A conversation with The Yellow Diary and Mumbai Fuzikk, two distinctive ensembles performing at the upcoming edition of One World Many Musics: Celebrating Artistic Plurality, the NCPA’s festival of assorted musical forms.

By Aishwarya Bodke 

In its 13th edition now, One World Many Musics has invited some of the finest musicians in the country to the NCPA since 2009, interrupted only by the pandemic. A two-day celebration, it explores the vast possibilities of Indian music, where a contemporary rock band may headline the festival alongside notable classical musicians. Ghazals and poetry may find their way to folk-fusion music, while an African percussion instrument may be used to interpret the tabla repertoire. It is in these exchanges that the festival finds its raison d’être.

OWMM upholds the dynamic nature of music in the subcontinent, where creative artistes have always pushed the envelope of traditional music-making. This year’s line-up, too, encapsulates the very spirit of the festival. We spoke to the much-loved band The Yellow Diary, and Mumbai Fuzikk’s Aditya Kalyanpur ahead of their performances.

Dear diary

Often described as poetry infused with rock, The Yellow Diary’s (TYD) music can be a heady encounter with India’s alternative music landscape. With vocalist and lyricist Rajan Batra, Himonshu Parikh on the keys and backing vocals, Stuart DaCosta on the bass, Sahil Shah on the drums and Harshvardhan Gadhvi on the guitar, TYD has become one of the most sought-after Indian bands in the last six years.

With their breakout debut single ‘Marz’, The Yellow Diary commanded notice, and a keen listenership swiftly followed. The subsequent EP with two additional songs, ‘Kashmir’ and ‘Afzai’, heralded the band’s arrival on the independent music scene of the country with its fresh sound, coupled with lyrics that are often philosophical, sometimes political and always perceptive. In the compositions of TYD, folk music flirts with the sensibilities of rock and the words in Punjabi and Hindi converse with their intriguing Urdu titles. A sincere longing in Batra’s voice lingers as a postscript.

“If one had to go by the colour of the diary that Rajan carries around, we would be The Blue Diary,” the band members joke. The name reflects the perspective from which their music is written—personal and intimate; rooted in experiences that often find solace in a journal. Yellow is a metaphor for the expanse of emotions the colour can embody. “It has now also become a journal of our musical timeline. Every song is turning into a snapshot of who we are and what we believe in, at a particular moment in time,” Parikh tells us.

Despite the shift towards individualistic voices in the independent music industry, TYD believes in the incredible potential of a collective. “Over the years, we have created music as a band and as solo musicians. It is only when we come together in a room that it sounds like The Yellow Diary,” says Batra. “Making music is a lot more fun when a group of people who have grown together unite to build something. And for that reason, bands will always be timeless,” Shah elaborates.

Batra explains that songwriting, too, is a collaborative exercise for the ensemble. “We are all writing in our own languages. Mine happens to be words. The song can start from a riff that Himonshu plays on his piano or a drum pattern that Sahil is working with,” he notes.

The beating heart of TYD is the kinship between the members that is palpable, whether onstage or through a screen. It sneaks into their words for each other and in their silences. Batra reiterates, “It is not that complicated. We are best friends. We do not meet to write; we meet to hang out and music becomes our way of revealing to the world a moment in time.”

It is perhaps this solid foundation that lends the band its unmistakable sound and identity. TYD’s oeuvre features music that traverses through different genres and collaborations with artistes that are just as diverse. While their rendition of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s ballad in ‘Tere Jeya Hor Disda’ is an instant classic, the ensemble has teamed up with singers including Shilpa Rao, Akasa Singh and rapper Slow Cheetah for their original compositions.

TYD performs extensively across the country to packed halls, stadiums and cafés. The most recent tour for their new release ‘Kahe Kahe’ was met with tremendous enthusiasm. For them, passionate audiences are the ones that create alchemy while they take the stage. “It is always overwhelming to have the crowd sing back to you for the whole set. We never take that for granted,” DaCosta tells us.

Close on the heels of a successful tour, the band shares that their performance at the NCPA will be unlike any other TYD show. It is perhaps why they choose to call it The Yellow Diary Experience. DaCosta elaborates, “You can expect completely different arrangements for some of the songs, with a string quartet and backing vocalists. We wanted to bring depth and a cinematic edge to the experience. We are trying to pull out all the stops. It has been in the works for a while now and we are excited that it will first be seen at the NCPA.”

To Mumbai, with love

Led by Aditya Kalyanpur, an accomplished tabla exponent, Mumbai Fuzikk will bring together Chandana Bala, a vocalist trained in Carnatic music and noted instrumentalists Hrishikesh Majumdar on the flute, Shikhar Naad Qureshi on percussion, Ninad Daithankar (a past winner of the Citi-NCPA scholarship for young musicians, whom audiences may recognise from his performance during the allied Promising Artistes Series in 2021) on the santoor and Prashant Ohol on the keyboard.

Designed to be an immersive experience, the performance will combine Indian classical and fusion music against the backdrop of enthralling visuals. Mumbai’s iconic landmarks—the imposing façade of the Gateway of India, the Bandra-Worli Sea Link that glues the suburbs to ‘town’ and the spirit of Haji Ali, Mount Mary’s Basilica and Siddhivinayak Temple—are the muse.

Born and brought up in Mumbai, for Kalyanpur, the performance is an ode to the souvenirs of childhood and years spent learning music. “It is a heartfelt way to honour the city which has given me everything,” he says.

Mumbai is a microcosm of India’s heterogeneous social fabric. Kalyanpur’s vision seeks to celebrate the city’s cosmopolitan pulse and uphold it as a space capable of tolerance where many faiths intermingle. Bala’s Carnatic vocals and Kalyanpur’s training in the Punjab gharana offer a seamless blend of the South and North Indian schools of music; a characteristic that runs through the ensemble at large. At the same time, global artistic influences peer through in its music to paint a unique soundscape of the city. The part exploring Haji Ali will integrate Arabic influences, the sound of ‘Ganesh Vandana’ will herald an important part and jazz will make its way during another.

Adapting percussion to different styles and musical contexts is something with which Kalyanpur constantly experiments. In a composition, his tabla will emulate the sound of a local train, the city’s bolting lifeline. In addition, Shikhar Naad Qureshi will bring in many different facets of percussion through the drums, the darbuka and the interpretation of tabla on the djembe, of which his father Taufiq Qureshi has been a pioneer.

Kalyanpur gets nostalgic when he speaks of Dadar’s Shivaji Park, an integral part of one of the compositions. It is where he grew up and learned from the great masters of the tabla, Allarakha and Zakir Hussain. That Qureshi, the youngest scion of his guru’s lineage, is a part of the ensemble has paved the way for a special component of the show. “Shikhar and I dedicate a segment to our guru, Allarakha, who spent most of his years in Mumbai. The composition takes his name—‘Abbaji’, as we called him. My taleem of nearly 35 years converges with Shikhar’s multifarious musical instincts. It is heartwarming to see so much of Abbaji in Shikhar’s music,” Kalyanpur tells us.

Kalyanpur also invokes Ravi Shankar and Zakir Hussain’s vision of encouraging innovation in Indian classical music all those years ago. He avers, “They opened the doors for us, and we must strive for experimentation. I look forward to performing at the NCPA because it has one of the best audiences in the world—cultivated over several decades— who understand and appreciate the many forms music takes.”

This article was originally published in the October 2024 issue of ON Stage.