by Vishal Venkatesh
The Bulbul tarang. It’s an Indian musical instrument which can be considered as a capsule of stringed complexity. Shortly after Gana’s university studies concluded, he ventured out to rural regions of Northern India where he uncovered this utter gem of an instrument.
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“I’m not a fan of prescribing a message in music. Rather, I like the fact that I’m able to make it as abstract as possible.”, expresses Gana, with a deep-rooted conviction.
Using the Bulbul tarang (which had not majorly entered the mainstream at the time), Gana was effectively able to explore this self-discovered ideology/aim.
Beyond exploring instruments, Gana intuitively embedded meaningful facets of life into his music.
‘Water Trance’, for instance, was reflective of a memorable family bushwalk that he embarked in the Blue Mountains. Gana came across a light stream which had a serene but distinctive effect on his ears, which he instantly recorded and used as an undertone for the track itself.
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Gana recommends his audience to listen to his album without any pre-conceived notions or ideologies. Though the composer has certain intentions in mind, the musical experience is best embraced when one formulates their own interpretation and seeks their own internalised meaning.
Artforms such as music can aim to freeze snippets of time for retrospective purposes, but Gana’s focus on maintaining a level of ‘abstractness’.
This serves well to convey that music is very much open to being hybrid, and it’s about time that conventions are challenged for the better.
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“I was more interested in what other composers were doing.”
When asked about what his musical diet comprised of and what composers he looks up to, Gana referred to his admiration for Illayaraja and Hans Zimmer’s work among many others.
The acclaimed Tamil-language film, ‘Sindhu Bhairavi’ stands out to Gana as one of Illayaraja’s best works.
He believes the music could be listened to outside the context “of the movie” and the emotions are still communicated with effectiveness.
It is a stand-alone marvel.
As for his future vision in his early twenties, Gana openly admits, “I actually had no idea. I didn’t know how it was all going to click together. I didn’t want to be a part of a band. It’s too restricting.”
Having listened to AR Rahman classics, Gana has extracted inspiration from the musician’s ability to weave a sense of natural modernism with Carnatic ideas to form multiple hybrid possibilities.
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This further sparked Gana’s interest in the commercial side of music and the plethora of opportunities it has to offer. The earlier stages of Gana’s youth was clearly filled with vivid familial memories and enriching travel based experiences and the positivity and colour of such fragments of life have gracefully jumped into the heart of his music.
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