Many of us are familiar with Jugalbandi – a performance in classical music where more than one singer is involved and the notes are improvised and sung. Jugalbandi is often applauded by the audience as it takes music to the next level. But, how about a Jugalbandi with Siri?
Yes, you heard right. In this type of Jugalbandi, one of the performers is Siri – the “intelligent assistant” that enables the users of Apple devices to speak natural language voice commands in order to operate the mobile device and its apps.
Three Radio Jockeys of CLUB FM, UAE, Carl Frenais, Puja Unni and Pavithra Menon, made a video, where they have mixed beat-boxing with a Tyagaraja Kriti along with ‘jathis’. The entire creation is backed by a voice command by Siri, which is the most interesting part of it.
Carl spoke to The Kochi Post about the video.
“We saw a boy beat-box with the same Siri loop after asking ‘her’ the same question, i.e. what is one trillionth to the tenth power. We thought it could be done in an Indian version as well. It was never meant to leave the office WhatsApp group. But the next thing we know is that it has been uploaded on Facebook and gone viral. Today, it has over 30 million views through multiple posts,” he said.
He also expressed his surprise over how the video gained these many likes and views in a short span of time.
Apart from this, the team of RJs at CLUB FM have come out with other interesting creations as well. For example, a video comprising the various sounds of India that a major section of Indians still connect with was done for Independence Day. This work of theirs also received wide recognition among Indians throughout the world.
Sharing her experience on the video, Puja said, “The iPhone experiment was actually something random that we were doing at office. Being a dancer, I randomly picked up the beats and was murmuring dance ‘jathis’. And then we felt that it was sounding nice. Our colleague picked up the camera and we began to shoot. Pavithra joined in to sing. However, posting it on social media was completely unexpected. We tried to get it deleted, but by then it went out of hand. That’s how we went viral. I still meet people who ask me, ‘Oh, was it you saying thakadhimi?’. This was totally unexpected. This video was shot on my birthday. So, I take it as a birthday gift from the world.”
According to Carl, many of his colleagues are singers and musicians. They often indulge in various musical experiments at office. Carl, who hails from Kochi, is himself a songwriter and member of the band called Reda Mafia. The band creates music by mixing various backgrounds that result in a hybrid sound known as “Funk Jam”. According to Carl, it is basically about combining elements of funk, rock and roll, and blues, with a twist of pop music. The band is all set to perform in Kochi on September 17, 2017 at a programme called Tunes from Neptune.
