Ethnic electronica takes on the Indian santoor

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Rahul Sharma

Unlike the sounds of conventional techno, trance and house music, Deep Forest’s interpretation of EDM with its rustic sensibilities and natural voices, gives birth to a whole new world of dance music called Ethnic Electronica.
It comes as little surprise then that the French musicians chose to sync their sounds with Indian santoor maestro Rahul Sharma to create their latest music album, Deep India.

It is the third time that the artistes have tried to capture the musical essence of a place through their works. The first two being Grammy-award winning Boheme and Deep Brazil inspired by Eastern Europe and Brazil respectively.
Speaking about his latest muse — India, Eric Mouquet of Deep Forest says, “India has a rich cultural heritage and the entire world knows about its folk talent spread across the land. I wouldn’t have got a better opportunity than this to combine my beats with Indian folk music and the tunes of Rahul Sharma. I was astounded to listen to Rahul’s music as I had never heard his works before.”
The Deep India album consists of eight tracks that capture the rhythm of folk melodies from across the country and each track will be given a special Deep Forest treatment. The tracks draw inspiration from ethnic folk numbers that are rooted within the regions of Jammu, Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat, North East and South Indian cities. He goes on to say, “The real flavours from the specific regions, make it lively. The rustic tunes of those regions mixed with my electronica transforms the track into something completely mind-blowing.”
The duo recently performed at the Taj Vivanta Hotel amidst the deep valleys of Koorg in Karnataka.
Rahul believes that the approach is unique and something no one has experimented with before. “Listeners can expect to hear rare Indian folk singers and instrumentalists along with my Santoor and Deep Forest’s ethnic electronic pulse on this album. It’s something never done or heard before. Not just santoor, but merging sounds of different singers from different parts of India has added value to Deep India,” says Rahul. Talking about the growing popularity of Indian music globally, he says, “Indian music can’t be expressed in words. It’s something that filmmakers and artistes the world over want to incorporate in their projects. Late Pandit Ravi Shankar was the first to introduce Indian classical music to the world and we’re just taking the trend forward.”