Siren Songs and Sopranos

What happens when music and performing art meet whimsy? Jazz-textured melodies wrestle with Indian classical sensibilities, words run into each other, sometimes colliding, sometimes juxtaposing the absurd with the profound; Virginia Woolf meets Bjork against a chaotic soundscape before dissolving in the silver sunshine of a winter morning”¦ and you’re still left searching for a mould to fit the sound of Sridhar/Thayil in. A two-piece band, not counting the laptop that may as well be their third member, S/T mixes an exotic cocktail for their sound ”“ equal parts jazz, Indian classical, dancehall, reggae, Kraftwerk-style MIDI boops and not a little madness. It’s a mash of various art-forms ”“ poetry, music, theatre, storytelling ”“ but given the artists’ profiles, it’s the least you can expect. Jeet Thayil, already a well-established figure on the literary scene, is a poet, performer, author, songwriter and musician among other things. Suman Sridhar is a singer, songwriter and actor ”“ she trained in Indian classical music in her childhood, majored in Western classical music, directed and acted in several plays and sung with jazz bands in the US. Little surprise then that their synergy produces a form of music that’s unique.

Born out of a chance encounter in 2007, Sridhar and Thayil started writing their music almost as soon as they’d met. “Before we even decided we would be a band, we were writing songs together. And the songs were so good we just had to make it a band,” says Sridhar. “The first songs we wrote, ”˜City Of Sisters’ and ”˜This Be The Beat’, within the first week of meeting ”“ we’d written pretty much the skeleton of both those songs. Then we started to record the chords to them and before we knew it we were gigging in Sri Lanka.” Starting with a half-hour set, they kept expanding their repertoire, writing and playing longer sets until finally they had enough material for over two albums. Their songwriting process, too, seems to have ranged from the harum-scarum to the ponderous. “A lot of songs just hit you when you’re travelling and you have to quickly record them or write them down. Some of the songs we’ve actually sat down and written together. Some songs have happened to me, some to him and we just put it together when we meet,” says Sridhar. “When I write a song I write it for her voice. Often it’s just one line, a sweet melody that grows and takes on a life of its own. Melodies happen all the time, when you’re fooling around on the guitar or the keyboard”¦ The important part is to know and understand a good melody, then all you have to do is follow it home,” adds Thayil.

At the Kala Ghoda festival in Mumbai in January, Suman’s clear, almost child-like soprano rang out like a clarion, cutting through the clutter of a hundred conversations ”“ a siren in a sea of people even as Jeet wove wicked blues licks on his guitar, emphasising a punch line, riding a tricky vocal passage, dropping some gravelly witticisms in a forest of midis and occasionally switching to play a rather grating keyboard. “We’re not heavy metal, we’re not indipop, we’re not electronica either so there’s no precedent. It’s like we pick up the listener and drop her into the deep end, to sink or swim. The thing is, when we’ve done it so far in an intimate space, it’s been incredible, especially in Mumbai, how people get it. They get the whimsy of it. They understand that while it’s fairly light and not so serious, there’s depth as well.”

The band aside, the duo is also foraying into opera with their first production being “a conversation,” Thayil explains elliptically, “between a soprano and a ghost,” which they’re trying out at Prithvi theatre in Mumbai. They’re also looking for live musicians, especially a bassist (“I’d have two if possible,” says Thayil) to change the dynamics of their sound. There’s no doubt that their sound is still evolving but given their combined eclecticism, Sridhar/Thayil are definitely one of the more intriguing acts to watch out for in the indie space.