‘Best time for independent music’

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They are touted as the new sound of 21st century India. Midivial Punditz’s music, an effortless mix of electronica and Indian Classical music created a stir in the music scene a few years ago and continues to do so even today. The reason Tapan Raj says, is a constant urge for innovation.

“We love to experiment with our music. Working with new voices and talents is one way of broadening your own horizons,” says the artiste who has in the past, collaborated with a range of talents like Kailash Kher, Karsh Kale, Anoushka Shankar and Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. “We have worked with established singers and local qawals from Delhi. The similarity between all the people that we’ve worked with is the fact that they’ve all been open to new age Indian electronica, a genre most conservative musicians are skeptical about trying out,” he says.
Tapan and Gaurav were part of the musical TV show The Dewarists that recently won an award at Cannes. The show is part documentary and part travelogue and aims at bringing together talented musicians to collaborate and compose original music while traveling across India. Recounting their own experience, Tapan says, “We were introduced to Indian-Canadian rapper Humble, the poet, as part of the show in Goa. His genre of music is completely different from ours. We enjoy that kind of music — it’s something we had never experimented with so we were a skeptical about the collaboration. But we really liked each other’s styles and in a period of four days, we came up with four tracks instead of one.” Called No ID Required, the song captured the essence of the fact that appreciating music needs no particular identity.
About music in India today he says, “This is the best time for independent music in India. People are moving away from B’wood and bhangra and giving new age music a chance.”