Churning soulful melodies: Band Sanam

Mumbai-based band Sanam, which is a hot favourite on YouTube, in a freewheeling chat talk about their music, song and future projects

“GulabiAankhen”, “Mere Mehboob QayamatHogi”, “Lag Jaa Gale” among others are evergreen classics churned by stalwarts of the industry. These soulful melodies tend to uplift the environment or mood of a party at any given point. Taking these classical renditions to the Gen Y, Mumbai-based pop-rock band Sanam has made mellifluous covers of these original hits. The band garnered accolades for their renditions of these cult hits. The band comprises of SanamPuri (Lead Vocals), Samar Puri (Lead Guitar), Venky S (Bass Guitar) and Keshav Dhanraj (Drums). Their YouTube channel is amongst India’s top ten channel with a million followers.

SanamPuri, the lead vocalist of the band has sung a few songs in Bollywood too. “We are really lucky and honoured to have so many wonderful people following us on YouTube and other social media. When we were growing up, the accepted truth was that, to make it in the music industry, you need to either work in the Bollywood film industry or you need to be signed to a big music label. Those were the only options. However, in this digital age, things are different. Many of the biggest artists in the world today were discovered on YouTube by uploading simple videos made in the comfort their own homes.”

Sanam states that money, contacts and influence are not important factors on YouTube. “If your product is good and if people like it, you will find your video spreading on its own. This is what inspires us the most! Out of billions of videos being uploaded on YouTube, it is really overwhelming to know that more than a million people have subscribed to our channel and enjoy listening to the music we put out.”

Keshav Dhanraj, the percussionist of the band says that being the first Independent music artists in India to have a million subscribers on YouTube is just the start. “We are hoping to see many more talented independent artists come up in India real soon! We started our YouTube channel when our manager (fifth member of our band) Ben Thomas suggested we upload a few videos online so he could showcase our work to the industry. In that process, we learnt a lot by doing everything on our own. This gave us the confidence to continue to put out more music that we wanted to share with the rest of the world!”

About formation of the band Samar Puri, the lead guitarist, says “Muscat, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore… We came from these cities to jam up in Mumbai and make music together. Mumbai really pushes you to make your dreams come true. And we are so different in our musical influences; it is god’s grace how we work so well together.”

Adding to that Venky S, the bass guitarist shares, “Collectively, we lean towards a pop rock sound… It was the common ground. Bands were part of the popular culture when we were growing up. We love those power ballads and a big hook or riff that can make a song last a lifetime.”

There a plenty of remix and cover songs in the market. Does the alarming number of cover songs in mainstream industries across various music scenes imply that we've stagnated? “I think it's a form of paying tribute and an appreciation of the artist's work. It's imperative for the musician to make it sound good and put their sound in their cover of the tune. As long as the intention is true, I don't see this as a bad thing. We've in turn learnt a lot by rendering classics and other tunes that we really like on our channel,” Keshav Dhanraj shares.

It's pretty hard in a city like Mumbai to survive as a band as there aren't enough venues to support bands on a regular basis and which cater to the various styles of music they offer. “We can only hope this changes with more venues popping up and hopefully the government can support some of the owners of the venue with an intention to provide entertainment for the music lovers in this city that never sleeps,” Venky says.

“At the moment bands need to tour other metropolitan cities which have live venues like Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata, etc, as well as live music festivals that are organised by different event companies across the country. We've also had a string of successful performances in countries such as Suriname, Netherlands, Mauritius and Trinidad recently. We've also tried to reach out to more people in India with renditions of regional songs - we hope to learn more regional tunes and release them in good time.”

The band is excited about our original releases this year. “We hope we can put out at least 4-5 new originals before the end of the year. Also, public performances - Our YouTube channel has been viewed in almost every country in the world! We didn’t expect our music to reach out to so many countries. We have had some really memorable experiences in our concerts abroad. Music has taken us to some of the most beautiful places on Earth,” Keshav Dhanraj concludes.

By Navin Pivhal