Credit: Special Arrangement
For Bengaluru band Derek and The Cats (DATC), every song is built around a feeling or emotion. That their music is instrumental, makes this principle all the more significant. “Instrumental music does not tell you what you should feel. It allows you to arrive at the emotion yourself,” says Derek Mathias, who brought the band together in 2022.
Next week, the band will perform in Bengaluru as part of the Jazz India Circuit. The band also comprises Joel Rozario (percussions), Kenneth Besterwitch (drums), Gautam David (saxophone), Anand Murali (keyboards), Vishal Variar (bass) and Adesh Vinod (guitars).
Mathias always wanted to be a cricketer. “I was selected in the state probables list, but after seeing the level of cricket that was being played, I realised I could not match it. When I stopped training, I had plenty of time on my hands and somehow started exploring my musical interests,” he says.
The 26-year-old is a trained pianist, who started learning the instrument when he was a child. “I trained in piano for about eight years. But back then it was just another class I would attend. It was only when I was in university that I fully immersed myself in music purely for the joy of it,” he shares. He discovered his love for Queen and Red Hot Chili Peppers, and eventually found his way to jazz. “Though DATC is not a jazz band, it is heavily inspired by jazz,” he explains, adding that he would describe their music as dance music that blends Afro house, funk and techno.
The beauty of jazz is that one will never hear the same song played the same way twice. It evolves with time and with the artiste, Mathias states. Likewise, the band’s songs are not always played the same way at every performance. “The way the song is played is a reflection of how the song speaks to us at the time,” he explains.
In August 2025, the band released their second album ‘People to Meet, Places to See’. The album was written while touring the country. “I gave myself and the band a target of writing one song in every city we visited,” he recalls. ‘Cubbon Park’, written in their home city, aims to capture the feeling of lazy Sunday morning walks in the park. Another track, ‘Leticia’, is named for Mathias’ grandmother. “She was in poor health and I was dealing with the emotions of seeing someone I love go through a serious health problem and that is when I wrote the song,” he explains. In ‘Techno police’, a sudden police siren that went past their studio at the perfect time, became an integral part of the track.