The band 97 West creates music they call "Morph." "Morph is a musical form that seamlessly morphs from one cultural sound to another," says bassist Sharthok Chakraborty who gave the music such a name.
Sharthok, a disciple of Jazz guitar maestro Amyt Dutta, says the common string of their music was the usage of day to day sounds which are often 'neglected' as music .
The band is inspired by other experimental American musicians such as Ornette Coleman, John Cage and John Zorn.
While Coleman, who pioneered the 1960s free jazz movement drew heavily on blues music with his characteristic keening and crying sound, his contemporary American composer Cage became famous for his special piano which had its sound altered by placing various objects in the strings.
Also, Zorn who established himself within the downtown New York music movement and in the 1990s worked extensively in Japan bringing out avant garde experimental music.
Formed by a student of Grammy nominated Indian classical slide guitarist Pandit Debashish Bhattachary, Koustav, 97 West is possibly the only band in India to blend different cultures of the world and binds them in a single string.
Their songs like Golden Bride and Varanasi Underground provides the listener with a wide scope of musical horizons and a spatial travel across cultures, musically.
Producing music reminiscent of musicians like English guitarists Derek Belley and Fred Firth, the Indian band seems to navigate the tensions and space of musical experiments.
One of the unique ingredients of the band is that the band is composed of four melody players and does not have any percussionist.
"This is not co-incidence. Rather it is the intentional effort of the band to play percussive music on melody instruments, a concept which has yet been attempted in music," says Kaustav, who goes by the name 'The Acoustic Monk.'
Meanwhile, Suchal, a trained singer in Indian classical, whose vocals form the third instrument of the band, says, "Our music not only fuse eastern and western influences, but also from each and every culture around the world."
The wide unpredictability, coupled up with the continuous change in the cultural landscape, structure and topography of music, sound of 97 West seems like a journey, which paints images through sound.
"Be it in an unheard African village or in the streets of Turkey. One can actually hear and visualise the different influences taking shape in our compositions.
This very much sets us apart from other fusion bands," says Saptarshi, the keyboardist, who has also been associated with Urban Reflektions Jazz and Tanmoy Bose's...