Agneya, The Band With Fire Within
- 18 Jul 2017
- Sunaya
- Features
Aiming to purify the tormented soul with music
1.How do you intend on bringing back happiness through your music?
The key factors for any song to bring happiness are the content (lyrics, theme) and the way it sounds. We need to find a balance between the two. When you like something in particular and if somebody sings a song or writes something about it, the very subject itself gives you some sort of joy. But the thing is whether the song or the poem is doing justice to the subject. We always look forward to being honest towards the theme, the music, the raga or anything that matters, so that we can keep ourselves happy in the first place. We can spread happiness only when we are happy. ‘Pooram Rock’ is made with the same intention, same with ‘summer rain’.Whereas in ‘Dhwani’, the commitment is more towards the music.
2.Has fusing rock and Carnatic music together been a hard thing to do?
We always make sure that the song or the music sounds good (at least to us), rather than thinking about how much of rock or Carnatic is added into each other. It’s a creative process. Does the arrangement do justice to the emotion of the raga or the lyrics, is what matters more to us. It’s a give and take policy between us. Everything we do, from composing the melody to arranging it or setting the solos, are observed from a musical perspective rather than a technical perspective. Our guitarists are metal heads too, so it’s kind of a more exciting thing than a hard thing.
3.The name Agneya has a lot of history behind it. Are you hoping to eradicate evil from the surface of the earth?
‘Agneya’ means ‘born from fire’. Agni purifies all sins according to mythology, so is music. AGNEYA aims to purify the tormented human soul with music.
4.Where do you seek inspiration for your music from?
We get inspired by everything around us: every emotion, every sound, every view and every human. We get inspired from Dhikshithar to Dream Theatre.
FEW MORE THINGS WE WOULD LIKE TO SAY!
1.Carnatic music is often labeled as “Bhakthi sangeeth”, but we believe it is not just that, devotion is just one of the emotions which the form can represent. It is as capable as any form of music to represent any human emotion
2. Agneya is a team of musicians coming from different musical backgrounds. You can see hardcore Carnatic: Hindustani musicians, metalheads and western classical musicians in the band. But the best thing is we could always find a balance among these musical diversities in our production. It indeed is our biggest strength.
Text: Devika V Menon Images: Agneya
