Kendraka is ready for an Indo-Japanese collaboration

Kendraka is going global. The band is set for an Indo-Japanese collaboration for its forthcoming tour, which starts on November 8. Coming on board is famous new jazz flautist from Japan — Miya. What’s more, for the first time, a real time travelogue will be shot on the band’s tour.
Mainak ‘Bumpy’ Nag Chowdhury, Nishad Pandey and Gabu are excited about the tour, which they have designed differently.The first show will be in Kolkata. “It will cater to an urban audience and yes, Miya will be performing with us,” explains Bumpy. From there, the band will head to Guskara, where the musicians will collaborate with Kartik Das Baul at his akhra. “It will be more of an adda in presence of some of the famous bauls,” adds Bumpy. The next performance will be in Kuala Lumpur and from there, the band will leave for Tokyo and Yokohama in Japan.
Incidentally, the band did a tour of Kuala Lumpur midyear, and now, it will perform at the same club — No Black Tie. The only difference being that Kendraka is set to record a live album at the club on this tour. “The whole idea of collaborating with Miya came out of a conversation that I had with Benedict Taylor — a pianist from the UK. When I spoke to her, she willingly obliged. Our friend, Tamojyoti Mukherjee, has helped us out immensely” says Bumpy.
The musicians also found a lot of similarities in their approach. “There has been a socio-political shift in Bengal. But before that, for the last few years, we’ve been witness to social unrest. In Japan, there has also been disturbances because of the Tsunami. The fear factor has been killing. But despite all this, both our cultures remain unblemished,” adds the musician. Meanwhile, Bumpy has come up with an instrument, the Maitrayee bass, which he has named after his mother. “I have been attempting to incorporate the Indian classical idioms into my compositions for the past five years and a major hindrance has been the bass itself. These instruments are not designed to play Indian classical music as they don’t have sympathetic strings. My instrument is a double-neck seven-string fretless and sixstring fretted bass with 11 taraf and two chikari strings,” he says.
Gabu, on his part, adds, “Making a docu on live shows isn’t an oft-explored concept. The shows will be filmed by Debashis Sen Sharma. The docu will be in form a dialogue between artistes.” About the album, he adds, “No Black Tie has arrangements for live sound recording. We were kicked about this album from our last tour itself.”
The band has invited the CM for its first show. “We wanted the government know about this Indo-Japanese collaboration,” says Bumpy. The docu and the album are slated for release in January.