The Vachana Band

The Vachana Band is about four years old, although its members have been friends and fellow-musicians much longer. It began with some tentative experiments. The vachanas are sung in traditional Indian ragas. Over 800 years old, they are written in free verse, in protest against the strict demands of metre and formalism. The vachana poets rebelled against the hypocrisy of tradition, and questioned the supremacy of the Vedic scriptures. It is this spirit of questioning and dissidence that The Vachana Band seeks to explore. The band's main members are Supriya Acharya, who has sung for several feature films, S R Ramakrishna, harmonium player and music composer for scores of theatre, TV and film productions, Caleb Alexander, sessions guitarist for some of India's biggest film singers, and Joe Anthony, drummer for the country's top bands. The band's influences are Indian classical and folk music, and popular genres of Western music.