Epic rewind: Music memories from Indus Creed, Parikrama, Advaita & Parvaaz

They’d change their line-up in the years to come. Their name too. Rock Machine was renamed Indus Creed in 1993 and remains one of India’s most popular and enduring indie music groups. Benegal and Tinaikar are still part of the band (as is Zubin Balaporia, who joined a little after Benegal). The world around them, however, has transformed. Listen to their two albums, Indus Creed (1995) and Evolve (2012), and it’s almost a shorthand for how Indian listenership has evolved. From soft grooves and riffs that would build up, it’s become a confident, brave style. “We’ve been finding our sound constantly over the years,” says Benegal.

And fans have stayed loyal. Indus Creed packed out Mumbai’s Hard Rock Cafe in 2010, when the band reunited for the first time since 1997. They played an epic gig at the first NH7 Shillong in 2015. “At both those gigs we received a very special kind of love from the audience,” says Benegal. Fans come up to tell them they’ve been listeners right from the start, that their kids are fans too.

From the stage, the view’s changed too. Audiences are willing to pay for better sound quality at concerts, professional crews keep shows running smoothly, bands play world-class instruments. “The biggest change is the demand for original music,” Benegal says. “People no longer want their band to play covers.”

The ’90s Parikrama

Subir Malik learnt to play the keyboard on his grandmother’s harmonium, pausing his Deep Purple cassette tapes to recreate the notes he heard. Hey, it was the 1990s. Who else was going to teach him?

In 1991, age 20, he was hoping to form a band to play covers of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Deep Purple and Metallica. He almost gave it up to join his family’s Jeep-parts business. Luckily for Indian rock, he met vocalist Nitin Malik and guitarist Sonam Sherpa at a music festival in IIT Kanpur. They played their first gig at Delhi’s Father Agnel School and got paid ₹500 each. “We hadn’t seen so many ₹500 notes together in our lives,” recalls Malik. They got featured in a newspaper, which won over some parents. Calls for gigs poured in. They did 40 gigs in five months. By the end of that year, they were charging ₹18,000. Not bad, the boys said, and decided to stick it out for a little longer, creating music of their own.

That short-term project ended up becoming Parikrama, one of India’s longest running bands. It completes 33 years this year, with inevitable line-up changes. The boys have grown, and so has the music scene. “Back then we didn’t have professional lighting, management or even sound,” Malik says. “We used to travel by second-class trains and buses for gigs. We took three days to six months, physically meeting for at least 30 sessions to finalise a song. Today, it’s done in three to four sessions. But kids still listen to rock.”

Some teens, inducted by their parents, come to gigs in the band’s T-shirts. Some recall how Parikrama played at their college in the early 2000s. Musician Tajdar Junaid once told them that he had written an essay about Parikrama for his class 10 exam. In Kolkata, they met a fan who had Nitin Malik’s face tattooed on her arm.

What’s kept them together is the acceptance that Parikrama isn’t core job. Until January 2006, Malik sold auto parts in Delhi during the day and rehearsed at night. Nitin Malik set up an audio studio. Sherpa, who passed away in 2020, opened a music school. Chintan Kalra who joined later, did the score for documentary films. “Being a full-time musician even today is not the securest of jobs. But it’s the most satisfying,” says Malik.

The ’00s Advaita

In 2004, VJs ruled the screen, CD stores were profitable, and Delhi had a thriving band scene and festivals such Great Indian Rock. Advaita got together when five musicians realised they all wanted to create a sound that represented their generation, and make a career out of it.

Turns out, everyone wanted in, and out. Advaita has had, over the years, artists who’ve contributed not only vocals, guitar and bass, but also Hindustani vocals, sarangi and tabla. “The focus was: How do I respond to another musician?” says keyboardist Anindo Bose, who creates demos, arranges and records music for the group. “It was a lot of discovering what sort of music you like to write.”

Advaita today is Abhishek Mathur on guitars, Aman Singh Rathore on drums, Gaurav Chintamani on bass, Chayan Adhikari on vocals, Ujwal Nagar on Indian vocals and Bose on keys. They recently released their composition Palkan, a collaboration with Bollywood composer Salim Merchant. They don’t rely too much on complicated equipment or a huge archive of music. “So, we didn’t get lost in a library of sounds,” says Bose. They toured internationally, learning from the cultures with which they collaborated. The result? Contemporary fusion, a blend of Western and Hindustani vocals, lyrics that jump from English to Punjabi, that all somehow work in harmony.

Audiences have slowly come around to their ever-evolving sound, says Bose. And discovering new music is easier. “Your song could be placed on music apps or on OTT or as background scores in films.” While most venues are designed for solo or duo acts, there are now bigger stages that can accommodate Advaita’s huge ensemble.

Band members teach, collaborate outside of the group, do studio recording or session work, and try to feature each other in commercial projects. We’ve all sacrificed a few things to be able to do this long term,” says Bose.

It’s why, at their 20th anniversary gig, they met young musicians who’d been listening to their music since they were in school. “When they tell us we inspired them to make original songs or choose music as a career, it means more than someone saying, ‘Great song’,” says Adhikari.

The ’10s Parvaaz

Parvaaz, formed in March 2010, knows how much can change in just over a decade. The band got together when Khalid Ahamed (vocals) and Kashif Iqbal (guitar) met in college in Bengaluru. Sachin Banandur (drums) and Fidel Dsouza (bass) joined in the 2010-2011.

Their first performance at the Bengaluru club Legends Of Rock, was small, intimate and dimly lit. It felt like the grandest platform then. “We realised that performing live was more than just playing music, it was creating an experience, a shared moment of emotion, and connection,” says Ahamed.

They started out with classic rock, but branched out to include RnB, soul and Indian classical forms as they released their albums Behosh (2012), Baran (2014) and Kun (2019). Along the way, Iqbal quit and Bharath Kashyap signed on. It’s all part of the game. “Personal commitments, and the demands of touring can take a toll,” says Ahamed. “While it can feel like losing a part of our family, it’s taught us about resilience and adaptability.”

Fifteen years in, the world’s changed enough for them to talk about a Then and Now. Public obsessions have shifted from Facebook to Instagram, and from owning music to streaming it. “Many musicians now make more money from streaming their music rather than album sales,” says Ahamed. “There is more space for original music than when we started out. We have the freedom to release music on our own terms, without support from a major label.” It also means connecting directly with listeners and hearing cutting criticism directly from them in return.

So, Parvaaz is delighted when fans tell them that they’ve been following their music for years, when the love goes old-school – in the form of a handwritten letter describing how each lyric and melody helped them navigate a dark time. “The bond transcends the typical artist-fan relationship,” says Ahamed. “Success isn’t defined by chart positions or accolades, but by the depth of connection we have with our audience.”

From HT Brunch, June 15, 2024

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