Eugene Datta jams with the five-member fusion band — ‘Time Travil’

The room is small and unadorned; a narrow, unkempt bed is the only piece of furniture. A clutter of magazines and CDs lies on the ledge of a window overlooking a splashboard of a verandah.

It is the Kolkata residence of Ryan Shah, a 20-something Gujarati American percussionist and a Sabir Khan-aficionado, who, along with Mayookh Bhaumik, constitutes the heart of ‘Time Travil’ (no semantic confusion intended — just that they couldn’t register for a Web site using the correct spelling of “travel”).

Their music is high-voltage ‘tabla’ and drums, tempered with guitar and raag-based vocals. It is in your face and anachronistic almost in equal measure (it has been a while, hasn’t it, since the days of Shakti and Mahavishnu Orchestra, and their kind of music, which, Ryan and Mayookh acknowledge, has had an impact on them). In terms of appearance, they are neither ‘DJ Doll’ nor ‘Puff Daddy’. They are, in fact, remorselessly “unhip”.

No fancy hairdos, jewellery or tattoos for them. No pretentious quasi-ethnic kurtas or bandanas either.

‘Travil’ Through Time
Four years ago, having just emerged from a phase in which he tried to “expand the vocabulary” of the drum set, and having had some informal exposure to Indian classical music, Ryan found out about Mayookh, a classical ‘tabla’ player and a student of Sabir Khan, dividing his time between New York and Calcutta. Ryan invited him to South Carolina for a concert. Mayookh went and played, and the two became “instant friends”.

That summer, Ryan quit the band he was playing with in Columbia, and came to Calcutta with Mayookh to meet the Ustad. Before his return to the States later that year, they decided to form a band and call it ‘Time Travil’.

They hit it off, musically and otherwise. And despite dissimilar backgrounds, so did their three homebred band mates — Ambarish (vocal), Rishabh (electric guitar) and Mainak (bass guitar).

As a performer, Mayookh craved control, which his original genre did not permit. “In classical music, I hardly ever have any control,” he explains, “because the ‘tabla’ player is an accompanist.” Composing for ‘Time Travil’ and playing alongside his band mates granted him that command.

And So They Played...
“I liked their musical ideas,” says a reticent Ambarish, his soft speech belying the vocal prowess of an accomplished classical singer. “And I saw that I could easily contribute to their scheme of things without fundamentally changing what I knew.”

Fed on the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and scores of other ‘70s and ‘80s bands, Rishabh and Mainak were closer to their mates from North America in terms of musical exposure of a certain kind.

The goal is to reach a realm where “composition and performance can merge, and happen at the same time”. A mode of musical existence where mutual compatibility and understanding of one another’s sensibility would allow them to improvise on stage and create new sounds impromptu.

Admittedly, it will take them a longer time travel to get there. In the meantime, though, the applause of their audiences is set to get louder.

GOT COMMENTS OR QUESTIONS? E-MAIL US AT femina@timesgroup.com wITH ‘feature — just jamming’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE