New sound from T Nagar: Carnatic music with a twist

It's not quite a betrothal, but a `bride seeing' -a relic of another era for some, but, for many others, a living tradition. Bride-seeing is the all important first step in arranged marriages in which the bride, the groom and, more importantly, the parents meet, match the horoscopes and decide whether the marriage would work.
At this `bride seeing' more than a year ago in T Nagar, the groom's mother wanted to know if her son's BE was good enough for the bride who had done a BE and an MBA -routine question it certainly was.For Jayashree and her parents, however, the 'alliance' with Karthick was a leap of faith. Rooted in tradition, yet unorthodox enough, they made that leap.
Karthick Iyer was born and raised in T Nagar, studied in PSBB school, went to an engineering college, learned Carnatic violin at a young age -and makes a living as a crossover musician and a frontman for his band. The band's latest album, Indosoul is a delightful medley -too structured to be just an inspired jamming session between musicians of different genres and too cohesive to be called fusion.
Song-based Indosoul's sound seems more organically evolved to be called fusion ­ Karthick says the musicians have been meeting regularly , collaborating and playing for nearly three years now.
The band used to say they played contemporary Carnatic but that term soon sounded too generic for a group that had acquired depth in addition to the roots that were always there.
“Indosoul represents the whole culture in which classical music plays an important part but is open to other influences,“ says Karthick.
“Boundless“ is a bold opening number.Set in Shanmukhapriya, it quickly builds up to a crescendo. Clown junket is more a jolly romp but song-based and synched up ­ though it must be said that the album's songs don't follow the structure of Carnatic or even film music. One number stays close to the raga Saranga and the final song is faithful to the peppy Kathana kuthuhalam.
“I start with a feeling when composing a song, not a raga. There are no rules for me. I am willing to break and bend the rules,“ says Karthick.
Fusion with western music may be older than Karthick ­ L Shankar being a pioneer. But for Karthick, the base is Chennai and his fellow mu sicians are also rooted in Chennai -which means they are intuitively tuned to Carnatic music.
Karthick's target audience is the urban Indian between 18 and 45 years -people rooted in the tradition they inherit from their parents but have grown up on western culture. “During our recent band launch, however, we saw many older people. They were parents of our fans who were there to check us out,“ he says.
What's next for Karthick Iyer and his band?
“We plan to have an electronic component for the next album. It would be like having a DJ in addition to the five musicians,“ he says. That would round it off, it would seem -a Carnatic musicbased band with western musicians and a DJ thrown in.
“Indosoul is a first step. It needs to go forward.Between Carnatic music and western music there's a huge ocean that many musicians have tapped and which we also want to tap,“ says Karthick.