Mother India
Mother India 21st Century Remix
In a compositional team with DJ Tigerstyle and drummer David Shaw, we were commissioned by Indy Hunjan of Kala Phool to re-score the classic Indian film Mother India for live performance along to a showing of the film. The film was re-edited into a silent 45 minute version for the show by Josh Ford. The album was mixed by Ollie Pile and is purchasable from the Kala Phool website.
So far we have performed the show at The South Bank in London, The Sydney Opera House, Esplanade Park in Singapore, the Bandshell in Prospect Park NYC, The Arts Centre in Melbourne, The Edinburgh Festival and many other excellent venues.
Mother India 21st Century Remix has had a fantastic critical response with The Guardian newspaper describing it as a powerful and moving glimpse of a challenging, unwieldy masterpiece and New York’s Village Voice calling it a deeply moving tribute to the film. The show has also received backing from PRS, The Arts Council and The British Council enabling its development and international reach.
Shown below are a couple of tracks that I wrote for Mother India 21st Century Remix. The first, Jhaptal, is the finale of the show and follows a retrospective of the relationship between Birju and his mother in anticipation of the film’s tragic conclusion. The title of the track, Jhaptal is a reference to an Indian Tala which is used in the track but in an unusual way, alternating between a conventional and then reversed version of itself.
The second track, Metamorphosis, depicts the change in Radha’s children from boys into men in parallel with their storm destroyed land being transformed into a rich farm through years of gruelling labour. This track was also included on the official compilation album of the 2009 WOMEX conference, distributed to all delegates.
Both tracks make use of extended ornamented melodies in a subtle tribute to the great songs of Naushad which made the original Mother India Film such a massive worldwide hit.
See my portfolio entry for the Mother India project here
