Chennai :

What happens when five friends from drastically different musical backgrounds, equally passionate about music, come together? Naturally, music is taken to a different level — to a supreme level. Param (meaning supreme in Sanskrit), a four-year-old Mysore-based band took Chennaiites on a joyride with their music recently. CE got in touch with Mayur GS, the band’s drummer, who lets us in on their journey so far.

“We were all in Mysore, playing for different bands when we happened to meet and realise that we have similar taste in music. We also had similar aspirations. That’s how the idea of forming a band came about. Since we all are equally serious about music, it wasn’t very difficult to get started,” Mayur recalls.
The boy band has Vijay Hegde (lead vocalist), Shreyas Urs (lead guitarist), Sanketh Kumar (bassist), Mayur GS (drummer) and Abhimanyu Menon (percussionist — tabla).

The band, which is popular for the Hindustani Progressive Rock music genre, has played at several events including Toyota India Ekiden 2015, Mysore, and has even opened for musicians like Baiju Dharmajan. One of their biggest achievements is securing sixth position in the All India Category at the Channel V India Fest held in Goa in 2014. “We were among the top three bands from South India. It was quite exciting to tour as a band, but we have stayed away from competitions ever since to focus only on live performances. Our strength is that we rely purely on our original compositions,” he explains.

It is often said that music is universal…but how is it possible to fuse two diverse and different genres at the same time? The band combines elements from Hindustani and progressive rock that are like chalk and cheese in notes, tradition, language, etc. “Vijay has been singing Hindustani music for the last 20 years. I am trained in Carnatic music; our guitarist and bassist has a blues and traditional rock sound background. Our percussionist comes from a Hindustani background. Diversity is not the problem,” he avers. “The challenge is in keeping the songs simple, yet interesting. Sometimes tunes that sound good in Hindustani, for instance, might not sound very good in rock and vice-versa. That is where we need to understand limitations of the two, and produce some great music.”

‘Param’, which takes inspiration from bands such as Shakthi, Porcupine tree, Motherjane and Avial, has a diverse fan following as well. “The youth is attracted to rock music, but sometimes we see several senior citizens at our concerts. I am not exaggerating but even my grandmother comes to our concerts,” he laughs.

Though this is their first performance in the city, the band seems quite familiar with the musical history and tradition of Chennai. “Both Chennai and Mysore have played a huge role in preserving the rich history of classical music. But the concept of live music and performances is only catching up in these cities,” Mayur opines. “We perform quite often in Bengaluru as it offers a better platform for live musicians.”