Sitting in a circle, six men tap their fingers fast on the instruments kept before. Music comes out, not a single word is heard though. The all-men percussion band Rhythm Circle stands true to its name in every respect. Two years since its take off, the Kochi-based musicians have been a wonder in the circle of music bands here, as they stick too much on creating music out of rhythm. Bijoy J., founder and one of the percussionists stumbled upon this idea on one of his tours. Carrying his Djembe, he travelled to North East, meeting various traditional musicians, travel musicians and street musicians.
“I went to Rishikesh, and towards sunset, I saw people form a circle and beat drums. I joined them. In Sikkim and Kashmir, there is this motley group who engage time this way,” he recaps. Coming home, the idea took shape into Rhythm Circle. In due course, Sajeer Khan, Nekheeb Shah, Harikrishnan S., Jijoy K.J., Joyal Joy and Arun Kumar joined their journey together.
But in Bijoy’s view, all-percussion music has been very much in existence in Kerala. “Don’t we have chenda melam?” he reminds us. The band is equipped with all these oh-so-familiar to outlandish instruments. The line-up includes Djembe, Darbuka, Congas, Didgeridoo, Timbales, Bongos, Shakers, Cajon, Cymbals, Cowbells, Blocks and Tambourine. Sometimes the chenda too gets in to action. “It is not that we always play in the same pattern with one set of instruments. There are six people and we keep switching the instruments ,” he says. The band is open to Latin American, Australian, African, Arabian and Cuban music. They did give inclusion of vocals the thought, but was dropped later. A vocal effect was created using Didgeridoo, available in the playlist on the band website rythmcircle.com.
Conducting performance for tourists, the band moved out to public. In Kochi about a year ago, they conceptualised ‘drum circle’ an evening show on street. “On weekends, we play at Fort Kochi. Different from the way where musicians play and others just stand around and listen, drum circle lets everyone who knows to play come and join us, and we beat together,” he says.
Bijoy foresees his band grow from strength to strength in another two years, come up with an own music album and tour extensively across the world to popularise their kind of music.
