The Unbearable Lightness of Being Shaa’ir + Func

Francis Mathew

Randolph Correia has a lot on his plate. It’s the night before the musician leaves for New York and he’s bustling around trying to get as many things done as possible. He’s just been to the studio to run a few things by his Pentagram bandmates who’re in the process of recording their new album. And then he’s headed to the United States for what he calls “a bit of a break and some music,” play one show at the iView Film Festival before he has to come back to the country and begin touring the country with Monica Dogra as Shaa’ir + Func in support of their third studio album, Mantis.

 Mantis was launched last month to much fanfare and revelry at the Blue Frog in Mumbai, at a mad gig that featured everyone from Pentagram’s Vishal Dadlani to Scribe vocalist Vishwesh Krishnamoorthy and attended by everyone who was anyone on the scene. It was, in a way a homecoming for the band, a sign of what they’d achieved over their few years on the scene, the friendships they forged, the fans they garnered and the identity they’d established. The album, likewise, is an extension of that same theme, a coming-of-age piece of work that draws influences from and pays tribute to everything that makes Shaa’ir + Func the unique entity they are on the Indian indie music circuit.

The duo picked the name Mantis after struggling with a few different ideas for a while. “A really close friend of mine, he designs or helps design our covers with us. We thought Monica and I were going to be on the album cover again but then we were looking at ornamental decorative samurai warriors and insects to give it a different feel,” says Correia. While looking at reference images, they came across one of a praying mantis that immediately caught their eye. “It was wicked and abstract and then we looked it up and saw that “mantis” also meant prophet or seer and it goes with our philosophy, our idea of who we are as Shaa’ir + Func and we fell in love with it,” he says.

Mantis is a dense mash-up of genres, sounds, tempos, cultures and personalities amalgamated into an album that’s not easy listening by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a far cry from their earlier albums, the pop-oriented New Day: The Love Album (2007) and the dance-heavy Light Tribe (2008) and Correia is the first to admit that Mantis is not their most accessible work. “We thought a little bit ballsier, if I may say so, because that’s really what fans loved us for, for doing the unexpected or taking things to the next level. This album has a lot of layers which our previous albums haven’t had,” he says, “and at first listen, people are going to go, ”˜Oh, okay, wow, where do I connect with this?’ But with every listen they’ll discover something new, do deeper into those layers and eventually, I think, they’ll start seeing it the way we do.”

And the way Shaa’ir + Func see it, is as a celebration of all the music that they love and listen to, without the need to pigeonhole it into any one genre. If there’s everything from drum and bass/dubstep to jazz to reggae and funk on the album, it’s all there for a reason. “We keep telling people that we’re not electronica, that the Midival Pundits and Jalebee Cartel, that’s electronic music. We’re not a soul band because we don’t make Seventies style Motown and funk music. We’re not a reggae band although we love reggae. We aren’t any of these things. We’re just influenced by all these things and we’re just taking all of it in and blending it into a style of our own,” Correia asserts.

What Mantis undeniably is, though, is the sound of a modern India. Sprinkled all across the album are Indian elements that are not the clichéd sitar and meandering ragas, what Correia calls “the clichéd Indian, the tourist India for the white person.” Instead you’ll find earthy everyday rhythms like the dhol-phrasings of a Ganesh Chaturti procession (”˜My Roots’) or just the faintest lilt in Dogra’s voice (”˜Take it Personally’). “It’s about where I was coming from, growing up in Maharashtra; it’s our reflection of Bombay,” says Correia of ”˜My Roots.’ “About two years ago, we were travelling in a rickshaw through a procession. We thought ”˜Let’s use this, let’s make a bank of Indian rhythms but replace the drum sounds with modern beats and see how it goes.’ Because it’s the same thing, it’s all about tempo and it’s not difficult to write to them so why not try it and see how it works without being contrived or forced.”

The album also works a curious dichotomy of introspection and self-assurance that Correia attributes to growing as artists and people in the course of their travel. “We’re always listening, we’re always taking in humbly when we travel and we’ve bettered so much with our sound as producers and as songwriters just by being comfortable with being ourselves. But there’re some very human, personal things on this album, a lot of letting go. It’s sort of like a bungee jump, you’re not afraid to take that plunge and see new things about yourself, your people and your view of music and much of that’s found its way into the album.” But on the whole, says Correia, the themes they’ve explored on the album are “pretty basic,” exploring love, loneliness, personal struggles and one song about the 26/11 incident. “”˜Love Love Love’ actually came from the Oberoi, VT incident, the killings and all of that. That’s when I sat down one day and wrote that song and it’s very simple. You know who your enemy is but you still give him love, that was the premise of it. The idea of embracing your enemy is more powerful than an eye for an eye and as a musician I can explore this further than say, if I were a policeman.”

In the two-year-long journey of making the album, Dogra and Correia decided to share the process with fans so they could see how the music changed and evolved into their final counterparts on the CD. The duo would put up rough drafts of their songs as and when they were done, giving the process an interactive feel while keeping fans clued-in on what to expect. “We first started was putting on MySpace the first versions that we had, so people could get a feel of the workings and the process. So there are a lot of versions that only the fans have heard and they’re not around any more. But what we got out of that was that we now had different versions that we could play live, so the sets need never be predictable,” says Correia. The duo will begin their India tour this month, hitting all the Hard Rock Cafés across the country and “all apna favourite cool underground venues like Zenzi Mills, Cafe Morrison, Someplace Else, Bangalore Opus,” grins Correia.

But there’ve also been changes within the Shaa’ir + Func camp that had the fans talking. During the recording with the album, while Correia also worked on the Pentagram album that’s to be released this year, Dogra was offered a role in the Aamir Khan-produced, Kiran Rao-directed Dhobi Ghat to act alongside Aamir Khan and Prateik Babbar which she accepted. Did the fact that she was shooting while writing for the album have any influence on her? “I’m sure it must’ve influenced her writing on the album because it was an experience for her. Somehow all those experiences find a way to seep into the music. It wasn’t a negative, it didn’t take away anything from the album. It only added a lot,” says Correia.

Dogra was away in Toronto at the time of the interview, where the movie premiered to rave reviews from the international press, leading fans to speculate about the future of Shaa’ir + Func if Dogra decided on a career in the movies. Are they worried fans will see it as a Bollywood sell-out? Correia is quick on the defensive. “People are sensible. This is an indie movie. Aamir Khan is a Bollywood star [but] that doesn’t mean the film is a Bollywood film; it’s indie. And in fact, Monica’s playing an Indian-American who speaks broken Hindi”¦ and she’s pretty much playing herself in the movie, you know. She’s actually worried that it might get slagged by the press here because it’s not a Bollywood-kinda movie.” But he points out that if she makes it big after the film, it would only help to make Shaa’ir + Func bigger, like Vishal Dadlani being in Bollywood made Pentagram bigger. He also doesn’t think that her career in the movies will affect Shaa’ir + Func much. “We’re in a great space right now. We’re not global superstars but we’re touring all over the world. The only time I see the schedules coming in the way is when we’re touring and that too if she’s shooting a movie around [for] two months. Making music is not an issue at all; we could even do it on the phone.” He concludes on an optimistic note: “I think we’re part of a scene that’s really really going to change the country and I’m not being very modest about it but I really believe this.”