00:00And I grew up in Juhu which is not too far from here and yeah I mean late 90s
00:12early 2000s kid grew up playing guitar and played with a lot of local bands and
00:18you know I come from a family of musicians my mom was a great singer my
00:21grandfather was a great sitar player my great-grandfather was a just a genius
00:26luminary who was a poet he was a sitar player he played V.S. Raj he was conferred
00:32even a title by the great Rabdhanath Tagore and who penned some words of
00:38poetry for him and he was he was also one of the teachers of the great
00:42Kumbhri artist Sathya Shree Devi of Banaras. So with that background I grew up you know
00:47playing guitar mainly Western music you know a lot of rock and a little bit of
00:51jazz a lot of metal and rock and then I started to get more deeply inspired by
00:56the classical music of India. I had the great opportunity when I was 16 years old
01:01to watch the great Ustad Ali Akbar Khan Sahib who later would I know I would
01:05become a part of that Nirvana you know his son was my main teacher Ustad Ashish Khan Sahib and I
01:09it changed my life to watch Khan Sahib play and I had to pursue this road so I
01:15put the guitar down I'm a person that can only play one instrument at one time
01:18I'm not a multi-instrumentalist. I'm a composer who expresses himself through one instrument. So I put the guitar down I went
01:25seriously into the sarod studying ragas and talas and you know riyaz and just 15
01:31hours of practicing and then when I moved to the US a lot of my collaborations
01:35were based on the sarod. I moved to the US because I love jazz and I love
01:39Western classical music and I've had the opportunity to study with masters and
01:44work with the great musicians and at some point in life the guitar made an
01:48re-entry into my life because when I was playing the sarod I was missing the
01:52guitar, when I was playing the guitar I was missing the sarod. So and as a composer it was
01:57important for me to amalgamate both these instruments into one and hence
02:02this instrument which I call Khaali Maa was born.
02:09Well like I was saying earlier I consciously believe that the word fusion
02:15is a little misunderstood. I do not think fusion is a style of music. I
02:19really think fusion is a concept. I think like I was saying we are all fusion.
02:24We're exactly halves of our mothers and our fathers. That makes us fusion. Our
02:30mothers come from a completely different family, our fathers come from a different
02:33family, from a part of the world or family and we fuse to become our
02:38identities. Our food is fusion. Tomatoes didn't belong to India. They came as a
02:43part of the Colombian exchange. We use tomatoes in our food. That's fusion.
02:47Similarly music if you look at the word sitar, the word sitar is a Persian word
02:52but we play classical Indian music on it. The word sarod, my previous instrument
02:56Sakharud in Persian means good sound but it is played in Indian music. This
03:02amalgamation of cultures has always existed in music. Film music is
03:07fusion music. You'll have a wonderful melody which is of an Indian ilk which
03:11you have this lovely orchestration which is western. Even if it is the
03:15deepest classical music there is some fusion in it. You cannot escape that
03:19because of humanity we are a fusion of chemicals. So I look at it even from a
03:25scientific point of view. I have a problem with the word purity. Every time
03:30I heard the word purity I start to get a little suspicious because it sort of
03:34reminds me of things like pure blood, pure race and pure people. So I don't
03:40subscribe to those ideas.
03:46It's very important to maintain your dignity, your civility, your artistic
03:52integrity at a concert because art is a gift of you know Saraswati Ma for us
03:58you know in India no matter what religion you are you know we are you
04:02know we are Saraswati bhakt first so it's a very pure thing. You know we go
04:05in only in India you'll see that we'll go and we'll you know we'll touch the
04:08stage and we'll take a pranam and we'll see we'll take our shoes off you know so
04:12it's such a beautiful thing. Look I don't know anything about such a
04:14controversy so I cannot comment on something I haven't seen. You're very
04:19welcome.
04:24Now that is an amazing question because at least in the West we talk about this
04:29a lot so I'm glad in India we're discussing this as well. Well yes see you
04:33have to take a look at the history. There was a time in the West where there the
04:36drummers you know like the great drummers and the bands and rock bands
04:39and this and that and then that was replaced by drum machines you know these
04:42keyboard synthesizers and the drummers lost their work you know. There was a
04:46time in the Indian film industry where you had amazing string players and
04:49orchestras and stuff but then keyboard sequencing started and those poor guys
04:53were driving rickshaws. So technology will come you cannot stop it you know
04:58that's that's just just like trying to stop a tide or a wave. There was a time
05:02you know when you had dial-up phones hello you know but now it's a mobile
05:06phone you know. So technology will come it's again how you use it. Technology is
05:10a double-edged sword you know it can destroy it can also create. So I feel
05:14like AI if we let AI replace the human element in art or society. See
05:22remember even pilots when they're flying a plane they rely on a lot of technology
05:26a lot of computer instrumentation but the final decision is always that
05:31human intuition. So that is what makes us you know artists, musicians, human
05:38beings that complex fusion of ideas is what makes us human beings. So if AI
05:43complete the algorithm totally gets rid of that human element then it's not the
05:49music I am personally interested in because for me music is a human
05:52interest thing you know.
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