Mumbai: In an exclusive conversation with international musician Anupam Shobhakar. From his musical inspirations to his thoughts on fusion music and AI-generated tunes, Shobhakar shares his unique perspective. He also addresses the recent controversy surrounding Udit Narayan. With his blend of traditional and modern styles, Shobhakar is pushing the boundaries of music.
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FunTranscript
00:00And I grew up in Juhu which is not too far from here and yeah I mean late 90s
00:12early 2000s kid grew up playing guitar and played with a lot of local bands and
00:18you know I come from a family of musicians my mom was a great singer my
00:21grandfather was a great sitar player my great-grandfather was a just a genius
00:26luminary who was a poet he was a sitar player he played V.S. Raj he was conferred
00:32even a title by the great Rabdhanath Tagore and who penned some words of
00:38poetry for him and he was he was also one of the teachers of the great
00:42Kumbhri artist Sathya Shree Devi of Banaras. So with that background I grew up you know
00:47playing guitar mainly Western music you know a lot of rock and a little bit of
00:51jazz a lot of metal and rock and then I started to get more deeply inspired by
00:56the classical music of India. I had the great opportunity when I was 16 years old
01:01to watch the great Ustad Ali Akbar Khan Sahib who later would I know I would
01:05become a part of that Nirvana you know his son was my main teacher Ustad Ashish Khan Sahib and I
01:09it changed my life to watch Khan Sahib play and I had to pursue this road so I
01:15put the guitar down I'm a person that can only play one instrument at one time
01:18I'm not a multi-instrumentalist. I'm a composer who expresses himself through one instrument. So I put the guitar down I went
01:25seriously into the sarod studying ragas and talas and you know riyaz and just 15
01:31hours of practicing and then when I moved to the US a lot of my collaborations
01:35were based on the sarod. I moved to the US because I love jazz and I love
01:39Western classical music and I've had the opportunity to study with masters and
01:44work with the great musicians and at some point in life the guitar made an
01:48re-entry into my life because when I was playing the sarod I was missing the
01:52guitar, when I was playing the guitar I was missing the sarod. So and as a composer it was
01:57important for me to amalgamate both these instruments into one and hence
02:02this instrument which I call Khaali Maa was born.
02:09Well like I was saying earlier I consciously believe that the word fusion
02:15is a little misunderstood. I do not think fusion is a style of music. I
02:19really think fusion is a concept. I think like I was saying we are all fusion.
02:24We're exactly halves of our mothers and our fathers. That makes us fusion. Our
02:30mothers come from a completely different family, our fathers come from a different
02:33family, from a part of the world or family and we fuse to become our
02:38identities. Our food is fusion. Tomatoes didn't belong to India. They came as a
02:43part of the Colombian exchange. We use tomatoes in our food. That's fusion.
02:47Similarly music if you look at the word sitar, the word sitar is a Persian word
02:52but we play classical Indian music on it. The word sarod, my previous instrument
02:56Sakharud in Persian means good sound but it is played in Indian music. This
03:02amalgamation of cultures has always existed in music. Film music is
03:07fusion music. You'll have a wonderful melody which is of an Indian ilk which
03:11you have this lovely orchestration which is western. Even if it is the
03:15deepest classical music there is some fusion in it. You cannot escape that
03:19because of humanity we are a fusion of chemicals. So I look at it even from a
03:25scientific point of view. I have a problem with the word purity. Every time
03:30I heard the word purity I start to get a little suspicious because it sort of
03:34reminds me of things like pure blood, pure race and pure people. So I don't
03:40subscribe to those ideas.
03:46It's very important to maintain your dignity, your civility, your artistic
03:52integrity at a concert because art is a gift of you know Saraswati Ma for us
03:58you know in India no matter what religion you are you know we are you
04:02know we are Saraswati bhakt first so it's a very pure thing. You know we go
04:05in only in India you'll see that we'll go and we'll you know we'll touch the
04:08stage and we'll take a pranam and we'll see we'll take our shoes off you know so
04:12it's such a beautiful thing. Look I don't know anything about such a
04:14controversy so I cannot comment on something I haven't seen. You're very
04:19welcome.
04:24Now that is an amazing question because at least in the West we talk about this
04:29a lot so I'm glad in India we're discussing this as well. Well yes see you
04:33have to take a look at the history. There was a time in the West where there the
04:36drummers you know like the great drummers and the bands and rock bands
04:39and this and that and then that was replaced by drum machines you know these
04:42keyboard synthesizers and the drummers lost their work you know. There was a
04:46time in the Indian film industry where you had amazing string players and
04:49orchestras and stuff but then keyboard sequencing started and those poor guys
04:53were driving rickshaws. So technology will come you cannot stop it you know
04:58that's that's just just like trying to stop a tide or a wave. There was a time
05:02you know when you had dial-up phones hello you know but now it's a mobile
05:06phone you know. So technology will come it's again how you use it. Technology is
05:10a double-edged sword you know it can destroy it can also create. So I feel
05:14like AI if we let AI replace the human element in art or society. See
05:22remember even pilots when they're flying a plane they rely on a lot of technology
05:26a lot of computer instrumentation but the final decision is always that
05:31human intuition. So that is what makes us you know artists, musicians, human
05:38beings that complex fusion of ideas is what makes us human beings. So if AI
05:43complete the algorithm totally gets rid of that human element then it's not the
05:49music I am personally interested in because for me music is a human
05:52interest thing you know.