Piyush Mishra: Our music is like a theatre dialogue

Ballimaaraan sure is a rather curious name for a group of musicians. And this Indie band has an interesting reason for selecting it.Ballimaaraan is the name of a street in Delhi where Mirza Ghalib used to live and the lead member, who is a big fan of his works, chose this instead of their earlier option, Inquilab. The unusual, phonetically beautiful name, Ballimaaraan, stuck on and they preserved their love for Mirza Ghalib forever, with this nomenclature.The band, comprising Piyush Mishra (on harmonium and voice), Jayant Patnaik (percussionist), Lubhanu Priy (keyboard) and Nishant Agarwal (guitarist), believes that their music is like a theatre dialogue. “Lines are very important and it is an amalgamation of various emotions and genres of songs. Our tracks include socio-political and women-centric issues, and satirical songs with various emotions attached to them. Lyrics are important and thus the instrumentation is minimal so that there is an exchange of dialogues through our songs,” explains Piyush.The performance highlight for the four-member ensemble has been when a large audience sang along with them at one of the shows. Talking about it, Piyush shares, “We have thoroughly enjoyed all our performances but there was a memorable one where a huge crowd that had turned up gave us a standing ovation for all our songs along with the demand for an encore on pretty much every track.”They feel in a way, they are a part of the Bollywood industry as music connects everyone. He explains, “Our music is not mainstream, but still connects with millions who love listening to these stories in our songs. According to me, Bollywood music has given us some amazing stuff, but lately it has seen a low. It used to have a classical influence, but these days that’s rare. So much so that even Urdu lyrics have pretty much vanished. There are few lyricists today who would still use Urdu in their songs. I feel something better can be done.”The band is looking forward to performing at national and international gigs and are working on a music album and video.