The ShrutiBox

Here I am on a cold winter after noon, thinking about the influential highlights of year 2011. Something that didn’t make much of the breaking news though was once flashed on the facebook share rather expeditiously, until before three weeks. If you think you have a great deal of idea what I am hooking on to, then you probably might want me to make your day and I am glad to break it to you that it has nothing to do with “Kolaveri Di”. But I must admit17,097,755 hits in just two week’s times seems a bit overestimation for what I have heard. It leaves me in a flabbergast thinking why this “Kolaveri Di”? The latest viral actually perturbed the number of hits on almost all major uploads precisely one piece of work for sure that shouldn’t have been neglected.

About Shankar Tucker, while his mastery over the clarinet can’t be doubted....he magnificently blends the essence of jazz, pop, Indian classical to create seamless fusion. I know this sounds a bit melodramatic and though most of his videos crossed 1 lack views, the comments were not very alluring. Before I started writing this article, I was under the impression that the guy who sings in “O re piya” video was actually Shankar Tucker. It all fits, the guy named Shankar (an Indian Hindu Mythological name) who fuses Indian music with jazz should happen to be a desi firangi. It mesmerizes me to think someone linguistically alien, should share the same stage as the legendary artists Zakir Hussein and Hariprasad Chaurasia.  

Giving an aura to blend into, such was the effect of John Mclaughlin’s “Remember Shakti” on the Tucker boy who went forward, composing “The Shrutibox”. If you think there cannot be something as captivating as the Oscar winner’s air, catch up with the “O Saya (A.R.Rehman cover) ft. Shankar Tucker”.

Unlike the conventionally released compositions, ShruitBox is an online going music album and a prodigy like Shankar, when his career has barely taken flight, claims not to make music that must sell. A blend of fresh Carnatic fusion- vocals by the Iyer sisters with the highlight from the melodist’s clarinet left me in crisis of adjectives, spending half an hour on rerunning the “Nee Nenaindal” video. Refined and perfected, lilting and rising sounds of his clarinet in his signature style can even beat the pulses of a heart; such ambience is of his original composition- “Lemongrass”. A treat to anyone who appreciates classical music is his deft rearrangement of classical Bandish of Raga Bimpalassi in the vocals of Nirali Kartik’s- “Ja Ja Re”.

This whole article might look a bit aggrandized and amplified to some who are in the critics’ stage of persona or to the Jagjit Singh or Pundit Jasraaj fan followers, who are grumpy over the lyrical and pronunciation aberrations in the videos. If I could understand my culture and musical heritage half as well as he does, I would have been in a better position to pull ranks.