Rajan Batra: We let the collaborator shine

Rajan Batra of indie band The Yellow Diary on collaborating with folk musicians for seven-part web documentary, Equals

In the seven-episode web documentary Equals, The Yellow Diary joins hands with Sucharita Gupta for the making of a track that’s as immersive as it is melodic. “The title, Equals, is self-explanatory in that you are meeting a performer who is an equal, and comes from a different [musical understanding]. They speak a different language of music, and you have to come together to create something which is multi-lingual. While the sound that we have is modern and new age, the artistes we were supposed to be collaborating with had a heritage-like musicality to them. We were open to listening to what they had to express. In terms of the experience she brought, Sucharita ji was a treasure. There was so much to learn from her,” says Rajan Batra of The Yellow Diary.

Batra says the band was often mesmerised by the “depth in her musicality” when she simply hummed the songs they contemplated working with. “As musicians, we latch onto an emotion and start writing for it. When we told her about how we approach our music, she could relate to it. We took the melody and gave it our own spin, and then went ahead with the composition to align with how she sings. In a collaboration, you must allow the collaborator to shine, because that’s when you allow the little elements of every artiste  present in the room to be expressed.”

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