The Residency
It all started with a phone call back in August of 2020, in the peak of the lockdown, when Bharat started exploring Nimadi folk music that he had grown up listening to. He started working on a Kabir bhajan called “Guru Gyaan” and called Jayesh to play some Saxophone on it. As they got to talking more about the Bhajan and the different folk forms of Nimad, it became clear that each of these folk groups came with their own unique peculiarities/quirks and were seriously on the edge of extinction.
It soon became an obsession for both of them, exchanging videos of folk groups Bharat would find there and stories he heard since childhood. Over a Recce period of 3 months, Bharat and Deepak Yadav (engineer) would travel all over Nimad in a car, with his drum kit in the trunk, finding each folk group. The hunt for these groups was like finding a pin in a haystack as most of these were Nomadic tribes and would keep shifting from place to place. Towards the end of 3 months, we had 8 folk groups that they were ready to work with.
These were - The Dhangars, The Harbolas, Chichli Dhol, Bichoonath Baba, Kumawat Sisters, The Adivasis, Kalgi Turra and Kabir Panthis.
During a little break in the 2nd lockdown, they found a little window, packed their bags, studios and left for Chichli, a little village in Nimad, on the bank of river Narmada, surrounded by acres of Banana plantations.
They set up camp in Bharat’s ancestral mud house, turning it into a make shift studio by borrowing rugs from the people in the village. They got in electricity through wires, They learnt that mud absorbs sound and acts as a natural studio. It was a 4 people crew that went in to spend 25 days living in Chichli, documenting the sonic and visual landscape and jamming with the folk musicians - friends Dipak yadav (engineer) and Akshat Vijaywargiya (cinematographer) came to help them with this vision.
Over the first 10 days, they had 1 folk group coming in everyday to record with them. They would have a lot of chai, hear their stories, jam and eventually record them. In the nights, they worked on shaping these recordings into songs. Over the next 25 days, they completely immersed themselves in this world and came out of Chichli with an album.
Once back to their homes after the residency, then knew what we wanted and approached collaborators like Bombay Brass led by Rhys Sebastian on ‘Harbola Blues’ , Aftab Qadri Qawwal Party on ‘Pyaro Pyaro’ and Saurabh Suman on Bass for Pyaro Pyaro and Harbola Blues, to add on their essence into the songs. After a couple months, they were done writing and were now ready for Mix and Master.
They made a list of 10 people around the world that we wanted to work with. To their surprise, they got to work with our idol, Ben Findlay, who has woked with the the likes of Paul McCartney, Peter Gabriel, Robert plant, Tinraiwen, but most importantly, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. And The Night Song album by Nusrat Sahab had been a monumental record for both Jayesh and Bharat in their lives. So when he replied to their mail after hearing the demos, his words were, “Stillness and Confidence! It is very pastoral and is like an ode to the countryside”.
After 6 months of working with him, they finally had their album!
“Stillness and Confidence! It is very pastoral and is an ode to the countryside”
- Ben Findlay
Watch our entire journey here
Read our detailed interview with The Polis Project about the entire process.