Grammy nominated Berklee Indian Ensemble founder Annette Philip: 'To be in the same category as Anoushka Shankar, Angélique Kidjo is unreal honour'

Anindo Bose: It’s a great wow moment, of being an Indian representation on such a big, high, prestigious platform. It feels amazing to be able to channel that music and energy through us. And with so many wonderful musicians, it’s fabulous.

Pavithra Chari: I’m overjoyed and very grateful that we could be a part of this humongous endeavour. It’s taken so many years of hard work and dedication from Annette, the whole team at the Ensemble and all the wonderful musicians.

Annette Philip: It’s like you have a dream for years and years and then you really work towards it. It’s very surreal. It’s really an 11-year journey, the logistics of it took two-and-a-half years, but the process of getting to this was from 2011. And, right from the beginning, there were two questions, What if? and Why not? And that was even how the Ensemble got formed, and here we are, on a global scale, the highest musical recognition that one can get, which is in an organised fashion. Let’s keep in mind that thousands and thousands of people submit for Grammy consideration every year, so, to be part of the top five in that category is really such an honour. We submitted in seven categories and got this one, and are so heartened and humbled to be in the same category with some of our own musical heroes, Angélique Kidjo and Anoushka Shankar, it’s unreal. It’s also a moment of pride because this is a really distinct and unique project, and it really took a village on the record. And Ani (Anindo) and I go way back to pre-AU (Artistes Unlimited, an a'capella group that was active in Delhi in the 2000s) days.

Shadow and Light's 'Dua' concert with the Berklee Indian Ensemble. (Photo courtesy Annette Philip/Berklee Indian Ensemble)

For the album Shuruaat, what came first — the parts, the 10 tracks, or the idea of the whole?

Philip: The idea of an album came first.

How did you zero in on these tracks and the artists?

Philip: Well, it’s an interesting two-part answer. We wanted this album to give a glimpse into the next 10 years of the Ensemble while also looking back at the journey of not just with the Berklee Indian Ensemble musicians but also the various collaborations that have enriched our experience over the last decade. We wanted to have many languages and genres, both within Indian music and global. To have originals, tributes, and reinterpretations. And to feature some of our exciting collaborations. We had to also procure the rights and sign necessary agreements, contracts with all of the musicians. That process took over two years of talking to record labels, to the musicians on the album, to understand what does it mean now that we’d like to put the collaboration in an album format that would be released commercially all over the world, and also be submitted for the Grammys? How do we also design an equitable revenue-share system so that the people who’ve not been paid as a work for hire are able to share in the success of the album for life? In all of that, the album went from 10 songs down to three, then to five and seven, then back to 10.

Can you talk about the track Dua?

Chari: We wrote the song back in 2015, and we released it as part of our second album Elements, which came out in 2016. The song was structured lyrically very differently from how I usually write for Shadow and Light. I wrote it…I had the idea of putting couplets together, having smaller groupings of lyrics together to form like three or four different sections. And usually for Shadow and Light, in terms of melody, in the composition, I’m really looking at how balanced my blend of different influences can come through. And I’m making a conscious effort to make that fit the narrative of the song. In this case, I felt the words were extremely powerful, and the melody needed to guide and support that in whatever way it could. So, if you hear the melody, it’s perhaps one of our simpler compositions in terms. I remember that we bought this vibraphone from Auroville. And we used that, in fact, that instrument inspired us to write the main melodic riff that Anindo plays, that’s there in the arrangement, which we were able to also recreate with the ensemble. And that’s the story of Dua technically, and it’s just the idea of the theme behind this song, which is basically about what we want from life. What we think we want from life. Do we ever stop wishing for more?

Annette, can you talk about the album and the other tracks on it?

The main theme across all the pieces is that it’s a celebration of Indian music, but it’s definitely a very global Indian sound. In every track, there is something that surprises a listener, it could be the choice of instrumentation, the arrangement style, the form of the songs, or could be a solo. What we would like as an outcome for people who are listening to it is that they start to expand their palate, and their preconceived definitions of what they consider a particular type of music, say, jazz or progressive rock or Sufi music or Carnatic music should be like, and really start to understand that you can honour a tradition but still allow for the artistic process to be porous. More beauty gets added to a genre when you have some breathing room.

So, there are four original songs, one in Bengali, two in Urdu, and one which is actually all scat syllables, it’s got three lines of Hindi in just the bridge. Then we pay two tributes to Shakti, we are mad fans of John McLaughlin, Zakir Hussain, Shankar Mahadevan, Vikku Vinayakram, L Shankar…all the people who were in Shakti and they’ve also just completed their 50 years. So, the timing of this album feels really beautiful to us, a little tribute to our heroes. The rest of the songs are complete reinterpretations of existing songs from India, like Shadow and Light’s beautiful Dua, magnificently composed and arranged, so, we didn’t touch a lot, just added vocal harmonies and an interlude. Unnai Kaanadhu Naan has a huge interplay between the bouzouki player from Israel and the violinist from Jordan and Iraq. So, it really brings that other Eastern flavour, West Asian flavour into the mix. Sundari Pennae, featuring Shreya Ghoshal, is Indian semi-classical meets progressive rock, it’s the first time we’ve used a megaphone as an instrument itself.

And then Sati, that piece was completely recorded remotely, not a single person was in the room together, we literally had people all over the world who were recorded through the pandemic. It features Vijay Prakash, an immaculate singer and storyteller. And we also have a very interesting solo, which was played on GeoShred, an app, a software instrument for multi-touch devices. So, our bassist played that solo, it’s literally his finger on a phone, it’s the app. And we’ve never used an app in a piece before. It was very cool to try.

What's the idea behind the album title and the elephant art on the jacket cover?

Philip: Oh, I love this question. Thank you for asking. So, the group was formed in 2011 and our very first residency was in 2013, with our first guest artist, the incredible Clinton Cerejo. That concert we titled Shuruaat. In that concert, we had our very first original composition, a quartet: Shubh Saran (guitar), Sashank Navaladi (sarod), Rohith Jayaraman (vocals) and Layth Sidiq (violin), and that was also called Shuruaat. The title had to be something meaningful as well as pronounceable. And John Legend did a pretty good job on it (at the Grammy nomination announcements in November). Shuruaat is our first album, the trajectory that will propel us forward and a new beginning for the Ensemble, because last year, we launched the Berklee Indian Ensemble as a full-time professional touring entity. The ensemble will have the freedom to tour and not be a class, with a permanent or semi-permanent line-up of musicians. We’ll treat it as a professional band, no longer an academic offering at the college. In fact, I have passed the baton for teaching to two of my long-term mentees, and we have renamed the academic offering there to South Asian Ensemble, part of the Berkeley India Exchange, the institute that we run at the college. So, Berklee India Ensemble (BIE) is also charting a new career path.

Shuruaat's album artwork designed by Nikhil Kaul. (Image courtesy Annette Philip/Berklee Indian Ensemble)

For the album art, the Delhi-based designer Nikhil Kaul told us that since our music is so layered, with each layer having more layers within it, so the visual representation of that kind of musical approach was to be found in Gond art, from Madhya Pradesh. In that art tradition, the old tribal leaders believed that everything on our plane of existence has a sacred energy, and we are the sum of all of our experiences, and that’s why Gond art is so layered. And the elephant is BIE’s spirit animal, because elephants are very family oriented. They take care of their young and old. They move in herds but don’t have herd mentality, they’re very individualistic. And an auspicious being in Indian culture and mythology. We are probably the only culture that writes about elephants as graceful.

Shadow and Light stands on the crossroads of classical and contemporary, and, Annette, you bring together myriad musical styles at BIE, how do you all react to the word fusion which has got a bad rap over the years?

Chari: When Shadow and Light began, we used to hear a lot about fusion and there was a lot of confusion around the word, it’s a very loaded word. Instead, we thought we’ll get a little bit more real with what are the two major influences we are working towards and contemporary classical is how we define our music.

Philip: Thank you for asking that, this is again what people should question. Fusion is sort of that word where you don’t know what it is, it’s the same with the word ‘world music’, you don’t know what to put it in, so you call it something. I think, though, that having styles cross-pollinate is one of the most fun things to do. Even in the food we consume in a day, it is very rare that a person would only have jeera (cumin) or pepper. All that we eat has a beautiful combination of different ingredients and one enhances the other, you decide the ratio. Our human experiences are not a singular, one-sided, one-colour experience, they are so diverse, and we should enjoy melding and experimenting with things. If the word fusion allows you to be curious, then, go ahead and use it, but listen to the music, enjoy it, and, maybe, that will inspire you to think, hey, that’s something I’ve never heard before, what is that instrument, what culture does it come from.

Shadow and Light with Berklee India Ensemble at the 'Dua' recording. (Photo courtesy Annette Philip/Berklee Indian Ensemble)

What about crafting identity through music, as a South Asian woman of colour making music in a predominantly White male world?

Philip: I see it by turning it on its head. When I'm in a room, I'm not thinking of myself as a woman, as a South Asian, I'm thinking of myself as an artist, as a creative person. India also has some very interesting artists who are not of Indian heritage, who either play our music or speak some of our languages. I think, whenever we see someone who’s not quite of the same culture, there is usually shock or surprise. It’s a natural thing when you enter a culture that is not your own for there to be a little bit of a question mark sometimes. I really love and am intrigued by my own culture, there’s so much of my culture that I’m still learning about. And if I can do a project that allows me and other South Asians as well as other people from any country to explore, have fun with, and also flavour the music that we co-create, then why not?

Last year, Pakistani singer Arooj Aftab won the Grammy for the song Mohabbat in the Best Global Music Performance category. The ghazal was originally written by Hafiz Hoshiarpuri and sung by artists such as Mehdi Hassan in the past, but there was no mention of it. As artists, how important is it to give credit where it’s due?

Chari: In terms of giving due credit in anything that you do, I think it’s one of the most important things and it’s something that you do as an artist, towards other musicians as well as anybody who’s worked on the album. Shadow and Light has always made sure that we are properly crediting and mentioning everyone who’s helped/supported us in a small or big way. In terms of reinterpretation, individually Anindo and I have different bands or our own projects where we reinterpret existing songs or cover them, but as Shadow and Light, on principle, we only work on original music that we write from scratch. But, in the future, if we were to reinterpret an existing song, we will definitely do it with the right intention: acknowledge in name, discuss rights and do the paperwork.

Bose: Credit is very important. In Advaita (another Delhi band Bose is a part of), for instance, among the newer songs that we did, there was one which has poetry from Baba Bulleh Shah, so, wherever we have posted it online, in the descriptions everywhere, it does mention it is an adaptation of his poetry. We definitely want to make sure that if there’s any compositional elements and script that have been taken from someplace else, it has to be credited. Last year, I had arranged a special version of Hum Honge Kamyaab in association with a Delhi brand for Airtel, an initiative of bringing people together, and my first condition to the brand and the agency was that I’ll only rearrange it if you make sure that you put everybody’s credit in the description on YouTube, Instagram, everywhere, along with the original writers of We Shall Overcome, the original, so, mention Pete Seeger, Joe Glazer and Frank Hamilton (who recorded it in 1950), and Girija Kumar Mathur who first translated it into Hindi. We fielded questions about the number of characters not fitting on YouTube, etc., but unless you credit, there’s no way you can forward that information to anybody else. And everybody’s genuinely very ignorant when it comes to reading about who’s actually been part of the album beyond the fronting artists/vocalist. So, it’s very important to educate your audiences and give credit.

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In another instance from last year, in the Kantara-Thaikkudam Bridge plagiarism controversy, one of the arguments put forth was that Varaha Roopam song was based on the same raga as Navarasam and hence the two sounded similar. Pavithra, as someone who sings across ragas, what do you have to say?

Chari: Okay, so, that’s an interesting question. When it comes to a raga, we do differentiate it from a scale, because the scale has a particular set of notes that you can work with, while a raga, in addition to having a particular set of notes also has its particular rules of how to negotiate those notes, where the resting points are, how the delivery is to be done, and all of that and that’s true for any raga, I’m talking about Hindustani classical music here, so, when we are looking at a raga, there are definitely melodic elements of a raga that are unique to it and that are taught to you by your guru. I think where the question becomes deeper is when you’re looking at it in a different format, in a different compositional structure, and when you’re looking at it based on its melodic similarity, in terms of just the melodic lines that are running by in the instrument, or the vocals, in a song structure, for example, with the most recent example that you had picked, and what is also important for every artist to understand is the compositional material itself, which includes the lyrics as well as the melodic elements. So, for example, if you were to take a bandish (composition), which is in the public domain, and it has been sung by various artists and interpreted by them in their own unique styles, then there’s a particular set of protocols that you follow as an artist and, there too, crediting the vaggeyakara, the composer of that bandish, is very important, along with stating the raga and the taal. I take huge inspiration from my guru, Shubha Mudgal ji, who encourages all her students to study the compositions in detail. You’ll find the penname in most compositions in the antara (verse), and she ensures we also speak about it when introducing the composition before a stage performance. She credits everybody, when she’s on stage.

Philip: It’s about really giving credit where it’s due, and making sure to check not just once, but sometimes three to five times, that all people who are related to a composition, or even a sound recording are 100 per cent committed and give their consent joyfully. For Sati, written by Salim-Sulaiman, I had written to them seeking permission to record it, since, as the original writers, they own the publishing rights. It’s important for musicians to realise the requirement to get everything in writing. An upstanding musician with integrity will be joyful in creating paperwork for anything that they require permission for, that needs to be equally as important as your creative process, arranging process, performance and delivery or your marketing, it’s tied into the piece of art. Similarly, if the lyrics is a shloka, one must look it up, find the translation, see where it comes from, whether it is in the public domain or not. For the Shakti pieces, we actually found out that in one of them, it was credited wrongly in the global system. It was actually credited to Ravi Shankar rather than L Shankar. And, we wrote to John McLaughlin and L Shankar pointing it out. I don’t want to get technical, but basically, there’s a system for songs that are released globally, not all Indian songs are copyrighted and have all the correct, required copyright-owner lists, but at least songs that are released by Shakti, most of them have the copyright listing done, so you can just look it up. And we were shocked to find out that it was wrongly credited. It’s human error. John McLaughlin told us, he doesn’t need anything, just to credit him in the metadata. But we made paperwork, it took three-four months for him to read, sign and give us the right. I actually think that contracts are such a beautiful way to be transparent, to be honouring each other, to be honouring yourself and your art and the worth of your art. Open communication is the most powerful thing you have in any collaboration.

Was that a reason why Taylor Swift is re-recording her albums now?

Philip: Swift is re-recording because she didn’t own the masters of her songs; in any piece of work, there are multiple copyrights. So, one is the composition (music and lyrics) itself, not the performance. The second is its sound recording. And, oftentimes, the person who composed it is not the person who’s recording it. So it could be someone who shares it, or two or multiple parties. At the same time, if you did not pay everyone who performed, they automatically own a piece of the sound recording. If you are paying everyone, then that is considered a work for hire.

For Berklee Indian Ensemble’s album, we did the paperwork for 98 musicians, because some of these songs, when they were recorded, weren’t recorded with the intention of commercial release, but for student experience, experiential learning. So, now, we fought for the students’ rights, for them to own a piece of this pie, too. And the contracts we created, show the percentage that you earn (off of the DSP/digital streaming platform, like Spotify, JioSaavn; off YouTube views; license fee for the original composer, etc.) based on your contribution in that song. I think this needs to be the norm in the industry. And artists have to realise their own worth and rights.