A Release...

A proud mom,  I was sitting amongst a small but enthusiastic audience, my heart aflutter, as I listened rapt to my son Dhani's semi-nervous yet confident voice, cruising across the hall at Kalabhoomi, the Art Centre in Auroville. 

Outside the evening storm carried out its usual theatrics. "An early monsoon", some said and shrugged matter-of-factly, others, the climate change theorists were more cynical. But thankfully, it did not stop the die-hard friends, jazz enthusiasts and fans  to trudge through the red mud and streaming roads to haul themselves to the venue to attend the release of Dhani's debut jazz album, called 'Chimu Fiesta'. 

It was a long-awaited release. One and three quarters of a year, to be precise. Recorded in Bangalore in Dec. '19, it fell prey to the clutches of Covid lockdowns and unending restrictions...  Finally, when WHO generously upgraded the Covid status in India, from being a pandemic to an endemic, did a date to release the album was finalized. Inadvertenly, the date coincided with the day of the Goddess Saraswati, who reigns over the realms of Art. Automatically, everything about the delay felt auspicious. 

Roping in some of the finest jazz musicians in the country, the album was recorded in 16 hours. Even though its concenceptualisation had begun to wriggle its way into Dhani's musical subconscious way back in 2014, it took five years to materialize. It was no wonder therefore that each piece had a story to go with it, and revealed a moment lived, seized and  imbibed with its raw and undying intensity: 

"a moment sees, the aeons toil to express"...

While expounding upon sources of inspiration behind each track, Dhani spontaneously struck a rapport with all those present as he interspersed his narration with several humorous anecdotes related to translating the theory into action. Needless to say the hiccups were many  stemming from the fact that some of the musicians were meeting each other for the first time on the recording set. "But that is what made it both challenging and exciting", confided Dhani to a riveted audience. Each one a musician par excellence, the chemistry amongst them evolved naturally, paving way for a defiantly supreme end result: 'Chimu Fiesta'. In the artist's own words, "here is a small part of the bigger Whole; a cutting of life that I either magnified or minimized a hundred times -- so that perhaps, just may be, you can experience something close to the totality of what I did".

At the end of the event, one thing was clear: one can't just sit back and listen to 'Chimu Fiesta', for it grabs you by the soul and leads you to places you didn't know even existed. 

To download, click on the link below and go to bandcamp:

https://linktr.ee/suitetheexpatriate