Power of the voice

How do you make music with just your voice? Meet a cappella and beatboxing band Aflatunes, performers at this year's The Guide Restaurant Awards

It's been a tiring day. You're in the Metro on your way home from work. Things at office aren't going too well. But then six youngsters hop on. They are positively bursting with energy and sporting infectious smiles. That's enough to lift your spirits. But your mood gets even better when they burst into Chhaiyya chaiyya, the smash hit from Dil Se. The group performs an impromptu a capella version of the track, with two beatboxers substituting for the instruments. Their pitch-perfect rendition carries on for about three minutes and when it's done, you break into applause along with other passengers, having forgotten your worries for a while.

That's the sort of unfiltered fun that the members of Aflatunes can inject with their performances, as they did in a Metro ride one evening in 2016. It's also the reason why mid-day has chosen them as the band to light up The Guide Restaurant Awards, scheduled for April 9, with a musical interlude during the show. We meet all seven members — Anish Nair, Jaimish Ashar, Joel Mathew, Nilay Singh, Pearl Alex, Devashri Golambare and Dany Marshal — ahead of the event, to find out their story. And the sort of jovial camaraderie they display shows how a band that laughs together will, in all probability, stay together.

This line-up, though, is a slight change from what the city-based outfit looked like when it was conceived in 2014. Nair tells us, "The genesis of Aflatunes goes back to a beatboxer named Roy, who approached me and said, 'Let's start a band that is a combination of beatboxing and a capella.' He's the one who spearheaded the whole thing, and we had a random audition at the garden of Inorbit Mall in Vashi, listening to one beatboxer and a capella singer after another. That's how it all started and the first break we got was doing a background score for a sports channel ad."

He adds, however, that Roy and a few early members later parted ways amicably due to personal reasons. "But I wanted the show to go on," Nair asserts, saying that a second round of auditions helped make up for the missing pieces of the musical puzzle. Three of the current members — barring full-time musicians Golambare and Nair, and Mathew and Ashar, who are students — have day jobs. Marshal works for a logistics company, while Alex is with an engineering firm. The only time they thus get to rehearse is after 8 pm, and on weekdends. The good thing, though, is that this being an a capella band that doesn't require any instruments, they can jam together practically anywhere. "But either way, what you are now looking at is a full pizza with all its slices intact," Nair confirms.

This knack that the band has of talking in metaphors is emphasised when Riya Sen, the manager, tells us that the plan now is "to spread the good disease of a capella". The current members have perfected their set list — which comprises English and Hindi chartbusters — having performed together at marquee events over the past few years. They have even made a foray into Bollywood, after contributing to the music of the 2017 Farhan Akhtar-starrer, Lucknow Central. But the intention for the near future is to hold workshops at schools, colleges and other organisations, where they can educate youngsters about the nuances of beatboxing and a capella. They are also looking to work on a few originals and release a music video in due course, on the lines of Pentatonix, American a cappella behemoths they are influenced by. But before all that, there is, of course, their performance at mid-day's awards night, where there's one thing guaranteed.

When their performance ends, Aflatunes is sure to receive more love than they did at that Metro ride three years ago.

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