Sridhar/Thayil
WordsSridhar: I didn’t have a choice about “getting” into music. My mother was hopping BEST buses to a Yesudas concert just hours before I was born. My father is a tabla and harmonium player, my mother a Hindustani and Carnatic singer. I was exposed to western music in a real way only when we moved to America. A friend lent me my first CD, ‘Great Ladies of Jazz’ that I listened to over and over again. After several detours, I ended up studying western classical music in college and sang with jazz bands in NY/NJ. It made sense. I’d been in apprenticeship since childhood without realizing it. Every play I’ve acted in has turned into a musical when the director found out I could sing. That’s been very telling for me, to stick with music no matter what. Thayil: My heroes were poets, musicians, revolutionaries, drunks. Just like every other teen on the planet. I wrote in emulation of them and I’m glad I destroyed most of that early stuff. It was crap. I started to write songs around the same time I started writing poetry, in my early teens. I had a nylon-string guitar and there was a family piano. So I wrote songs and never did much with them. I played guitar for various short-lived bands that flared up and died in the stoned seventies and eighties. And then I quit music to become a writer. I got lost in the alleys and byways of the lit world, which is an ill-lit world to tell you the truth, and it’s good to be back in music. One of the songs Sridhar/Thayil is doing is ‘Double Tribal’ which I wrote on piano when I was 17 and never forgot. Of course, it’s a whole other animal at this point. But why wouldn’t it be? Sridhar: My earliest recollection of writing a song is on the harmonium with my sister for a pantomime we wrote as kids. As a singer, one always depends on other musicians. You may be in the spotlight, but you often don’t have the power over production and arrangement. With Sridhar/Thayil I got into software music production. Earlier I would write chords on a keyboard. Now you can write intricate parts to an entire orchestra and play it back. Thayil: I met Suman late last year and we began writing songs almost immediately. She has the kind of voice I’ve always wanted to work with, and when we improvised it always led to songs. Sometimes we couldn’t get them down fast enough. ‘This Be the Beat’ is a good example, it began as wordplay. The more we wrote, the more we wrote. And we ended up with pages and pages of material. We had to throw a bunch of it away because there was way too much. People seem to like it. I don’t know why. Sridhar: Sridhar/Thayil is exactly what it says it is – Jeet and I, everything that shapes our respective sensibilities. Initially it began as an unstoppable wave of songwriting every time we met. Then we began to put everything else we do and dream of doing into S/T like art, photography, video, storytelling, drama, improv and chaos. We often surprise ourselves with the results. But our one steady philosophy is to keep evolving. I began to pay more attention to words after I met Jeet. With Jeet in the band, you can’t have bad lyrics even if you try! Besides, how many great guitar players are also great vocalists? We each take center stage which is a very unusual and special thing. I have to admit I’m addicted to the spotlight. Most of what I write is for the stage, including music. It’s an entirely different kind of writing. Your image of a writer is someone who sits contemplative at a desk. Well, I’m at my desk acting out before typing out, making sure I disturb all the neighbors. I make a lot of noise and call it writing! Writing for an album is quieter, altogether different. You can layer and craft the sound with precision, make it something you can’t achieve live. That’s the exciting potential of record-making. Besides you can write more experimental and acoustic bits that your average music audience in India is reluctant to lend an ear to. You learn and make leaps from live shows in ways you just can’t, rehearsing in your living room. That’s what makes one addicted to the stage. You do things just for the audience; they do things in turn just for you. It’s a pact of intimate exchange. The most exciting improvisation happens at live gigs. * [Interlude] Lung full of junk, stamped full of punk, * Sridhar: Songs can strike you like a god-sent bolt in the middle of the night or over long hours of banging out crap on a keyboard. The latter is just as precious. The best songs were born in one breath, and 100% collaborative. The content is vast – a lament on the environment, a love song called “Rumors of Light”, a hate song called “Single & Preying”, an homage to sa re ga ma called “Punk Bhajan”, anything that moves us to write. The best thing about what we do is you can be as non-committal as you like! The only thing you commit to is producing, other than that the doors are wide open. I’ve been there with studying under an opera teacher who does not let you sing jazz, or singing only soprano in a choir because that is your voice part. As enriching as discipline and training is, when it comes to creating your own baby, you break all the rules. That is what’s liberating about Sridhar/Thayil. You stop being just a student, you’re your own boss. Between the two of us, I think there are enough influences to draw in people from several corners of the world. That’s the point. Thayil: My songwriting process? Black coffee! |
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