A mosaic of music: Hailing from legendary families, these artistes did not let their influences define them

Taufiq Qureshi: We never set down and planned the genres. We first decided the number of beats the track will have, threw ideas at each other, and just started jamming.

Bickram Ghosh: When we started in Kolkata in my studio, Taufiq bhai just picked up an instrument in the dubbing room and started playing it. I played a segment after that, and slowly we started building from there. Both of us as musicians think sonically, not intellectually. We as humans respond to frequencies of the instrument, not the information; and a genre is ultimately information.

Taufiq: That is why this album comes under the genre of world music. Bickram’s ‘Ram’ and Taufiq’s ‘Ta’ have come together and become RamTa. It is the essence of all the different kinds of music we have listened to over the years—African, Cuban, Latin, Italian, and of course, Indian classical.

Taufiq: When you compose an Indian classic track, you obviously have to adhere to the thaals and raags, so you think on that tangent. World music on the other hand is fusing genres.

Bickram: We can make an analogy between world music and fusion cuisines. Around 40-50 years back people would not enjoy it, but now people love to see different cuisines coming together. Zakir Bhai—whom we all consider the godfather of fusions—had told me that if one wants to learn a culture, they have to break bread with them. One has to eat with them, understand their body language, see what sounds their body moves to, see how exactly their body moves to those sounds. This album is a product of Taufiq bhai and my travels. We are world citizens.

Taufiq: When people go out to eat now, they prefer a buffer because it offers multiple cuisines. The same applies with music. Instead of classifying music, we should just enjoy it.

Bickram: (laughs) Back in the day, music shop owners had a lot of difficulty putting our albums in particular shelves, because they didn’t know which genre this music falls under. One of the albums I had done with Rhythmscape, the shopkeeper had put it beside Anup Jalota’s bhajans, and I made a huge ruckus.

Bickram: For people like us who travel extensively, boundaries start blurring naturally. When we travel to another country and listen to the music there, we automatically draw parallels with Indian classical music. When you start seeing commonalities, blurring happens very inadvertently.

Taufiq: I have always felt like the Delhi Gharana Kayda is very similar to the beats of Bossa Nova. The Kartaal being played in Rajasthan is similar to the one played in Spain. So essentially while the boundaries started melting, the influences and lines became clearer.

Someone told me in the USA that I play the Djembe, but not the African style. I have immense respect for their style, but I have imbibed Indian knowledge, and will always think and play like an Indian.

Bickram: One evening after we finished recording in my studio, Taufiq bhai and I had a very memorable conversation. We talked about our histories, how we came to be, who we were and what we have become. Through those nuggets of information, we realised the we had many similarities in our journeys, and connected on multiple levels. When we came back the next day, something was a little more calibrated, more connected, and that reflected in our music.

Taufiq: According to me I’m still carving my niche. I realised that I have already listened to the A (Allah Rakha) to Z (Zakir Hussain) of music in my house, and need to have a different vocabulary. This is what made me pick up Djembe and transpose my knowledge in a new direction.

Bickram: Like Taufiq bhai said, each of us likes to do something out of the box. I wanted to experiment with how I can create different sounds with the tabla. I picked up the handsonic, the low-Sa tabla, and combined it with body drumming.

Finding separate journeys was necessary for us, otherwise we would have been in the shadows of the doyens. Initial years were very difficult for me as I was constantly negatively compared with my father. People started accepting and appreciating me only when I found my own voice.

Taufiq: My father had a very strict riyaaz routine, and I would always think to myself that I would never do something like this. Unlike conventions, I do my riyaaz at night—start at around 10 pm to 2 am. I find this time very peaceful, devoid of any distractions. I have also been fortunate enough to have kind and understanding neighbours. On days I would not practice, they would even come to me the next day and ask me with concern.

Bickram: One thing I picked-up from my father was conceptualising and ideating. He would go to buy groceries early in the morning, and ask me to build on little nuggets of information he passed on. So more than practicing syllables or kaydas for hours together, I would develop and ideate a lot. I would have the taal cycle in my head and just keep improvising. This helped my understand that music is a flow.

Taufiq: Surya was born during my college days at Xavier’s Malhar festival in 1984. I needed a band name, and while standing outside, I saw the sun and chose Surya. Later, I formed it professionally with Shankar Mahadevan, Salim Murshid on keyboards, and Sridharpal Sarathi on mridangam. We were fortunate to feature Ustad Zakir Hussain and Ustad Sultan Khan in a few shows. Over time, members got busy, and the band faded. I later revived it as "Surya – The New Sun," with Sarav Kulkarni on sarod, Kaushiki Joglekar on keyboards, and my son, Shikhar Nath, on drums with me.

Bickram: Rhythmscape was born out of necessity in 2000 when I wanted to create tabla-centric music. Traditionally, accompanying tabla players follow other artists, but I wanted creative control. Zakir Bhai once told me, “Let that animal out, or you’ll go mad.”

Over 25 years, the lineup of evolved, but key members like Pandit Shekhar (mridangam) and Pulak Sarkar remained. Now, we have Abhishek Malik (sitar), Arun Kumar, Pranav Dutt, Satyajit Mukherjee, B Suresh (ghatam), and vocalist Nirmala Roy. Rhythmscape unleashed my inner composer, "the beast," leading to numerous opportunities shaped by our unique sound.

Taufiq: Right now, it is all about RamTa. This whole year is going to be full of performances and more collaborations for live concerts.