Soulmate: Green Hill Blues

What are your musical influences?

Wallang: As primarily a guitar player, I like Albert King, Albert Collins, Muddy Waters, Jimi Hendrix, so many other greats. Most of these guys come from the Texas-style of playing: strong, punchy, a hard-driving style, with shuffles and everything. As a songwriter, while I like these guys, I also like Willie Dixon.His lyrics are inspired ”“ very strong but very subtle. I find that writing blues lyrics comes quite naturally to me.

Tips: As for me, I really like Aretha, Coco Taylor, Janis.

You really seem to go for Janis, do Janis covers”¦

Tips: Coco Taylor also. But we don’t do manycovers, only songs that really move us, move me.

Wallang: As a female blues singer you can’t but help be moved by Janis. And there aren’t too many black female blues singers these days that come to mind. Janis did what she did. She got a lot of white people into the blues.

You guys are a hardcore band, but for the blues scene to grow here, more bands need to do what you’re doing. Are there any who you think make the grade, or will soon make an impact?

Wallang: Take what happens at Haze, where we play a lot. There’s now another band, called Beat Root Blues Band, from Mumbai. They do harmonica-based blues, a Mississippi Blues, a different style from ours. I’m not sure how much they are writing, but they have a very good harp player ”“ harmonica player. They’re good. Then there’s a band from Kolkata, The Saturday Night Blues Band. They mostly play at Someplace Else in Kolkata; they sometimes play at Haze, too. So at Haze, at one time there was just us, now three blues bands play.Our aim is not to be the only blues band or the number one blues band.

Our aim as a band is to play the blues to as many people as we can. It’s what we do. Our aim is to spread the blues. We are ending up inspiring a whole lot of youngsters who haven’t even heard the blues, the guys in skulls-and-crossbones T-shirts who come to our gigs, the metal heads.

Right now, Delhi is the place. Man, the amount of gigs that have been happening these last two years or so is no joke. And I am also really happy that crowds in India are finally beginning to accept original music by Indian bands.

That’s also because there’s more quality music.

Wallang: And it’s not only about blues but also rock.

How much has the environment affected your music? Do you see Meghalaya as a zone of calm or do you sense undercurrents?

Wallang: Compared to most of the Northeast, Meghalaya is relatively calm.Compared to Nagaland, Manipur and Assam, Meghalaya is calmer.And so is Mizoram.

So there is less of that situational angst, right?

Wallang: Not really. There are bands that perform in the local lingo.

And as Soulmate, you’re not particularly driven by that?

Wallang: See, what’s the blues all about? It’s all about life and each of us has our own experiences in life. We come from Shillong, Meghalaya. If I were from Nagaland, it may not have been the blues; it may have been heavy metal. But right now, we’re where we are. We write our own stories. If something affects us in life we write about it. If something affects us in relationships, we write about it.

Tips: Not just political; it can be about anything. We just wrote a song called ”˜Crab Man’.

What’s it about?

Wallang: In Shillong, there’s generally a mentality where, among the Khasis, the majority don’t like people going up. They like to bring him down. The crab effect: one crab is trying to get out and others are pulling this guy back.

Tips: It’s one of the reasons why we don’t play in Shillong as much as we do in Delhi. There are not that many people who appreciate”¦

Wallang: What we do.

What’s your song “Shillong” about? To me, it sounds anthemic.

Wallang: It comes from a poem, ”˜Sier Lapalang’ [The deer from Lapalang] written by a well-known poet in Meghalaya, Bah Dewi Sing Khongdup. Ferdy and I ”“ we were in Mojo then  ”“ went to meet him to ask his permission to do a song with it. The tune is an old folk tune, a beautiful tune. But we couldn’t do it with Mojo. This time around, I had written a song called “Shillong” and it kind-of gelled together. he beginning is the blues and the folk tune is at the end. The main tune is about Shillong”“ what it is and what it should be like.

What’s the story?

Wallang: For me it was always about a mysterious place. ”˜Sier Lapalang’ is a 38-verse song about a deer from the plains and his mother. The mother and her son. She asks him not to wander far but the young deer is disobedient. He goes to the hills, where there is more green. He wants to explore; he comes upto the hills in spite of his mother’s warning. And he is very arrogant: I’ll do what I want, nobody can stop me. He is eating up all the stuff. A grove of bamboo tells him to stop, respect other people’s places. Then a hunter sees him, makes an arrow from the same bamboo and kills him. The mother deer sees that and she sings the song. It’s a mother’s lament. We took one verse.

What does the song do for you?

Tips: So much blues in the mother, man. The original meaning is that, the deer wasn’t sticking to his border. He came to this land ”“ the hunter’s land ”“ and got killed.

Wallang: Which is what we didn’t want, the negative message in the story.It’s a parochial message. Us and them, hills and plains.

Tips: Yeah.

Wallang: [For us] it’s more like advice to youngsters: respect your environment, respect other people. Respect where you come from and respect wherever you’re going. But no borders, never any borders.

Tips: When you sing it you have to put yourself in the mother’s place. This song has a lot ofblues in it.

Wallang: At gigs, sometimes people shout it out, ”˜”˜Shillong’!’

Beats shouting, ”˜”˜Cocaine’!’ I’ve heard that even at jazz concerts ”“ enough!

Wallang: Many people know about blues as just being “Roadhouse Blues” [by The Doors].

Tips: This one guy came up to me in Hyderabad. I felt that this guy was coming up to say, like, he knows the blues. And then he says, ”˜”˜Roadhouse Blues’’. And I said, “We don’t do that.”

Think it’s time India had a blues festival?

Wallang: It’s high time. To get the blues to masses, we must have a blues festival.

You guys making much money from your music besides your gigs?

Wallang: When we started the band we had no idea where we were going to be. Where we are is because of our hard work and determination. Even now we don’t know what’s going to happen.We’re just going with the flow.We’re doing things on our own terms, withour own music.

Tips: And this is in India, man. There is more respect for what we do. Imagine being in Pragati Maidan [Delhi] with a wild bunch of metal bands and still being accepted by head bangers.

Wallang: Guys were wearing metal Tees and other wild stuff. Hardcore, young guys. I was quite wary.

Have you tapped bigger labels after OML? Any beeps from any of the bigger labels?

Wallang: Bigger labels would be concerned about the commercial viability of our music. We have Achille of Silk Road Music. But we’re playing the blues and I think I know what’s happening. We’re getting closer to the reason. The picture is getting bigger and we’re part of the picture. We don’t do the blues just for ourselves and the blues are taking us somewhere. 
 

The piece originally appeared in the launch issue of ROLLING STONE India in March 2008.