Taking over hosting duties in the latest edition of Sound Trippin, Ankur Tewari on how stories played a crucial role in representing the music of different Indian cities.
Ankur Tewari
Watching him navigate the rocky terrains of a Goa beach, a portable recorder in hand as he captures sounds of the waves crashing against the shore, Ankur Tewari comes across as an artiste who uses his travel escapades to find inspiration in a city's sounds, sights, and food, for the creation of music. "I am a boring artiste," he says, bursting our bubble. "Send me to Goa or a hill-station, and I won't write a word, choosing instead to chill on the beach with a beer," says Tewari, who was bound by the pressure of delivering a promising track from this getaway, owing to his association with MTV's Sound Trippin.
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Two sets of the four-episode series, which sees Tewari explore four cities in an attempt to create songs that represent the culture of each, have already aired. An endeavour of this kind demands a coordinated dance of sorts, between his team and him. "I had seen previous seasons, and concluded that I wanted to showcase my personality via my music, for this edition. It was important to have a team that could enable me to successfully do that. If I made a scratch, they would digitally enhance it and send it back [in no time]. I also wanted to use stories to express my sounds."
The first episode makes evident that stories, indeed, weave the show together. Several chance occurrences – be it an interaction with an artiste who eventually frontlines the episode's culminating song, or several musicians who add value to the track – are credited for enabling them to achieve their goal. But, are such coincidences commonplace when hitting the road for a travel series of this kind? Tewari admits that some amount of scripting takes place before they leave the rest to fate. "For instance, while the Goa episode shows me being introduced to [musician] Sonia Shirsat [to explore the genre] Fado, I actually interacted with her before we rolled. We researched the musical aspects related to Goa, like we did for the other cities, as well. I had a vague idea of what I [wanted to present]. I knew what the mood of the song would be, and the artistes I would need, to create it. But, we also left abundant space to explore and alter our plan. The process needs to be organic."
Set to air next week, the episode that aims to reflect the sounds of Mumbai was the toughest to pull off. While he had created the celebrated soundtrack of Gully Boy, he found himself edging towards making yet another hip-hop song. "But I wasn't sure how I could make it sound different. What I needed to do was revisit my initial plan of weaving the episodes around stories. I recall that when I came to Bombay several years ago, I was excited to see the freedom that girls enjoyed in this city. They were freer than my female friends in Delhi and Calcutta, and one wasn't worried about the prospect of them travelling alone, late at night. I decided to explore this peg, and highlight how I wanted every city to be like this one. I found a female hip-hop duo to [lead the vocals]. Since I also wanted to reflect the immigration culture, I roped in Lisa Mishra, who moved from the States to make Mumbai her home."
For someone who admits to being as "paranoid" as Tewari is, pulling off this endeavour in the midst of a pandemic could be a deterrent. "Soon after I signed up for the show, questions on how we would see it through, were discussed. We shot in a bubble. No one went anywhere after the shoot, and all the people that we interacted with, were tested. The entire crew was tested thrice a day, with temperature checks and oxygen saturation readings being monitored each morning." That the unit took utmost care of its artistes is made evident in the fact that they did not have a single positive case at the close of the shoot. "For one episode, I was shooting in Mussoorie, and crossed my parents' home on two occasions. Yet, I didn't meet them."
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