Baajaa Gaajaa !

The first week of February 2010 saw the return of Baajaa Gaajaa, the music festival that aimed to bring together independent music from all over the country in all its diversity. I remember seeing pictures of the first edition of the festival in magazines last year, and wishing I could have been there. It was not entirely luck that I happened to be in Pune this time around!


Baajaa Gaajaa, this year, was a three day festival with an expo, seminars, movie screenings and the best part - live performances by a variety of artistes, ranging from Rajasthani Folk to Jazz to Alternative to Hindustani and Classical. There were two stages with different artistes performing through the day from 11am to dusk, 'when u can no longer see the guys on stage', as the fellows from Something Relevant put it. In addition there was a concert, each evening, at the amphitheater. With such a lot of performances I was spoilt for choice, but having still not mastered the art of being at two places at once, I had to miss out on some of them.

The stalls at the expo showcased various musical instrument manufacturers, some instrument stores, and a store selling cds of various Indian bands published by labels like counter culture, underscore and phatphish. The one store that really caught my fancy was 'Svaram', consisting of instrument makers and researchers fom Auroville, Pondicherry. The store, run by an Austrian named Aurelio, had some interestingly innovative instruments inspired by traditions from all over the world including rain drums, storm drums, lithophones and a variety of flutes. The most fascinating piece on display was the Sound-stones made by Hannes Fessman. These were carved out of a single piece of rock and produced musical sounds when rubbed with wet hands. What struck me was the physics of resonance and the calculations that go into the making of such an instrument. It doesn't come cheap either - the piece on display was worth Rs 3lakhs! It seems the craft was started by some stone carvers and musicians in Germany. You can checkout this site about it here. Hannes himself seemed to be having a ball of a time meeting new people and showing them his creations.

Here is a video of Klaus Fessman and his Klangstein ensemble performing with soundstones at Hachenburg - (it doesn't work anymore. been removed by user)



On the first day of the festival I reached the venue in the evening just in time to catch Rohan Solomon of 'Cyanide' finish with his acoustic set, accompanied by someone on tabla. Remember Cyanide from the Channel V launchpad episodes a few years ago? They had seemed to be a good band. I wonder if they still play.

The band I was really looking forward to, that evening, was 'Something Relevant', a jam band from Mumbai. The band consists of Tanmay (guitar), Stuart (bass), Aalok (percussion/backing vocals) , (lead vocals), Ryan (saxophone), Luis (piano/keyboard/backing vocals) and JJ (drums). They play something of a blues/jazz rock mix of sounds and the sax does give the music another dimension. My first impression was that they sounded a bit like Dave Matthews Band but I was soon to stand corrected as their other songs had a more jazzy feel to them. Somewhere in the middle the drum pedal broke and the guys broke into a drumless version of a song which had a very lively feel to it. Unfortunately I don't remember the name of the song. Soon the drum was fixed and they played the same song again with the drums. The session had to end when it got dark because the two stages had little lighting. On the whole a very cool band, I would definitely want to catch them again. You can check them out on myspace.