Bickram Ghosh: We should honor our amazing legacy of instrumental music

Bickram Ghosh unites the best musicians under one roof with Glorious India, including Purbayan Chatterjee, Kumaresh, and Grammy winner Rakesh Chaurasia, among others. He talks about using Indian instruments as the focal point of his composition and submitting the record to the Grammys in this interview.

edited snippets from the conversation.
Why did you choose to collaborate with these well-known artists on this album?
Indian classical music is the origin of fusion music, according to its historical development. Indian classical artists have always been the ones to enter the world of fusion music. Being among the pioneers in this field, I wanted to have the best instrumentalists in our nation on board. These are the top performers on the classical circuit who have performed all around the world. There are musicians here from both northern and southern India. Among the finest percussionists are also participating.

India is now the focus of attention for various reasons, including our achievements in sports and the film industry. Glorious India is a representation of modern-day India, a nation that is proud of its history and traditions, yet it also looks to the future. India is a highly renowned country for its music and spirituality.

We need to honor this wonderful legacy of instrumental music. In western concerts, the stage usually accommodates eighty musicians. However, you may listen to sitar, sarod, and tabla music for three hours here in India, even if there is only one musician for each instrument. India is home to an abundance of literary works and exquisite musical compositions. The veena, sitari, bamboo flute, and our amazing percussions are among the instruments. Why don’t we put it all together to create a funky but brilliant album?

Could you describe the process of filming these artists’ videos?
Miming Indian classical music is a very tough task. You can lip-synch to a song, but it’s difficult to do so with Indian classical music since the performers improvise a lot as they play. They introduce some harkats during the recording, and they are kept. They must thus keep track of and recall those improvisations in order to film the video. Every little curve and twitch of the neck must be recorded. We made a lot of mistakes and often needed to try 20 times. However, it was worthwhile.

Considering your many years of expertise, one may think that guiding other composers is simple. Undoubtedly, there can be difficulties in figuring out how to best use each artist’s strengths in the studio.
We’ve performed on stage for so long that we’ve stopped worrying about making mistakes. We now eagerly anticipate taking the stage, cracking jokes, and trying to catch the other artist off guard so we can playfully bounce something off them in the hopes that they will miss it. However, because they are also intelligent, they don’t.

Could you provide further details on the choice to enter this record for a Grammy?
I have played on four Grammy-nominated albums and am a voting member of the Grammy Awards. We started this album with the feeling that we had created a [commendable] piece. Africa and India have drawn a lot of attention at the Grammy Awards. We thus have a strong probability of succeeding. Since I can submit it to the Grammys since I am a voting member, it is simple for me to do so. After then, the whole public has control over it.