Project Laya Live in Mumbai

The National Center for Performing Arts or NCPA as it is called, is a famous address for a lot of creative happenings in the city of Mumbai. Located in Narimaan Point overlooking the Arabian Sea, it is indeed one of the most beautiful locations in this cramped city. On the 9th of June 2007, it played host to the Live concert of Project Laya.

The Laya Project, born in 2005 is a project which sees musicians from six Tsunami-affected countries come together to highlight the traditional music and sounds of the areas which were wrecked by the 2004 tsunami. It is the brainchild of Sonya Mazumdar of Clementine Studios, Chennai, and Yotam Agam, a recording engineer from Israel. They had originally decided to collaborate on a folk-musical project; it ended as a unique amalgamation of folk sounds from the regions, under the label EarthSync. On the way, music connoisseurs from Malaysia, Canada and the Netherlands joined in.

The performance on stage was led by Paul Jacob of Chennai based Bodhi Muzzik, who has been working with folk musicians for the past 12 years now. He handled the bass and the keyboards sounds for the performance. Joining him was guest percussionist Chen Zimbalista from Israel. Rest of the artists were an amalgamation of classical and temple musicians from Tamilnadu, tribal percussionists, sufi singers and Buddhist monks from the Tashi Lhunpo monastery.

The sounds for the evening were primarily carnatic music fused with the vocal strains of sufi poetry. It was truly a mind blowing display of musical finesse by some undiscovered talents and the Laya platform has indeed done a truly commendable job.

The percussion piece by a group of tribal percussionists in the end was truly beyond compare and unfortunately I ran out of space to record that simply terrific performance. The Project Laya album (Rs. 500) and a documentary (Rs. 1200) is available in stores now and is a must buy. You can also place orders online on the site

An excerpt to give you an idea of the music in the album:

Two unknown singers from Myanmar croon a plaintive tune as percussion players from India lift the piece to a catchy beat; a Buddhist prayer cymbal chimes on the offbeat and the whole piece comes together as a song in the album, Laya Project. The musicians — a woman from a Maldivian isle, villagers of Polhena in Sri Lanka and Gayo in Indonesia, Buddhist monks from Myanmar, Tamil folk musicians from India and Thai islanders — are hardly known outside their sunny strips of coastal land. But they share a moment: the angst-ridden instance when the fury of the sea shattered their lives into smithereens, killed their children and washed away their homes. Laya Project is the sound of that pain, of wails waving across desolate shores, of the lapping of the waves against bodies half-buried in sand. It is also the music of survival.





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