09 August,2011 11:37 AM IST | | Sharin Bhatti
Eclectic, Grammy-award winning singer and composer, Imogen Heap explains exactly what she was doing in India last week and why she's excited to perform in the country in November at a music festival
It's a breezy, busy Saturday afternoon and under the legendary Banyan Tree at Prithvi Cafe, which usually is the resting place of a certain bearded flautist who plays to an unassuming audience, a different artiste from a distant land is narrating a lyric she recently co-wrote from her iPhone. "Tham ja, mud ja rey hawa..." she sings in her crisp, cockney accent. The voice belongs to the six-footer, British eclectic artiste Imogen Heap, who spent almost a week in Jaipur learning to sing in Hindi, among other things, for a new song she co-created with local music man, Vishal Dadlani.
Imogen Heap in rehearsal with Pentagram's Vishal Dadlani while on her
visit to Mumbai last week. PIC COURTESY/ KUNAL KAKODKAR
"It means stop, turn around oh strong wind. And we experienced a lightning storm on the rooftop of the palace we were staying in, when we finished recording the verse. Isn't that something?" she marvels.
The tagore connect
The musician has been in news recently for working on a certain secret project with music composer, Dadlani. The lyrics belongs to a modern-day interpretation of Rabindranath Tagore's 150-year-old poem, Where the Mind is Without Fear, which Heap deconstructed along with Dadlani for a new online TV show, called Dewar's The Dewarists, which will launch in September end and will also be released as Heap's new single, called #heapsong3 on her digitally released new album project.
"We call the song Minds Without Fear. Ever since I flew into Mumbai, last week, Vishal and I have been recording the song, co-writing it and filming the process for this new travelling online TV show, that chronicles different musician's collaborations, while they are travelling to distant lands," explains Heap, who journeyed through Jaipur, recording samples of various Rajasthani instruments including dhol, tabla, tumbi, harmonium and more in a small music shop.
"I played the harmonium in the mid-section, played some drums and danced with ghungroos on my feat in the shop. The shop owner also chipped in on various instruments. Some people walked in the shop, curious to know what is happening inside, and we recorded them singing the chorus with us, 'Jiji Jiji Rajaji'. It was wonderful," says Heap, who even improvised with 30 odd nine-year-olds she found on the street and recorded their voices as well.
"I carry a small studio with me wherever I go. I put all the samples in, clean them up and loop them around to see what else I needed. I think I've got most of it," shares Imogen, whose talent spans from the craft of songwriting to elaborate live multi-instrumental improvisations, building on a unique voice and unusual tech-savviness.
Art and sound
Self-produced, independent, engaged, she blurs the boundaries between pure art forms and creative entrepreneurship, and uses her knowledge of the web and social networking to communicate and now even collaborate with her fans in pioneering ways. In her new album project, Imogen is releasing collaborative songs once in three months, with each song distinct in characterisation and chooses to share the process of the songwriting with her eager audience.
Her first song of the album, Lifeline was created with samples of sounds that her fans sent in that. It even includes the sound of a dishwasher and "the sound of a new-born baby's heartbeat that my brother sent. I used that as the tempo of the song," reveals Heap, adding, "The fact that I can produce my own music and share each single at a time, allows me the freedom to not be tied down to making an album. I can do other things, spend time with my family and even give soundtracks for movies.
The Grammy-Award winning singer will travel next to China as part of a British Council initiative to work with local musicians for her next single.
Second coming
Her second Heap Song, as the tracks on the album are called, was a 3D track called Propeller Seeds. Even though her visit to India was around the album, she will return in November, as the headlining act for NH7 festival, which will be held in Pune.
"I am very excited about playing here. That should be interesting to play to an audience one thought one would never play to. But I admire the music form of the country," she says, who will also be travelling to Bhutan at the same time, to compose a soundtrack for a new movie.
