Play it forward

Raghu Dixit and Suhail Yusuf Khan have joined international artists including singer-songwriter King Creosote and Scottish band The Pictish Trail in Edinburgh to produce a brand new collaborative album, titled The Dewarist Sessions, in the space of a single week. The creation of the album will coincide with the famous TED Global Talks, a global set of conferences on topics relating to technology, entertainment and design.u00a0"Any opportunity that brings artists from different places together to work with each other is a fantastic learning experience for all involved. And I'm glad that I'm part of The Dewarist Sessions Part 1. This is going to be quite special," shares Raghu.

Musician Raghu Dixit

Inspirational talks
To help inspire the artists, live TED talks will be streamed into the studio as they work on the album. However, the musicians maintain that it will not interfere with their creative process. Explains Raghu, "Artists derive inspiration from various elements, so the more ideas that are thrown in the mix, the better. I don't see how it will be an interference. It will be nice to step out for a bit and catch the action at TED."

Cross-culture music
Although the musicians belong to varied backgrounds and diverse cultures, they are happy to collaborate and are ready to blend in. "The concept is to bring the diverse culture of the musicians together and make them sound like one, as music does not have any caste or creed. It's up to the musicians to decide how best they gel with each other to create a sound, which no one would have ever imagined," informs Suhail.u00a0Raghu echoes the sentiment: "No one is going into this with a mind to do something specific, instead, we are looking at making this as open a collaboration as possible. So, at the end of this, we should have in our hands, a fantastic piece of work that might be an album or just a couple of songs, but the sound that we will be able to capture will be incredible."

Sarangi Player Suhail Yusuf Khan

Road blocks to success
The album, which will be completed with great difficulty in just a week's time, will be available in India later this year. Raghu elaborates the ‘hurdles' that they have been facing - "It's been hard, especially if you aren't aware of what you are going to be recording and that you will be creating everything from scratch and using old ideas but giving them a new sound and identity. If you look at it pessimistically, everything is a hurdle, but I'd like to look at every step as a challenge." Suhail is more optimistic: "Recording the album is not a challenge once we have the material ready - it's easy to start recording and continue to address minute corrections side by side."