Musician Ankur Tewari is ready to host the third season of MTV Sound Trippin’, a present that captures the area of interest sounds of our lands, from Goa to Uttarakhand
Singer-songwriter Ankur Tewari marvelled on the 150-year-old kamaicha he held in his fingers, because the realisation that right here was an instrument, all however misplaced to fashionable music, dawned on him. Ankur was in Jodhpur, capturing the third season of MTV Sound Trippin’, when he met Dapu Khan Merasi, a people singer who makes use of this century-old bow-and-string instrument.
After a hiatus of seven years, MTV has introduced again Sound Trippin’, a present that paperwork uncooked and distinctive people sounds from throughout the nation, by way of a street journey. “We travelled from Goa to Mussoorie, Rishikesh, Jodhpur and again to Mumbai,” says the Gully Boy music supervisor. All year long, they met musicians from totally different niches: the Fado vocalists of Goa who specialize in Portuguese music to the Manganiyar group of musicians.
Season 1 of Sound Trippin’ began with Gangs of Wasseypur music director Sneha Khanwalkar capturing sounds from totally different locations that greatest represented them, and, in season 2, she was joined by Karsh Kale and Nucleya.
“After I was invited by MTV and Hyundai to host this season, I went again and rewatched the outdated episodes. I noticed how Sneha introduced her persona into the present. She’s all about sampling, and in the event you shut your eyes and hearken to her tune, it’s hers,” says Ankur, “I puzzled, how do I carry myself into the present.” As an artist, Ankur has all the time thought-about himself a storyteller. “That’s what I needed to do with this present. Uncover the tales that every of those locations need to inform, and produce these out within the type of tune and music— in raga, tempo and lyrics,” he says.
Every of the episodes are then primarily based on a theme: ‘Saudade’, ‘Roots’ and ‘Streets and Silence’, and finish in a soundtrack, written by Ankur, which blends sounds he picked up from numerous musicians by way of the course of the episode.
Again to the roots
As an illustration in Jodhpur, the expertise for Ankur was about vacancy within the streets, resulting in a sure calmness inside. “It gave me a sense of slowness that in a means was all the time lacking from my life,” he says. It was an concept that he usually mentioned with singer Papon from Assam, which gave itself to a tune. “I needed the tune to maneuver, to sway in the best way a camel would. Such which you could really feel the slowness not simply within the BPM (beats per minute) however even within the phrases, ‘Jo khamoshi me harkat hai wo shor-o-gul me nahin.’”
One other fascinating problem the present introduced was to create a beat out of the sounds of a automotive: door slams, seatbelt clicks and engine revs. However as a lot because the present was about discovering non-mainstream sounds attribute of sure areas, for Ankur it was additionally about rediscovering native sounds he grew up listening to.
Taking pictures in Uttarakhand was like a homecoming for the Kumaoni musician, whose mother and father reside in Dehradun. People to him, like many others earlier than him from Uttarakhand, was all the time ‘Bedu pako bari masa’. The Kumaoni tune, written in 1952 by Brijendra Lal Shah, is an ode to a particular, extra harmless time in our lives — a comparability between bedu, the fig that ripens around the yr, and kaphal, the wild crimson bayberries that seem solely between March and April.
“I took ‘Bedu pako’ as a base, and constructed a tune round it merging reminiscences of my childhood to it,” he says. The sounds of the handpan and the flute gave it one other dimension. “Due to this present I lastly bought some high quality time at residence, to revisit a part of my tradition and share tales from the land.”
Sound Trippin’ airs each Friday at 7 pm, on MTV.
