INDIA, SHAKEN & STIRRED

The songs of Shuruaat, the debut album marking 10 years of the Berklee Indian Ensemble, leave you with a residue of longing

- ANJULY MATHAI

The song ‘Arz-E-Niyaz’ from the Berklee Indian Ensemble’s 10-song debut album, Shuruaat, is a moving track composed by sarod player and composer Sashank Navalady, with lyrics inspired by a poem of the 19th century Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib. ‘Arz-E-Niyaz’ was also the first original song in Shuruaat to be sung by a renowned artist—the Grammy-winning vocalist and composer, Vijay Prakash. The song was recorded during Prakash’s artist residency at the Berklee College of Music in 2015.

“We were rehearsing the song on our own, when our tabla player M.T. Aditya Srinivasan came to me during the lunch break,” says Annette Philip, the Indian musician who founded the BIE in 2011, when she was given a “blank slate” as a young faculty member at Berkeley to start a project of her liking. “He said to me, ‘This song is really beautiful. Do you think Vijay Prakash ji would consider singing it?’ We [pitched it] to Sashank and he got very excited. We thought, ‘Let’s just ask him. If you don’t ask, you can’t open any doors.’ He was so thrilled to do it and spent so much time rehearsing the song with Sashank.”

It is this sense of adventure—the philosophy of “without asking, no doors will be opened”—that defines the BIE. Philip calls it their “slightly rebellious, slightly rogue” attitude. They are willing to take risks because they are not afraid of failure. If an idea bombs, they simply move on to the next one. Along with the appeal of their exuberant music, herein lies the clue to their decade-long longevity: they don’t take themselves too seriously.