JOIN USWe stitch!” laughingly admitted Kartik Shah. They get works from Mumbai, Kutch, Delhi, Pune, Jaisalmer, Guwahati, Meghalaya, besides London, Karachi, Peshawar, Paris, New York, Auckland, Boston, Toronto and by the time this article will be out, many more places around the world will be added to their list.
No, they are neither embroiderers nor quilt makers. They are the gang of Maati Baani. They are musicians sans any particular genre. “That is why we call it ‘World Music’,” elaborated Nirali Kartik.
Maati Baani band is based out of Mumbai with performers participating from all the nukkads of the world. The name of the band itself is self-explanatory — Maati Baani, meaning voice or language of the earth. Their music videos have performers or collaborators, as both Nirali and Kartik prefer to call the musicians, from all over the world, from different cultures and landscapes, with different languages, joining hands to make a unique music band where the performers very rarely have met each other except via Skype!
And that is the reason for not adhering to one particular genre. It has Hindustani classical vocal music provided by Nirali who is a disciple of Mewati gharana, which in today’s time is known for its famous vocalist Pandit Jasraj. Kartik, the guitarist, admits to be a ‘self-taught from Internet’ guitar player. He is the main music composer and writer of the group. The husband-wife duo, both in their 30s, form the core of Maati Baani.
At present, 70 artistes — vocalists like folk singers, pop singers, rappers, street performers, instruments like flute, sitar, harmonium, trumpet, clarinet, violin, rabab, drum, keyboard players plus lyricists from India and 20 different countries have joined hands. So it’s but natural that the band gets represented by different cultures, sounds, languages, voices, and is a mixture of Hindustani classical plus jazz, funk, rock, lounge, ambient and whatever else one can think from the world of music.
None of the musicians involved are renowned artistes of their country. They are Youtube superstars who love music and enjoy it.
Kartik says, “Primarily, we all love our music and we aim to make others enjoy music without getting restricted to one genre.” So in one song one gets to hear Indian classical, Rajasthani folk, a jazz from France, a rap from Pakistan, so on and so forth.
So if there is a song like ‘Tore Mataware Naina’, French jazz artiste JoyShanti starts with beautiful French verses and Kartik picks it up on his guitar with Nirali coming in with the Indian verses of ‘Tore Mataware Naina’. The surprising element in the song, besides JoyShanti, is the street flute vendor Naushad playing the flute as a filler, and Basheer the cotton carder (old time cotton bed maker), who keeps the beat with his carder! They are a real novelty.
There is another song, ‘Lagan lagi re’, shot on the subway of New York. There is a ‘saw lady’ Natali Paruz, with her very unique instrument, a carpenter’s saw, and a metal bow, sitting on the platform and playing it. Natali is perhaps the only artiste in the world at present playing this old traditional instrument. The video of this song is really intriguing. The background is the subway, and besides the ‘saw lady’, there are other performers — bassist, lite feet dancers from NYC, folk singers, and a double flute player from Kutch, saxophonist, trumpeters and drummers. With Nirali singing classical, and Mooralal Marwada, the folk singer, giving it the Rajasthani folk music touch, the song is scintillating.
The modus operandi of making a song is very simple yet highly complicated and time consuming. Kartik and his team of sound engineers scout the Internet and Youtube to zero in on musicians whose sound they like and want others to hear. They then try to contact them. Once again the Net comes to their aid — social media, emails, Skype, and of course phones, are used. Once the contact is established, then the explanation. The tricky part comes when there is language barrier. Though most know and can decipher English, some in the remote parts of Japan and Russia know very little English.
“We had a funny experience when we were trying to contact a musician from Tokyo. Though we made him understand the reason for contacting him, when we sent him the music sheets to record, he couldn’t understand it and gave us an entirely different version of what we wanted. Even the interpreter couldn’t help much. Then Nirali sang some portions, I played guitar and somehow we succeeded in making him understand,” recalls Kartik.
Then comes the part of video shooting each and every person’s section. Kartik and company hunt out good audio and video teams near the performers and record their performance. There is to and fro consultations, discussions and shoots and reshoots. When each portion is received by the Mumbai team, the ‘stitching’ of the video starts!
So far, since the Maati Baani was formed in 2012, they have always come out with only singles. In the last four years, they have brought out 14 songs. “It takes a lot of work to get musicians suiting that particular song on board,” says Kartik who hails from an advertising background. He has composed around 250 ad jingles and a few title tracks of Hindi TV serials like Maharana Pratap, Devo ke Dev Mahadev etc.
In March, the band collaborated with Vivanta Hotels and Resorts by Taj and came up with The Music Yantra, which is completely online music. In fact, The Music Yantra is the first sponsored programme. For Maati Baani, Kartik has been putting money from his own pocket.
“With more sponsors coming up and getting worldwide recognition for our type of music, we plan to come up with more songs,” signed off Kartik and Nirali Shah.