OTHERLANDS COLLABORATION #14

Date: Jan. 14, 2020 • Location: Kolkata, India

I love tracing how I come to know people and be in different situations, so here goes. Arko and I were introduced by guitarist Koustav Dey, who plays with Arko. I was introduced to Koustav by Billy Cardine, a bluegrass dobro player who has been traveling to India for many years, studying the Indian slide guitar (they met at a music camp in India). Billy and I both live in Asheville, NC (well, before we moved to Spain) and became close family friends. I'm not exactly sure when Billy and I met, but my earliest memories of him are backstage at the Freight & Salvage in Oakland, CA, sharing an evening with his band the Biscuit Burners while I played with Tim O'Brien.

**To learn more about Arko's music and projects, please visit the link(s) of your choice:

Arko and I first met over tea at cafe in Kolkata. This was early on in my arrival to India, and I shared some of the musical activities that Banglanatak dot com had suggested for me (See one of those collaborations here). There was a Baul music festival that I was going to attend in the evening, and Arko gave me an insider tip — the concerts are great, but if I wanted to see a more acoustic and intimate version, I should visit during the morning when all the Baul musicians sit around jam together. I took his advice and it was amazing. I even got to play a bit with one of the musicians. Thanks, Arko!

A few days later, he invited me to join his band, the Arko Mukhaerjee Collective, for a concert at a local university. He is a trained Hindustani (North Indian Classical) singer who also led a bluegrass band for ten years and loves to sing Irish ballads. His music is rooted in folk music from West Bengal and includes both originals and traditional numbers. I took him up on the gig, got in some good greenroom jamming, and ended up playing on stage for the whole evening—holding on for dear life as I didn't know any of the material. But, we had enough common ground to get some good synergies going. A couple days after the concert, we planned to meet at a friend's recording space, Blue Monk Studio, to record a song for my project.

On the day of the recording, I head over to meet Arko and Koustav at the Lighthouse Cafe. Over coffee in the courtyard, Arko gets out his balalaika and shows me the tune he wants to record. It's an original that, if I understand correctly, is about living a good life and respecting life—and this is an equally acceptable way to reach the next stage in life, in addition to the path of progress achieved by religious means.

This will be the first time he's planning to record playing balalaika, and I'm happy he's deciding to take a chance on the collaboration. The song has a softer quality about it, and it gives me the idea to play with a wooden mute on the bridge. The tone is just right. We play the song the first time, and there's a magical quality to it. Excited, we head over to the studio.

Blue Monk is a rooftop studio in south Kolkata. There is a control room and a live room that would fit drums. I consider setting up outside on the terrace for the city backdrop, but the light would be challenging for video as it goes down. Upon beginning to set up in the live room, we discover that the lights are not working. It turns out that the power has been cut in a way that only affects the live room. Electricity is being worked on in the neighborhood. The control room appears safe, so we move in there...crossing our fingers for continued power.

We do 2-3 takes and all are quite long, with morphing vibes, arrangements, and improvisation. It's challenging to get back to that first feeling at the cafe, and I'm doing a lot of searching/improv on my part. Some real great moments happen, but there's not a winner take yet. We talk about how you can get stuck in your head, overthinking, in the studio, with cameras watching. We take a break. Koustav suggests making a shorter take. So, we come back, agree to try different things and just let go. The take is much more locked in throughout, more energy, more dynamic. I try to catch harmonies with his vocal melody, try to answer, sometimes trying Indian "inflection" inspired by the gamakas (ornamentation) I've been hearing, and trying not to get in the way of his lyric. It's hard to hear his fingerpicking rhythm because his voice is so strong, but the last take does feel like a great conversation. This take is the one.

As we pack up, Arko hatches a plan to record another tune in a few days, this time one for him. He has a series of videos he does from his rooftop during the sunrise hours. For this, we planned to join two songs: "Little Girl of Mine in Tennessee" (a bluegrass piece) and a "Rangila Rangila Rangila Rey" (an eastern Bengali tune). Both are essentialy about the same love longing, one from the male perspective and one from the female.

Meanwhile, as soon as we finish recording, power is cut multiple times in the neighborhood as I was trying make a backup of the files. Thankfully nothing was lost. And, at least the power didn't disappear while recording.

That night, I was in bed early-ish, by around midnight, to rest up for an early TV morning show that would be the catalyst for my upcoming collaboration with Dipannita Acharya and be a bit of a "sign" for my collaboration with Rina Das Baul. Stay tuned for both!

CREDITS

Song: Manyota dao Jibonke (Arko Mukhaerjee)

Recorded at: Blue Monk Studio, Kolkata, West Bengal, India

Recorded by: Tirthankar Ray

Music Arranged by : Casey Driessen & Arko Mukhaerjee

Voice & Balalaika: Arko Mukhaerjee

Fiddle, Video & Audio Mixing: Casey Driessen

Calligraphy: Subrata Ghosh

SPECIAL THANKS:

Koustav Dey & Billy Cardine