Magic of Indian Ocean Band

In the month of March this year, British council division of New Delhi arranged an alluring musical evening with Indian Ocean Band that fetched lot of delights for music enthusiasts especially for them who have meaningful leaning towards their roots. Fortunately I had an invitation for this evening which was a precious gift for me since it granted me a chance to feel the unusual charms of this one and half decade year old innovative band through live presentation in India’s most prolific central business district area (Cannought Place) .
Persons of all the age and reputation besides nearby standing giant concrete structures, all could sensed and thrilled with the meticulously woven expositions of musical numbers that all prepared through long extensive research and innovations by its team across the world and beyond lingual fortifications.
Asheem Chakravarty, percussionist and vocalist of Indian Ocean said “A lot of people think that we are an issue based band, it’s wrong, we just sing with motives to change the peoples, no body has even been able to change the world”. Indian Ocean band stands with such pious motives and spiritually striving to connect peoples especially Indian to their roots with eternal soundness of proposition.
Band has a lot of spiritual elements, people like this because it’s spiritual appeal that is markedly distinct from any particular religious fervor. Indian Ocean acknowledge the characteristics of mood, so it posses lot of diversity from special Bhojpuri number (Hille le Jhakjor Dunia) composed by Gorakh Pandey to soothing prayer in Aramaic language “Kandisa”.

Songs like “Maa Rewa” influenced by the folklore of central India which was composed for the cause of Narmada River. There’s most popular and soulful number “Bandey” stuffed with the intricacies of intelligent lyrics, entrancing guitar and percussion; “Jhini” carries Sufi elements in its infectious composition, on the other hand number like “Tum abhi se dare ho” (Composed by Pakistani poet M.M. Rashid) unleash their humane concern and worries towards insensitive political practices.
In the end of programme Rahul Ram, bassist and lead vocalist went into an enjoyable “Jugalbandi” with Amit Kilam, the drummer. Ram played the bass guitar while Amit matched him with his gub gubi; Sushmit remained superbly consistent on guitar throughout the show. Indeed listening Indian Ocean leads music passionate to the voyage of supreme spiritual destination that seems both satisfying and adorable.

Concepts on which Indian Ocean are active is an outcome of its team members integrity with the causes and standpoint they stand for; they have vision for unified social order with close proximity to their cultural backgrounds. Very few people may have awareness about the academic backgrounds of these four persons; Rahul Ram the lead vocalist and bassist had done his doctorate in Toxicology from California University, so is the case with remaining team members, they all are educationally proficient and knows its application very well to harness theirs cosmic vision.
Emergence of Indian Ocean band has revitalizes the practices of meaningful themes in musical arena and caused for supreme transcendence's of enthusiasts. Although magic of this musical group has emerged from Bengal albeit whole cosmos is its ambiance.

Atul Kumar Thakur
September17th 2009, New Delhi
atul_mdb@rediffmail.com