JOIN USA collective of musicians, aficionados and believers in music activism, Space, the music band which started with Tritha Sinha and Ritika Singh in 2008, in Kolkata, has been growing by leaps and bounds. Sinha is a trained musician in Indian classical for 25 years and Singh, with a background in the western genre, collaborated for a new concept which is a multi-lingual, multi-genre, multi-arts outfit focusing on the point of view of the modern Indian woman.
Paul Schneiter also accompanies Sinha and Singh on drums every now and then, though he mostly lives in Paris, his hometown.
“In view of the fact that there is a lack of ‘space’ in different circles of society; in relationships; in ideas; on the roads and in living conditions etc, Space thought of creating the space with our band,” says Sinha, the lead vocalist and music composer.
Sinha adds, “Space started with an idea of expressing against violence on women. Today, we have managed to continue our passive, steady fight as a way of life. We welcome more than just musicians in our space, instrumentalists, singers, actors, painters, dancers, photographers, costume designers, make-up artists, jugglers, gypsies, tramps and thieves have also shared our ‘space’.”
Space not only experiments with different artistes, they also experiment with various genres and instruments to compose their ideas.
“When we started, we did not know all the instruments, but we have been learning. We have made music with toys, broken guitars, Tibetan prayer bowls, ghungroos, street percussive instruments, sometimes electronic live loops from a laptop and any other miscellaneous paraphernalia. Also, we made music not only in one genre. We met an Italian pianist named Alessandro Valdambrini in one of our jam sessions, he had a ‘jazz’ touch to his music. We collaborated with him too, to make some of our songs,” says Sinha.
Likewise Space has created songs, in Indian classical, western, electronic, ragas fusion and many other styles.
“One of our very first songs was, Kali’s Forest. The song was conceptualised around a real incident, when my domestic help came home with bruises on her body. After a lot of probing she confessed to have been beaten up by her husband. The song says there are various such silent stories which our hidden in our society; that when we walk
on the roads, we do not exclaim at those marks we see on so many women,”
Sinha remarked.
Though space has deviated from topics of women, with songs like, Zindagi Bitani, which is about honour killing and forced arranged marriages and If Despair, which is a song that speaks of corruption and political thought in Indian people, women-centric songs are what they are most known for.
Space has composed songs in various languages, including Punjabi. Bengali, Hindi and English.
“To keep tradition and modernity both, we have made language an important tool to communicate with a maximum range of people,” explains Sinha.
The group has also collaborated with eminent ideologues like Sheela Raj, Mallika Sarabhai and Eve Ensler.
To interact with the music group Space, one can log on to www.facebook.com/
soundofspace.