For over half a century now, ace percussionist Trilok Gurtu has had a flagrant disdain for boundaries. Not because he does not value tradition or its indicators, but mostly because he isn’t satisfied with the prevailing idea at the heart of Indian classical music — freedom within a discipline. The antidote to this lies in Trilok’s restiveness, which allows him to go into unexplored realms. “It’s a difficult path but more satisfying,” he says.
It’s no wonder then that any performance by him is made unique with his extensive “floor kit”, one that features a metal bucket filled with water that sits next to his tabla which is placed next to a bunch of cymbals, strings of shells, congas, gongs, snares, dhol, cowbells, and ghungroos, among others. The results have been dazzling. And very often, for years, have found criticism from purists. At 71, he has no patience to deal with them.
“Name one Indian artiste who is export quality. A lot of Indian artistes go abroad and play for the Indian diaspora only. They aren’t creating new audiences… I have come to a place where I don’t want to play with many Indian musicians anymore. Very often they do not come prepared, or don’t want to rehearse or end up saying things like, ‘stage pe dekh lenge (we’ll figure it on the stage)’. In fact, a lot of famous people get away with this. So I told the organisers this time that I am not going to play if the musicians are not the right kind in Mumbai. I’ll play with some other group or I’ll play solo. And yes, probably with (composers) Ajay-Atul, too, because they are original in their creations,” says Germany-based Trilok, in a telephone conversation from Mumbai, a place of his childhood memories. He is on his two-city India tour (February 9 in Mumbai and February 11 in Delhi), and will present an improvisational jazz performance — a collaboration with the Israeli ensemble, Castle in Time Orchestra, wherein Trilok will attempt to showcase how “different musical cultures like India and Israel can sound like one unit”.
Trilok’s transformation into a world-class artiste, where he is called a “revolutionary” by international musicians and critics and is hailed as a world-music pioneer who’s embraced jazz, combined it with Indian classical music, and abstract improvisations, can largely be credited to his own attempt to constantly look to the far side and innovate. “That and my mother’s music and the access I got to music because of that,” says Trilok about his mother, thumri legend, Shobha Gurtu. “She was a gentle person, initiating me into the world of classical music and supporting me in my endeavours,” says Trilok.
The music at home led him to a love for percussion at four, when he’d play the dining table while being fed or pound the tabla in the music room. He formally began training in the tabla at 11 from Manikrao Popatkar of the Benares gharana and then in dholak from Ustad Abdul Karim. He also learned under the tutelage of famed tabla exponents Ahmed Jan Thirakwa and Pandit Suresh Talwalkar. For years, Trilok accompanied his mother during her concerts. He did well but never felt it was all that he wanted to do.
His elder brother, Ravi Gurtu, was a well-known percussionist in Bollywood and introduced him to percussion instruments from all over the world. This was also when Trilok was listening to a lot of Carnatic music, especially from Palghat Raghu. “He had a huge impact on me. To me, Carnatic music came very close to African music,” says Trilok. He began playing drums in 1969 when he was 18, and joined Waterfront — a band with musicians Soli Dastur, Adil Batliwalla, Roger Dragonette and Derek Julien. They would perform originals at nightclubs and discotheques, but it wasn’t working. Even the Parsis of Bombay weren’t comfortable with ‘Indian people playing Western music”.
“So we thought let’s travel abroad. We played in Germany, France and Switzerland. It still wasn’t working as those people were still completely away from Indian music and this combination with Western and fusion, was not what they found interesting,” says Trilok, who then began busking in the streets of Europe because the money was over and there was no food. Trilok played with anything he found — plates, pots, pans. The band members soon decided to return but Trilok stayed back in Italy and decided to learn by listening to free jazz. He returned to Mumbai after a few months and joined another avant-garde musician — RD Burman.
In the mid-’70s, Trilok applied for admission at the Berklee College of Music, USA. He was about 23 and keen to study music arrangement but the dean of the school was not impressed. “I told myself I’ll come back one day, with my own music. With that, I also decided to not play in the US,” says Trilok, who years later was asked by Berklee to do a percussion workshop besides being called the “Best Percussionist”, seven times in the Critics Poll of popular American magazine, Downbeat. “The rejection helped me look more deeply at my own culture and music, and understand Indian music better,” says Trilok. He soon met American jazz trumpeter Don Cherry who became his mentor. In 1976, he went to Munich to study African music.
But Trilok’s debut album USFRET (CMP 1988) took a while. Its lead single Shobharock had his mother singing a Maalkauns bandish with violins, synths, heavy drums, bongos, a horn section and electric guitars. The piece remains one of the finest examples of world music even today. Trilok had suddenly found his feet.
His second album came from something he heard in his parents’ Grant Road home from tabla exponent Pandit Shanta Prasad. “Yeh sangeet zinda jaadu hai,” says Trilok. Years later, in 1991, he’d create Living Magic and follow it up with a number of albums that are hailed as masterpieces in world music. Besides playing with a number of international artistes like John Mclaughlin, Trilok was also a part of Tabla Beat Science, a band created by tabla exponent Ustad Zakir Hussain and American bassist Bill Laswell.
But, in India, fame has always eluded Trilok — he is still to make it to popular consciousness. “But that wasn’t the idea anyway. Music has nothing to do with fame. I am here to play. Our music is spiritual and finding it and then creating something new with it has been more than enough,” he says.
