Kolkata-based multi-instrumentalist Tajdar Junaid on working with Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf

Last year, Junaid wrote a note to Makhmalbaf. “I was watching a lot of cinema, especially Iranian films, and fell in love with their way of storytelling, and the way they make great cinema against all odds. I wrote to him out of respect and shared links of my music, saying that I would love to connect,” he says. “I didn’t think anything would come of my message but Makhmalbaf wrote back to say that he had heard my music and had liked it,” says Junaid. In March, the filmmaker reconnected and asked whether he could use Dastaan for The President, which he was shooting in Georgia. “I am just out to play my music and I feel that the universe is conspiring to make things happen,” says Junaid.

Born and raised in Kolkata, Junaid first began playing the guitar after his higher secondary exams ended. “My elder brother Shandar played guitar and after my exams, I began looking for teachers. I met Amyt Datta; that meeting transformed my life,” he says. Datta is something of a legend in the country’s independent music scene. The 53-year-old guitarist for bands such as Skinny Alley and Pink Noise is one of the most innovative and experimental musicians in India, and has mentored several young artistes. “Five of us from his class formed a band, Cognac, and we hit the festival and tour scene. When Cognac broke up, I joined Span and played with them for a while,” says Junaid, whose family has been very supportive of his music career.
In 2010, after playing guitar for different bands in the city for almost a decade, he decided to stop performing live; an unshakeable weariness had set in. “I was completely exhausted of the covers scene. It’s a great tool to expand your musical vocabulary, the money is good, but I was frustrated of being a photocopy machine, playing other people’s songs,” says Junaid.

With his days opening up, and with time on his side, he began listening to different music genres, including Indian classical music. “I began to listen to Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, in particular. His music expanded the way I was approaching my own music. I began to think that my compositions should look deeper into who I am, and what I am about,” he says.

Although he never held a full-time job, Junaid didn’t seek corporate funding for his debut album, What Colour is Your Raindrop. “I have been teaching guitar for many years and I used my savings from years of gigging,” he says.

While conceptualising the album, Junaid asked himself if this had to be his last album, what was it that he would want to say.
Released last August, What Colour is Your Raindrop is an intimate self-portrait and each song is a story from Junaid’s life. “I wanted to tell stories without using words much, they can become a crutch. I wanted to use silence in the songs, so that the listener can reflect on his/her own story. Different songs were born out of different experiences and I wanted to bring together all the people and the sounds that have shaped me,” he says.
Prelude to Poland, another song picked up for Sold, is a tribute to Frederic Chopin. “He is one of my favourite composers and I arranged the first half of the song as I imagined he would have,” says Junaid. It begins tentatively, delicately, slowly swimming in memory and nostalgia. The second half is discordant and tumultuous; Junaid wanted to bring alive the turmoil the Polish composer and pianist felt upon leaving his country at the age of 20 when war broke out in the November uprising of 1830.

Eighteen musicians feature in the 10-track album, including former band mate Vishal Nayak, Cognac’s ex-drummer, Anusheh Anadil from Bangladesh who provides the vocal harmonies on Ekta Golpo, as well as Kiwi singer Greg Johnson, who recorded the vocals for Mockingbird in his studio in Los Angeles.

His family finds mention, too: Aamna was written for his little niece. “I wrote it as a lullaby for her, she turns three this December and recognises it as her song,” he says. He also brought in his father, Junaid Ahmad, a retired sailor, to recite for one of the most original tracks on the album, Yaadon ki Pari. “My father has always written for himself but he was caught up with providing for the family. I wanted to draw him out and use his poetry,” says Junaid. The song begins with his father reciting his verse, the voice crackles as though a long-forgotten vinyl is playing till Junaid brings in his electric guitar and Nayak’s drums to steer the track into a chaotic, yet controlled, descent.

Junaid is now working on his second album. “I’m not really doing anything, though, just putting ideas aside. I’ve recorded one tune so far, Devotion. It’s close to The First Year in the first album. That album came together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, perhaps this one will, too,” he says.