CHENNAI: Psychedelic lights, Rastafarian hairdos, drums on one side and tablas on the other, tamburas alongside electric guitars…the stage was set, the lights dimmed and then there was his voice. Kailasa, the Kailash Kher concert organised by The New Indian Express at the Sir Mutha Venkatasubba Rao hall in Harrington Road, Chennai on Sunday evening was pure magic. As TNIE Editorial Director Prabhu Chawla said in his introductory speech, Kailash Kher’s music truly broke all barriers.The sufi magician’s magnetic voice had eight-year-olds and eighty-year-olds alike clapping and dancing with equal enthusiasm. The singer and his band Kailasa performed a few numbers from their albums, apart from Kher’s Bollywood hits. While ‘Aao Ji’ had the audiences swaying to its mellifluous tune, ‘Tauba Tauba’ had them tapping their feet to its rhythmic pulse.A true performer, Kher offered more than just music to his eager fans. His songs were interspersed with bits of what one could call stand-up comedy. He regaled his fans with anecdotes about how he once unwittingly asked listeners at a Las Vegas performance to shake their booty to his sufi tunes, which of course invited peals of laughter from the responsive crowd here. To please the Chennai audience, Kher performed his popular ‘Ma Meri Ma’ with a twist. The ‘mamma’ in the song was replaced by ‘amma’. Calling himself an aghori, Kher talked about how he knew nothing about terms like ‘musicology’ and ‘nuances’. “On my blog, I call myself an unintelligent, mad musician,” says Kher. And you can’t help but secretly agree with him. For it takes a bit of insanity to produce such insanely soulful music.
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