The sound of furtive distance

“A hybrid of different musical influences”. Welcome to Distance, Dhruv Ghanekar’s debut solo album. “The album’s a journey of a musician. This is a culmination of 18-20 years of my life with jazz specifically jazz harmony. I grew up listening to a lot of hindustani classicals and a lot of R.D. Burman and while Indian music has a strong melodic tune, it lacks a certain harmony that jazz has. For me jazz has a very deep and natural extension to the environment its been played in and the album is an organic blending of the harmonic complexity of jazz. Jazz has the highest form of complexity and it just turned me on,” says Dhruv with reverence.
With that very “organic” blend of jazz, classical and world music, it has taken the talented musician almost five years and a journey across the world that has culminated to collaborations with numerous other talents, some of which transpired into music in the album. “Music is a team sport. Certain things you create in isolation but, magic can happen when you come together with other musicians. Especially with jazz, it’s completely essential. Composition can be created in ways that sound can never be created without,” he says. A pool of the collaboration include Joey Heredia, The Ploctones, Husain Jiffry, Carl Clements, Ashwin Shrinivas flute and Nicoli Freisman.
Besides being one of the founding partners of Blue Frog Productions that seems to have revived if not unearthed the live music scene and brilliant artistes — local and international — and bringing in a new dawn for a mass of music lovers, Dhruv has also composed music for over 3,000 commercials, several feature films and music for television. “My commercial commitments put my album on hold for a while. I had to complete all of them and get it out of my system to mentally get into my music. Drona took a really long time, and while it was scheduled to be released last year, I decided to launch the other artistes signed on with us before bringing my own,” he says in a rather exasperated tone.
While the alumnus of the Berkelee School of Music believes that “there should be more Blue Frogs in the country”, he is still wary about the the “unigue” mainsteam music in India that solely piggy-backs on Bollywood. “We need to create something new rather than emulate others. We need to take our unique creations to the world rather than ride on the wave of the Justin Timberlakes and Britney Spears of the world. Unique, talented artists are at most times a product of the underground. While I live on both side, I always try and bring mainstream values like marketing concepts into the underground scene,” Dhruv says.
And his music? “It’s a niche within a niche,” he states.
And yet as a musician, producer and businessman, the man doesn’t seem to fazed by apprehension that the economic slowdown might do anything to album sales as he puts it, “I don’t think it would really affect the music. Of course the business aspect of it — lesser artist, lesser commercials etc., — no doubt, but I’m not worried really.” A captivating album ain’t that far away. Distance is available for Rs 200 at Blue Frog Records.

Intimate energy for music lovers

Shakira, Beyonce, 50 cent, Akon, Buddy guy and the rest. Only got a glimpse of the top of their head the
last time around at the MMRDA grounds? Would you prefer a more intimate personal experience with the
music and the artist that you love? While musicians and artists especially international acts have almost
always been known to play concerts in large venues (read MMRDA in Mumbai), with the likes of clubs
such as Blue Frog and the Hard Rock Cafe, many more artists are looking at playing gigs in smaller
confined venues.

Wyclef Jean of the fugees fame has performed at the Hard Rock Cafe recently. His first professional visit
to India, and he hasn't performed at a large scale concert anywhere in the country unlike other international
acts. Rather Wyclef has performed at the Hard Rock franchises in Pune and Delhi and Bangalore. While
live band venues have always been a phenomenon all over the world, leaving out local bands and artists no
international act is known to have played a gig at such confined arenas in the city. But the trend seem to be
slowly edging out with the likes of the Hard Rock Cafe and Blue Frog providing a platform for a more
intimate personal experience.

While the Hard Rock Cafe,to a large extend, caters to commercial well known artists, Blue Frog
differentiates itself by not conforming to a particular national or artistic stereotype. With international acts
coming in every week to perform, the long list of artist that have performed there include artists from
Holland, France, Sri Lanka, Italy, Germany, USA, Austria. The list goes on. The genres of music that these
artist play ranges across transcendental, break beat, d&b, elctronica, progessive house, fusion, folk to
acoustic folk, beatbox, drum and bass, tribal, and more of the likes that you probably have never heard of.

"International artists are more than willing to come and perfrom in such venues. One major reason being
the tremendous legal hassles that they have to go through in terms of performing in larger open-air venues.
Also co-ordinating with event producers, taxation and rules regarding loud noise beyond a certain time
greatly hinders such events, huge sums of money not withstanding," says Rayna Jhaveri, Communications
Head, Blue Frog. "Artist touring Asia would have normally given venues in India a quick miss what with
the tribulation holding such events entails. However with clubs like ours, we provide a perfect platform for
them to make a pit stop. It's not that these artist wouldn't like to perform in India. They do. We just provide
them a more intimate and personal experience with music lovers in the city while also providing state of
the art equipment what with Blue Frog coming equipped with its own studio," she adds.

Hard Rock Cafe has already seen the likes of international artist like Daniel Bedingfield and Simon Webbe
perform at their venue last year. While Bedingfield was here as a part of charity dedicated to the upliftment
of underprivileged children, Webbe performed to promote his album. "The response in India has been
tremendous and people have appreciated the close experience with the artists that hard rock provides.
Performances like these provide a much better way for our clientele to get up close to their favourite
artists," says Sanjay Mahtani, executive CEO, Hard Rock Cafe. They plan to bring in atleast four renowned
internationals acts to the likes of Aerosmith and the Black Eyed Peas within the next six months. The cafe
is also testing the markets to try and bring in something on the lines of what they do in Hyde Park in
london frontlining several known artists.
Well, get ready to get closer to the feel of the music that sway your notes into play.