Love for music, thayir sadam brought this band together

Soon after graduating from his college in the year 2016, Aditya Veera knew he wanted to work on making music. The story of how he found the right partners to form a band, and how they happened to give a name to the band is a rather interesting one, filled with serendipity and love for a bowl of curd rice. “I have been a singer and was sure after college that I wanted to make serious music. That was when I incidentally met Sundar Subramaniam, a drummer, with whom I instantly connected. Later, we heard Bharadwaj Krishnan, playing saxophone at a club. Over time, we gradually expanded our band,” recollects 25-year-old Aditya, one of the founders of the band.

“When we happened to get a chance to perform at an open mic event in 2016, we didn’t have a band name. The host of the show insisted that we needed one to perform. That was when we got into a huddle, and it struck us that we were all Tamilians who loved the simplicity of thayir sadam (curd rice). We wanted our music to be the same way — catering to all kinds of audience. That was when we gave ourselves the name Thayirsadam Blues,” he adds.

The five-member band has been performing across cities in the country with their unique blend of acoustic, modern pop, rock, jazz, funk, reggae music, Tamil rap and even Carnatic. They have performed over 200 shows so far in different cities. “We are an experimental project that plays a variety of genres. The speciality of our band is that all of us can sing, while playing different instruments. The project is very close to my heart and we aim to take our music to places across the country,” asserts Aditya, who hails fromCoimbatore.

Even though the band took form in Pune, a few of the band members moving to other cities eventually led to the birth of a Bengaluru chapter as well. Aditya, along with singer and saxophone player Ranjani, drummer Baheej, bass player Shawn, and keyboardist Kenneth play as part of the band’s Bengaluru chapter, while three other musicians Bharadwaj, Zion and Alex are in the Pune chapter.

The Mozart of Madras AR Rahman, singer-composer Sid Sriram, singer Benny Dayal, along with popular English and American bands like Coldplay, Eagles, Maroon5, Eagles and singers Eric Clapton, Frank Sinatra, Bruno Mars are some of the inspirations for the band. “We want a fine blend of these influences in our sound. As jazz isn’t very popular in Tamil music, we wanted to introduce it to Tamil audience. We are looking to perform more tribute gigs in Chennai and in other cities of south India,” adds Aditya.

Working at a global consulting firm and managing a few artistes when he’s not making music, Aditya feels that it is hard for independent musicians to support their livelihoods through music alone. “Performance venues take long time periods, even two months, to process the payments, making it hard for musicians. My aim is to work towards laying down artiste rights, which the whole music industry can agree upon for the benefit of performers,” he remarks.