Anirudh Varma Collective Talk U.S. Tour, New Song ‘Dekho Sakhi’

New Delhi fusion group Anirudh Varma Collective recently got to perform alongside jazz great Herbie Hancock in the capital, on the back of releasing their new song “Dekho Sakhi” and a 15-date U.S. tour between September and October last year.

Looking back at the tour that spanned 40 days, Varma says it’s been a “dream come true” as well as a learning experience to travel the U.S. He adds, “Our performance at the Herb Alpert School of Music in LA and our performance in New Jersey were probably our favorites from the entire tour and I think that will stay with us for a long time.” Their U.S. sojourn was put together by the collective and their management Teamwork Arts. “It took more than six to seven months to put the entire tour together, and that in itself has been a lot of learning,” he says.

It all comes at a time when the collective – led by composer, pianist and producer Anirudh Varma – celebrates five years in action. Over 200 musicians have been brought in to collaborate and perform with the Anirudh Varma Collective, making them one of the strong fusion forces in India right now.

Their latest release “Dekho Sakhi” – featuring vocalist Prateek Narsimha and sarod artist Rohan Prasanna, among others – is based on raag tilak kamod and lives up to their stature. Nostalgic in tone and subject matter, the collective drew from how Narsimha learned the composition when he was eight or nine years old. “The idea of this composition was to bring out the simplicity and nostalgia with which it was originally learnt,” he says. It’s the first single from their upcoming third album, one that follows 2022’s Homecoming and the 2018 debut album Perspectives.

The new Anirudh Varma Collective album will complete recording in the first quarter of the year. “We would be playing a couple of concerts in Dubai in the month of March, so that would be our first international tour for the year,” Varma says.

Watch the video for “Dekho Sakhi” below.