Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Bhubaneswar, July 23:

Folk Beats, the Sambalpuri band in Bangalore boasts of being a one of its kind outside Odisha. Garden city Bangalore witnessed the birth of this unique musical band Folk Beats founded by three Odia music enthusiasts, Shoban Das aka Babal, Satyajeet Chaini and Shreekant Kumar in 2014. Armoured with dhol, nisan, tasha, jhanj , jhumka, turee , mahuri  a few typical  desi instruments used for playing folk music, they are making waves in Bangalore .

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The journey began with a twist when Babal bought a tasha and dhol from his hometown Sambalpur in Odisha. The group of friends while returning from their puja vacation by Yeshwantpur Express started singing and playing the instruments inside the compartment. To the delight of the novice musicians this snowballed into a live performance. “It turned out to be a solid two hours of non-stop musical mania .The co- passengers, pantry staff, ticket collector all participated and we were treated to a free lunch of chicken and rice,” said a grinning Sreekant, who is a marketing professional and one of the co-founders.

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“Initially, there were a lot of teething problems but the most painful one was finding space to practice. Initially we began our practice inside an empty shop which was located on top of a saloon in Munekolala at Marathali. We had hardly played for more than an hour when the saloon guy complained of the loud music and we had to leave the place,” said Babal. Now they practise inside a school on weekends by bribing the official.fb2

“The intensity and devotion with which they practice has to be seen to be believed. It is filled with a lot of energy and physical strength,” said a smiling Minakshi, wife of Shreekant. “We are all professionals working in different streams like IT, marketing, sales etc. Living in a place which is not our own and building an identity for ourselves is a challenging task. We go through a lot of stress in our professional life and music is the only way that we de-stress,” said Satyajeet who is a senior software engineer at Yokogawa.

The band got its first break in 2015 and performed at the Orissa Puja Committee (OPC) in Bangalore. The same year on September 27 their first album Gunjurugunja was released at the Nuakhai Bhetghat which was organized by Juhar Parivar a socio-cultural organization. Same year they bagged an award for the song Gunjurgunja in the Assam folk festival in the dance category.

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“Today, Folk Beats is a sought after band and has become the first choice for Odia celebrations like Raja mahotsava, Utkal Diwas, Pushpuni Bhetghat etc. “Our band is invited to entertain the audience with desi musical numbers which can be as varied as a “Dalkhai”, “Rasarkeli”, “Rangabati”, “Gunjurgunja’, or a soulful romantic “Ae sajani”. Each member in our band is determined to preserve the originality of the songs and we also welcome other folk music. Our new album based on Sambalpuri devotional songs is going to be released on Nuakhai Bhetghat on September 11 this year,” informed Shreekant.