Dixit traces this to a phase of introspection in his mid-20s. “I started singing English rock when I was a wannabe and wanted to impress girls. Later, as I turned 24, I introspected, and began to wonder what I was really doing. I was trying to question my identity. That’s when I took to singing in other languages,” says Dixit, who finds the fresh Kannada — and sometimes Hindi — flavour of his music “a new great joy’’.
Indian Ocean and Euphoria, of course, have several Hindi hits to their credit. But then, any alternate Hindi music has to battle with the tremendous reach and popularity of Bollywood music.
However, after Rock On, quite a few inspired young groups have begun singing in Hindi. Faridkot is one of the youngest groups to come out of Delhi.
Bengal led the way
It was actually Bengal that led the way in regional rock. Way back in the ’70s when rock meant English, the cult group Mohiner Ghoraguli burst in on the Kolkata music scene with gritty Bengali numbers that dealt with contemporary social and political issues.
The group struggled for recognition during its day but today they are seen as trailblazers and the group’s name is almost used as a brand name forits music (Pritam used their incredibly beautiful Prithibita Naki in Gangster as Bheegi Bheegi, with some controversy over whether he gave the original enough credit). It also laid the road for other groups to follow.
Today Kolkata’s rock scene is bustling with talent and as music writer and drummer Nondon Bagchi points out every small town youngster in the state wants to be seen holding a guitar. Bhoomi, Lakhicharra, Chandrabindoo and Fossils are some of the groups that are creating quality music in the city.
“The benchmarks are really high here. Of course, there are the pretenders who think that it is enough to wear ear studs and practice occasional guitar to be a rockstar. But the groups that are good are bloody good. When we were doing rock music in the ’60s and ’70s, the idea was to just appeal to like-minded people. What Bengali rock has done is that it has made this music comprehensible to everyone from Ranaghat to Siliguri, not just in college campuses,” says Bagchi.
Mass appeal
Singing in an Indian language really opens up the audience base and market for these rock groups. Avial, for instance, says that their music is identified not just by the groovy crowds at Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram colleges but also by parents, grandparents and autorickshaw drivers. Dixit says it gets him the common janata.
“We would like to travel to as many places as possible. If it involves travelling by train or bus to smaller towns and villages, even better. We love to spread social consciousness about issues that matter. We live to take our music to people who can’t afford such exposure to music,” says Sanjeev Naik, the violinist with Swarathma, which focuses on folk fusion music.
Avial’s popularity in the rest of India has taken everyone — not least the band which has been struggling for recognition for eight years — by surprise. Few regional bands have even bothered to venture out of home territory because of the language barrier. Bengali bands, for instance, sing either at home or abroad to the NRI population. But record label Phat Phish, which released Avial’s first album, specialises in selling regional music on a national scale and believes that this is a strong market that has not been tapped enough.
Listeners today are discerning enough to spot sincere, engaging rock music when they hear it, no matter what the language. As Tony John puts it, the idea is not to just shove desi words into an alien format and somehow create a certain sound. The lyrics, music and the instrumentation — all need to come together convincingly. “If the music appeals to the people, they actually try to understand the lyrics,” says Dixit.
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