When you think of Indian bands that mix folk music and rock, one of the first names that come to mind is Indian Ocean. The band was formed in the 1990s and the current members include Rahul Ram, Nikhil Rao, Himanshu Joshi, Amit Kilam and Tuheen Chakravorty. Known for several popular albums including Kandisa, Desert Rain, Jhini and more, Indian Ocean just released its eighth album, Tu Hai and we caught up with the band to find out more and journey down memory lane.
Tu Hai is finally out! Tell us everything:
Himanshu Joshi: There was no particular thought we had in mind when we started working on Tu Hai. There was no theme that we looked into while producing the songs. But after we compiled all the songs, the idea behind the album shifted more towards the environment, about all that has been happening around us, clashes of thoughts amongst humans and more. I am happy it has a theme now. The songs were written, composed and done much earlier and then COVID-19 hit us.
Rahul Ram: The songs were created at different points of time starting from January 2015, on till 2019. When we compiled all the songs after recording, that’s when we realised that there is a common thread of environmental consciousness. So, this is our way of telling people to look at better ways of doing things and making it a better world for all of us.
Why did you decide to call the album Tu Hai?
Rahul: We pick the name of an album after we decide the songs that will be part of it. We randomly pick a song from the album and use it as the album name. Like Kandisa, it could have been called Kya Maloom too. But Kandisa was a very unique word and Tu Hai is one of the songs from the album. We were also toying around with Iss Tan Dhan, but people would have found it extremely difficult to pronounce, especially outside India.
And which songs from the album do you think will be the next earworms?
Rahul: Every single one! (laughs)
Nikhil Rao: We are in week three of the album release process. We’ve released one song, Jaadu Maaya, written by Varun Grover. The next song we released last week was Jungle, with George Brooks. Next up was Iss Tan Dhan. It is a Kabir bhajan feat. Vikku Vinayakram. Then we are releasing three songs at one go. We are planning to play all of them or versions of all of them in our live shows. We are also going on tour through the whole summer, which is unusual because we usually chill during this season. But Tu Hai is out now and we want to share it with as many people as possible. We are hoping people will like all the songs.
Going down memory lane, which has been your most memorable performance, yet?
Himanshu: One of the most memorable ones for me would be when we were performing in Pune and 6,000 to 7,000 people were singing along with us. Then there was a performance in Dharwad. I am not too sure, about 60 or 70 thousand people were there. So yeah, there was a huge crowd who were very receptive too. There are many memorable performances, but picking one would be difficult. I love college performances because of the energy we receive from the crowd.
Tuheen Chakravorty: I remember a few concerts. One was in Bund Gardens in Pune. There were so many people that a stampede ensued. We had to stop our song midway and ask people to calm down. Then there was a performance in Guilin in China. There were Chinese kids, who didn’t understand a single word we sang. But they enjoyed the performance so much that as soon as we finished our songs, all the kids came on stage and hugged us and clicked pictures with us and took our autographs.
Nikhil: For me, it was our performance in Taiwan because I never knew I would be able to go to Taiwan. I didn’t know there were 20 to 30 thousand people in the crowd. It was a great festival. There were bands from Madagascar, Canada, Switzerland and some other places as well. All of the bands were staying in one hotel. After the show, everyone started a pool party. So, around 20-25 people were there and we had a good time.
Rahul: I will go back in time. We were performing in IIM Ahmedabad in 2003. By then, Indian Ocean had become like this cult thing in the IIM Ahmedabad hostel. We were playing an instrumental track and the audience were singing the instrumental track with us. That is incredible. They were humming the track that was instrumental. Can you imagine that? That to me was memorable. Then there are memorable places where we performed. Like Gorky Park in Moscow. Even now, when I grade a concert, the A+ are very very few. The whole universe has to conspire to make an A + concert. You must be perfect, the audience must be perfect, the sound must be perfect, the weather must be perfect. You know, all these things rarely come together. Recently we had a performance in Bengaluru. That was an almost A+ concert. So, there are various parameters for memorability. There are memorable concerts for terrible songs too (laughs).
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