Diverse fare in store for music buffs

‘Freedom Jam’ will feature golden oldies, funk, retro and alternative rock music

February 29, 2020 01:23 am | Updated 05:19 am IST

 Oru Chinna Band will be performing at the The Freedom Jam music festival on Saturday.

Oru Chinna Band will be performing at the The Freedom Jam music festival on Saturday.

A night of diverse music, from golden oldies to funk, and retro to alternative rock, awaits concert buffs at the 17th edition of ‘Freedom Jam — Pondy Music Festival’ on Saturday.

The festival, normally held annually during the Republic Day weekend, has been rescheduled to February 29 in the leap year, organisers said. Also, the festival venue is PTDC’s Le Cafe on Beach Road, where music performances will start at 6 pm.

The festival is being supported by Puducherry Tourism since inception of the festival, which has carved a niche in the culture-scape of the city with its celebration of music for music’s sake. Apart from not being a free-entry concert, it also has the tradition of artistes not charging any performance fees.

On the music menu at Le Cafe will be Vidwan G. R. Ramanathan on the saxophone with his golden melodies, followed by futuristic funk on the saxophone synthesiser, catchy original rap and reggae songs by popular Too Lions from Bengaluru.

Rock fusion

The evening will also feature rock fusion instrumentals by city-based veterans Oru Chinna Band and blues and alternative rock by the Blahs & Blues, featuring prodigies from Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music.

‘Saxophone’ Ramanathan, son of Carnatic vocalist T. V. Gopalakrishnan, was born into a family of musicians of over five generations. He is a seasoned saxophone player performing extensively, both in India and abroad since 1955.

He has worked with film music directors like Rahman, Harris Jayaraj, Vidyasagar and others. These days, he has adapted the electronic Yamaha WX5, a kind of breath-controlled wind synthesiser, to bring out futurisic sounds for his EDM (electronic dance music) and fusion concerts.

His stature as a crowd favourite owes to the ability to mix both classical, neoclassical and also film songs catering to fans across the spectrum.

Too Lions, we are told, is not a spelling error. They did call themselves ‘Two Lions’ when they were a duo, but immediately an American band, which had already registered the name, sent them a copyright infringement notice! So they cheekily changed the spelling and went their merry way.

Guitarist-singer Arjun and rapper Rohit both love writing songs on topics that are deliberately not serious, but are surface-level random. They have laugh-out-loud rap lyrics and very catchy singalong choruses, keeping the background music pretty basic so it doesn’t overpower the song. The song titles range from screaming ‘Roar!’ to the reggae single ‘Dont Botha’ to the banana snack song ‘Pazhampoori’.

The band also features bassist Avram and Jesh Murjani on lead guitar.

Oru Chinna Band is a collective of veteran rock musicians from different old bands of the city, who love to jam in the Soundgarden studio. Joe, guitarist, came into prominence with the seminal late ‘70s new wave band the Cut Crystals. Since then he has partnered Joint Venture and had a leading role in Cover Story, the city’s first band to have played at the early Freedom Jam festivals in Bengaluru.

Kenny, keyboardist, is a sought-after session player, while parallelly exploring his creativity in the fusion field. Preetam Joe, guitarist, started off with Antidote and has never looked back. Maries, multi-instrumemtalist, who was selected to back up French funk celebrity Bibi Tanga last year, and Shaun, drummer and the youngest of the band of veterans, complete the set.

Saturday’s performamce will be a sneak preview of their soon-to-be released album.

Blahs & Blues from Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music are a band which started jamming on the blues, worked out their compositions and found their own sound adding the influences they brought with them from different parts of the country.

The band’s vocalists hail from different cities — Malvika from Ambala, Rebecca from Mumbai, Rando in Puducherry — while Prangana (drums) is from Guwahati, Rohit (bassist) is from Coimbatore, Jagjit (guitarist) and Parthajit (keyboardist) are both from Manipur.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.