Singer-Writer Amit Chowdhary | Photo credit: Anindya Saha
Amit Chowdhary is a man of renaissance in modern times. The 60-year-old is a world-renowned novelist who specializes in what James Wood calls ‘the denouement of the fabulous’, his writing full of simple pleasures and daily delights. Or you may know him as the renowned essayist whose last non-fiction work, find the chordwon the prestigious James Tait Black Award in 2022. There are also some poems in his work.
But Chowdhary also has an alternative career in music, in which he is equally established, albeit slightly less fruitful. A trained Hindustani classical singer, he experimented audaciously in the late 2000s with what he calls ‘non-fusion’ – creating vast soundscapes that explore the intersections between multiple musical traditions. The project resulted in two critically acclaimed albums, this is not fusion (2007) and got music (2010), before he got busy with other activities. But now, thanks to last year’s trip to Norwich, he is getting ready to release the follow-up.
Speaking over the phone from his home in Kolkata, Chowdhary talked about his recently released single and the importance of going against nature. Edited excerpts.
Your new single is a medley of Zawinul’s 1970 composition ‘In a Silent Way’ along with the Indian National Anthem. What synergy do you find between these compositions by an Austrian jazz musician and Rabindranath Tagore?
It was not a conscious, premeditated thing. My music in this project is often based on convergence, but it’s not because I go out looking for them. Several years ago, I was listening to Joe Zawinul’s version of ‘In a Silent Way’, and at one point I started singing ‘Jana Gana Mana’ along with it because there seemed to be some kind of syncopation. I started thinking of it as a musical act. It started from there.
TM Krishna recently released ‘Unsung Anthem’, in which he performed unheard verses from Tagore’s ‘Bharto Bhagya Bidhata’. In that choice lies a critique, of how the anthem is increasingly being used as a symbol for ideas with which Tagore never agreed. Were there any similar ventures in your re-imagining?
It’s up to you to say. Certainly it is not part of one’s conscious act, except when he is perceiving the song as a piece of music. A Tagore song is the result of an interaction between this plurality of traditions, made possible by a world in which there are many to travel. So, for me, it is important to revisit the national anthem, but not in a nationalistic or commercialistic way. It aims to be a kind of meditation and exploration of the possibilities of music. There is a tendency not to view pieces of music associated with nationalism or religion as an artistic artifact. We stop thinking of them as an object of beauty. And I think it is possible, and perhaps even desirable, to consider these as such.
This single precedes your upcoming album, your first in 13 years. What kind of musical themes are you looking for on the record?
I don’t want to talk too much about the album right now because it’s not out yet. But this project is similar to one I’ve done before, in terms of exploring musical overlaps. The main thing that differs here is the predominance of acoustic instruments. There is a lot more acoustic guitar and piano here than on the first two albums. And that’s just because I love that acoustic sound. Over the years, I started performing more with acoustic guitar than with a full band, partly due to budgetary constraints. But I liked the resulting sound and decided to go with this recording.
Amit Chowdhary performing.
The music video for the single focuses on a painting of the Indian national flag by Oxford artist Mark Rowan-Hull. Is there any special symbolism in the messy brush strokes of the plough?
There is no symbolism because once you have symbolism you become burdensome. You have fixed the meaning. One is trying to free the meaning, and unexpectedly feels a sense of euphoria and joy. Mark is a friend of mine who is a synth artist – he sees color in sound. They did this work many years ago, a version of the Indian flag that I really liked. So I thought it would be nice to make a video for this recording that doesn’t have human figures, only colors. But not everywhere in the beginning. It gradually becomes a version of the flag and so we also see an act of artistic creation rather than just a symbolic act of reverence.
Mark Rowan-Hull’s painting of the Indian flag.
You’ve spoken in the past about your distaste for ‘fusion’ or ‘world music’ as a category. How do you classify your approach to creating music that spans many traditions?
My approach is probably closer to Tagore, or the approach of music directors in Hindi films, where you’re making a song based on everything they know about musical traditions. It’s not like they’re trying to westernize or eastern a song, or add something uniquely Carnatic or something Dhrupad or the Latin element. they have a song, it could be as a Ghazal either songBut his own music and mental world holds much [more], And they put the song into that world, and let it carry a lot of what it means to be them. [the songwriter] at that point in history.
The single and the album are meant to mark the 75th anniversary of Indian independence. What do you hope people take away from this release?
It’s a well-thought-out message to writers, to artists, to filmmakers, to experimenters: Everything should be an opportunity to experiment with. Be it the anniversary of independence, any festival or just today and tomorrow. Everything needs a fresh look. So, I wanted to remind people that it’s possible to get joy out of everything as a creative. In every walk of life, one need not be disciplined. And it should be the most important thing about who we are, even more than freedom of speech.
The author is a freelance culture writer based in Mumbai.