The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Indus Gharana set to rock VH1

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Saturday, Jul 17, 2010
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Indus Gharana set to rock VH1

Yogendra Kalavalapalli

The band's number ‘Losing Mind' is being premiered worldwide on the music channel today

PHOTOs: NAGARA GOPAL

STRIKE A POSE:Members of hip hop-alternate-fusion band ‘Indus Gharana'.

HYDERABAD: For an emerging band, Indus Gharana is a relatively silent bunch. There is a twinkle in their eyes, however, that gives them away. And the gleeful smile just wouldn't go off their faces. And the band is on a high these days.

The hip hop-alternate-fusion band's number ‘Losing Mind' is being premiered worldwide on music channel VH1 on Saturday. Awash with graphics, ‘Losing Mind' is their debut video composition and the band members -- Kamran, Sanjana, Roll Rida, Shankar, DJ040, Megh-uh-Watt, Sumitha and Invincible P -- cannot hide their excitement of having made it to the telly on their very first attempt.

“We knew someone in VH1 and sent it through them. And we just made it,” says Kamran, composer-keyboard player and vocalist of the group. “At the time of making the video, we never thought of all this. It was just a chance we took,” chips in Megh-uh-Watt aka Meghraj Ravindra, band rapper.

Band members credit the stunning special effects by Shravan and a friend, Prashant's camerawork for doing the trick. “It was less money and more of team work.”

Diverse backgrounds

Hailing from diverse backgrounds, vocalist Sumitha is a graphic design student by the day, DJ040 works with a defence establishment mixing djing and missiles, rapper Roll Rida aka Rahul is a B.Tech graduate, vocalist Sanjana is a publishing specialist – all met through common friends and of course, their common interest – music – a year ago.

Like most bands, their journey too began in a small makeshift studio and in the confined space flowed their creativity as hip hop flirted with alternate and ‘desi Hinglish' music to give form to their kind of music. The group's diversified music training helps fuse music better.

While Sanjana and Kamran have trained in Hindustani classical music, Sumitha has finished eight grades at Trinity College of Music, London and DJ040 a trained rock DJ who vows by hip hop now.

Three compositions

Indus Gharana (Indus in Greek means India and Gharana derived from Hindustani classical music) has composed three songs to date. While ‘Teekha Teekha' is a complete Hindi number, ‘Dream' has a few rap parts in Hindi thrown in and ‘Losing Mind', an out and out hip hop in English.

Teamwork goes into the lyrics too. “We decide on a theme and everyone writes their part,” says Sumitha. Losing Mind can be downloaded free from www.tempostand.com.

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