Melodies from the mountains

Halfway through his 100-day journey of the Himalayas, music composer Shantanu Moitra is collaborating with a group of musicians and singers in the city for a concert that reflects his expedition

Having grown up in Delhi with the Himalayas just a day-trip away, music composer Shantanu Moitra has always felt a strong affinity towards this majestic range. When one thinks of the Himalayas, one thinks in superlatives. However, little is actually known about the range at large and about life above a certain altitude. To learn more about the mysterious terrain, Shantanu decided to undertake a 100 days’ journey of the Himalayas. What the composer found, along with the peace he had been searching for, was a wealth of inspiration for music and a freedom to compose what he liked —something he had been missing while making music for commercial films.

“I wanted to know what life is like above 14,000 feet. That was the lower limit that I set myself,” says Shantanu. “The entire span of the journey was to be from Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh. After finishing half the journey though, I felt that I needed to get some of the music that had stored up in my head onto paper,” he adds. This outpour of information is going to express itself in the form of a concert, where all the songs are inspired by moments that the composer spent in the mountains.

“The soaring of an eagle high above a lush green meadow, the trickling of a brook or the story of a biryani seller (who sells the dish as a breakfast food because of the cold and kept his chulha burning during the military unrest in the Dras region so that the soldiers can smell ghar ka khana and feel comforted), all inspire melodies,” explains Shantanu.

Accompanying the avid traveller for the concert are Ani Choing, who is a Buddhist nun and Kaushiki Chakraborty, who is taking vocalist Ajoy Chakraborty’s legacy forward as a classical singer. When asked about how he thought of the two very different vocalists for his concert, Shantanu says, “It was the contrast I saw between Himachal and Sandakphu. The difference between the two singers shows you the diversity in the hills.”

Kaushiki also admits to have connected with Ani musically while being in awe of her culture. “We come from very different backgrounds—both musically and culturally. But when we matched our voices for a duet that we are singing, it sounded like one sound. It really is amazing how music connects people,” says the singer.

Also on board for the project is flautist Ashwin Srinivasan, who has been collaborating with the composer since Parineeta in 2005. “The sound of the mountain is incomplete without the flute. Through this music, I feel like we are experiencing his (Shantanu’s) journey,” Ashwin says. It is not just through the flute that the music of the Himalayas has found an expression in Shantanu’s work. The composer also makes use of exotic instruments like the ukelele and charango, played by Ankur Mukherjee as well as (the very Indian) sitar, played by Purbayan. “The ukelele conjures up the images of certain villages in the mountains and the sitar creates the sound of the brook,” explains Shantanu.

On October 7, 8 pm onwards, at Tata and Experimental Theatre, NCPA, Nariman Point