Rock de BOOMM

Musical performance with mostly Hindi and a few Tamil numbers culled from various genres. For tickets: rockdeboomm@gmail.com

Date:	Sunday, November 8, 2009
Time:	5:30pm - 7:30pm
Location:	Jain Temple Auditorium, 722 South Main Street, Milpitas, CA 95035

Performers:

Anand Kannan - Vocals
B Vasant - Bass
Mugdha Shende - Vocals/Hand Percussion
Padamanaban Ramasamy - Drums
Prakash Ramakrishna - Guitars
Rahul Nim - Lead and rhythm guitars
Shwetha Ram - Vocals
Sridhar Narayanan - Bamboo Flute/Harmonica
Sunil Ramesh - Vocals/Hand Percussion/Keys
TN Arunagiri - Vocals/Hand Percussion
Vidya Shankar - Keyboards

See you all there!

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Ilayaragam's Debut - Arangetram

Hardly a week passes by without one hearing about yet another Bay Area desi band. This time, it is a Tamil light music band called 'IlayarAgam' (translated as 'Youthful Melody').

Ilayaragam is steadfast in promoting their vision, which is to (a) play only melodies and (b) to stay away from kuttu pATTu business. They want to play melodies, which are masterpieces and stir our souls every time we listen to them. These are songs which we have all been listening to since our childhood and will cherish them in our hearts, till the day we forget ourselves. As the band name itself suggests, the song list would consist mostly of Maestro Ilayaraja's compositions. Good numbers from other composers (who have been keyboardists with Ilayaraja or keyboardists with Ilayaraja's keyboardists), :-) will also be chosen.

Ilayaragam's vision is bold and greatly differentiated from other Tamil light music band's 'formula driven' agenda of serving a 'buffet' of Tamil songs, of which kuttu pATTu is a standard item. It's a highly commendable vision and I wish Ilayaragam good luck in spreading its melodic fragrances far and wide.

On March 7 2009, Ilayaragam went on stage for the first time. Their debut performance was called Arangetram (literally meaning going up on the stage for the first time). Although short and sweet with only 7 songs, it was a very well received show. The audience greatly enjoyed the song selection and went home craving for more. They raved about the orchestration, especially the keys, lead, rhythm, bass and drums, which are absolutely essential for bringing an Ilaiyaraja number to life on stage. Although I liked all the songs, my personal favorite was Oh Butterfly - what a melody from Ilaiyaraja! The band just nailed it and I had a great time mixing the sound for that song and also of course for the entire show.

The song list and order was as follows:

1. Overture (Original composition by Vidya Shankar in Raga HarikAmbhoji)
2. Sangeetha Megam
3. Enna Sattam
4. Sundari Neeyum
5. Oh Butterfly
6. Ooru Sanam
7. Nenjukkul
8. Ennamma Kannu

The Ilayaragam Arangetram show consisted of the following members:

Singers: Rangarajan Ramachandran, Gopal Tiruvengadam, TN Arunagiri, Janani Vishwanathan
Chorus: Srividya Guru, Swetha Venkataraman, Jenita Mariadasan and Uthra Ramachandran
Keyboards Main: Vidya Shankar
Keyboards: Ramakrishnan Guru and Nathan Narayanan
Conductor: Ramakrishnan Guru
Bass Guitar: Rangarajan Ramachandran
Lead Guitar: Easwar Swaminathan
Rhythm Guitar: Ashok Jayaraman
Drums: Saravanan Chidambaram
Pads: Nathan Narayanan and Logesh Manohar
Sound Engineering and Recording: TN Arunagiri and Nathan Narayanan
MC: Anitha Rangarajan

Videos are available here: http://tinyurl.com/iragam-videos

Audio recording highlights are available here:

Raga Shack is Born

It was the 15th day of March 2009 - the day when Raga Shack was born. The band aims to bring the best of Western music elements and Indian traditional music together to a maximum number of audience. As the name suggests, the band is open to improvisational music but when it claims a certain Raga is being played, it will strive to stick to the grammar of the melody (Raga) and time signature (Kaala Pramaanam), rhythm and tempo (Laya).

The members of this band just not want to play or sing but aspire to evolve as musicians and come out of the copy-exact mode that many popular light music bands operate in (doing cover versions). A critical part of that evolution process depends upon consistent effort in learning new things and becoming better at those by constant practice, so playing or singing becomes second nature.

Currently, the band has members with the following competencies:

1. Bamboo flute - Hindustani/Carnatic
2. Indian Classical violin
3. Lead/Rhythm guitars
4. Bass guitars
5. Keyboards
6. Western drums
7. Indian percussion (Mridangam/Tabla)
8. Indian classical vocals

The band members eagerly look forward to great jam sessions, where they would not only internalize their learning but more than that, simply enjoy the Music. Once that happens, raising the audience to the band's wavelength will follow naturally.

Rock de India 2008

It was a cool, misty night on Nov 8 2008 in Milpitas, California. Music was in the air. Two San Francisco Bay Area bands - BOOMM (Bunch of Oddly Musical Misfits) and Antariksh, deluged and delighted the audience with a wide variety of genres of Indian music - Rock, Pop, Bollywood, Kollywood, improvised semi-classical and adapted jugalbandis to shake their heads in agreement with the melodies and tap their feet; and also a lot of 'run of the mill' dheen-chak Bollywood numbers to shake their booties on the floor.


BOOMM went on the stage first. The BOOMM crew was as follows:

TN Arunagiri - Vocals/Percussions
Padmanaban Ramasamy - Drums
Rahul Nim - Lead and Rhythm Guitars/Vocals
Shantanu Swaminathan - Keyboards/Saxophone
Shwetha Pramod - Vocals
Sridhar Narayanan - Flute/Harmonica
Sunil Ramesh - Vocals/Percussion/Keyboards
B Vasant - Bass

BOOMM's song order (each title is hyperlinked to the respective streaming audio recording):

1. Dhoom Pichak Dhoom (Euphoria)
2. In Dino (Life in a Metro)
3. Breathless (Breathless)
4. Sax/Violin jugalbandi (Armaan) - BOOMM adaption with Guitar/Sax/Flute
5. Mann Ke Manjeere (Mann Ke Manjeere)
6. Aditi (Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na)
7. Vellai Pookkal Improvised (Kannathil Muttamittal) - Tamil. BOOMM adapted it and added rhythmic and melodic improvisations to it, using the pentatonic raga Hamsadhwani (Huns-dhun).
8. Kholo Kholo (Taare Zameen Par)
9. Aaj Kal Tere Mere (Bramhachari)
10. Adiye Kolluthe (Vaaranam aayiram) and Punnagai (Alai Payuthe) - Tamil medley
11. Tauba Tauba (Kailasa)
12. Socha Hai (Rock On)

Videos of the all above songs are available here: http://www.youtube.com/user/rhnimu2


The Antariksh crew was as follows:

Amber Sharma - Drums
Anand Kannan - Vocals
Anuja Bellare - Vocals
Mahesh Kumar - Bass
Prasad Bhandarkar - Flute
Pronob Ashwin - Keyboards
Rajesh Harekal - Vocals
Satyajit Sahu - Guitar

Antariksh's song order is given below. I do not have access to individual audio tracks. However a few videos have been uploaded by Anand. Go here for videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/anandk199

01- Mit jaaye (Kidnap - rock version)
02- Alvida (Metro)
03- Naina (Omkara)
04- Sanwal (Mekaal Hasan Band)
05- Yeh tumhari meri baatein (Rock on)
06- Mobius Strip (Antariksh)
07- Yeh Sama (Antariksh)
08- Never (Antariksh)
09- Jhok Ranjhan (Mekaal Hasan Band)
10- Tere bin (Atif Aslam)
11- Sinbad the sailor (Rock on)
12- Zehrille (Rock on)
13- Dard e Disco (Om Shanti Om)
14- Sajnaji (Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd)
15- Mauja hi mauja (Dus Bahane mix) (Jab we met)
16- Beedi (Omkara)
17- Desi girl (Dostana)

Last: Bhool Bhulaiyya (B.B.) performed with BOOMM.

Last but not the least, the Sound Engineer by whose grace we have the recordings today is Ramana Turlapati. Thanks a million to Ramana's 'sound engineering', we had great sound from the stage monitors - it was a sheer pleasure to perform for a wonderful audience!