Charanjit Singh: 2014

In 2010, soon after hearing a record called Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat, I sought out and met the creator of this music, #CharanjitSingh. With questions in mind and a deep excitement to finally meet the man behind this remarkable music, I and my friend Samrat B went to his home in Mumbai, and I rolled camera to document the event. I quickly cut the video on the train back to Delhi from Bombay, and soon uploaded it here -    • Charanjit Singh: 2010  .

I could not have foreseen then how meeting him then and making that short film would alter the course of my life multiple times over.

In the ten years since, I went on to begin to work with hundreds of other musicians here in India. In retrospect - and in particular over the course of finally making this short film ten years after first meeting Charanjit - I realize now how incredibly influential his outlook on his work and his life was to me. He took artistic risks not because he was a gambler, but because he knew what he was doing was absolutely and utterly worth doing. It left a seismic effect on not only to how I thought about my own work, but also what kind of artistry I wanted to showcase and support. He was utterly convinced of his craft, even if no one understood what he was doing when he first released Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat in 1982. That conviction in ones vision spoke volumes to me. It still does.

Between 2010 and 2015, I shot hundreds of hours of him - his performances as Charanjit Singh Live with Dutch producer and sound engineer Thee J Johanz, his private shows, his time at home and in rehearsal, and all the points in between as we toured internationally. This short film finally presents this footage, anchored by the only formal interaction I had with him on camera in March 2014, over the course of the setting sun on the terrace of his former home in Mumbai.

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This video comprises one part of "Plugging In The Indian Roots of Electronic Music" - http://bit.ly/CS-GAC - a commissioned exhibition that contours the tremendous effect analogue synthesis had on South Asian pop culture.

The collection is presented as a part of "Music, Makers & Machines: A Brief History of Electronic Music". Visit Google Arts & Culture for more.