From contemporary renditions of Bollywood classics to crafting original music, The Revisit Project, a funk/jazz fusion band from Delhi, has been in the limelight since their debut album Here We Go (2018). The eight-member band features Abhay Sharma (saxophone/composer), Aditya Bhagavatula (drums), Chetan, Dominic Awasthi (vocals), Kanu Gangahar (guitar), Karan Wadhwa (bass) Rythem Bansal (keys), Varun Rajasekharan (percussions), and Vrnda Dhar (vocals). In this week’s Soundscape, we speak to Sharma who describes everything including their music-making process, the independent music scene in India, the band’s influences and love for jazz, and more.
Excerpts:
The Revisit Project started out as a tribute band. How did you make a shift to original music?
The plan was always to express ideas and thoughts through my own music, but I wanted the band to follow a similar trajectory. As a professional musician, at least initially, my plan was to figure out a way of making a financially sustainable model and then invest the earnings into original music.
I was in the commercial music scene for seven years before I started the band. This helped me form good relations in the industry, thus leading to a realisation that there was a slot for a well -arranged instrumental set in the scene that would lead to income generation for everyone in the band and help fund the eventual idea of original music.
The independent music scene is yet to offer good financial returns to short and mid-term artists, making it impossible for an entry-level artist to sustain themselves. Once I saw the finances had become stable, I started writing original music with the band.
The song Miles to Coltrane released on streaming platforms in August this year. What was the inspiration behind it?
The song metaphorically compares the bond a couple might share with each other to the legendary jazz duo of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. In the band, we all love jazz. The story of the song is actually a personal experience, and since I wanted to express the story through the motif of jazz anecdotes and partnerships, I thought I might as well try writing around that theme. Musically, the idea was to make a ballad, and keep it simple without anything ostentatious or unnecessary.
Can you tell us a little bit about the band’s music-making process? Who would you say are your major influences?
I generally write the central idea/tune/lyrics before making the band hear it, and then we go ahead arranging it together. At times, the arrangement is set already or we might as well just change everything at the jam space, totally depending on how all of us are feeling about it.
We love finding more and more music everyday, thus the inspiration varies from Charlie Parker to James Taylor, from Jaco Pastorious to RD Burman. It can be anything that moves us. Lyrically Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan, Tower of Power, John Mayer and Parliament Funkadelic are big influences too. The Revisit Project’s ‘Miles to Coltrane’ is available on all major streaming platforms
Song Miles to Coltrane
artist THE REVISIT PROJECT