The Importance of Being Original

Thermal and a Quarter’s music institute Taaqademy works with four middle schoolers between the age group of 9 to 12 to create four original singles part of a Berserk Album. 

Nearly four years ago, Bangalore-based groove-funk rock band Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ) began a teaching initiative called Taaqademy to inculcate new and original music into the stream of consciousness of musically enthusiastic young individuals. In August 2013, founding members Bruce Lee Mani (frontman of TAAQ) and Rajeev Rajagopal (drummer of TAAQ) tied up with the art conclave Berserk, organized by Art Bengaluru and curated by Sublime Art Galleria, where four children, between the age group of 9 and 12, were guided to create their own original singles that would feature on a collection called Berserk Album.

On April 11 this year, Taaqademy released a video on YouTube (watch below) capturing snippets of the songs that were written and performed by these four young musicians. Co-founder Bruce Lee Mani speaks to us about working with kids, the idea behind Taaqademy, and the latent satisfaction in original compositions.

SoundTree: How and when did this association come about between Taaqademy and Berserk?

Bruce Lee Mani: Berserk is basically a workshop that happened for the first time last year. It was organized by the Sublime Art Gallery. It was a residential workshop that took 15 kids to a venue and kept them there for 4 days. So, 15 kids for each stream – in music, theatre, dance and art. They had different facilitators for each stream and the kids were taken in by auditions that were conducted in each school. Then in the workshop, the kids was taken through various aspects where they were taught about musical instruments, performances, jam sessions and a bunch of other things. That was the workshop that happened.

Out of the workshop, four kids were chosen and given a sort of endorsement by Taaqademy. We worked with them for 6 months after the workshop and apart from teaching them music, we helped them to write and record a set of songs which is what the album is about. It has 4 songs because there are 4 students. The workshop happened in August but our work with the students that you saw in the video started after that.

ST: How old were these kids?

BLM: The youngest kid was 9 and the eldest was 12 and a half.

ST: Take us through the process of helping kids create original music.

BLM: First you start with getting better at your chosen skill and one of them was a guitar player while the other three were singers, which means they already learnt a little bit about the theory in music, different styles and so on. So they had good grounding in technique and singing in general. Then at the end of a few months of getting them to be better musicians, we started working to see if we could try and create a song – choosing a topic, coming up with lyrics, studying other songs, figuring out rhyme and metre, and how to get a coherent idea for a song.

This was the first time the kids were doing it. They were very young. It’s a long process. Getting them to write something on a topic they’re happy with (laughs) – all that takes quite a bit of time. But eventually they wrote lyrics and then we tried to put a tune to it. It didn’t matter if the first tune you came up with was based on something you’d already heard. But starting with that and making something else was a slow process. Sometimes you just came up with one line for a whole week. Slowly they get more confidence, they opened up and that’s how it happened. The first song is always the toughest because you don’t know anything about anything.

At the Berserk Festival 2013

ST: At Taaqademy, do you teach students to compose originals or was this only for Berserk?

BLM: Yes, as much as we can. Because as soon as they cross a certain level in their musicianship (since Taaqademy is run by us, and we have this ‘do-your-own-thinking’ thing), we try and encourage that. Whichever of our students shows an inclination to do their own thing, we push them pretty hard saying ‘Come on, do it!’, and we’ll help you record it, put it out and give you a platform. If you see our YouTube page, there are quite a few bands of the same age or slightly older doing their own songs live on stage. There’s no satisfaction better than that.

ST: What was the audition process like to select these kids? How long did it go on for? On what grounds did you select them?

BLM: Since the auditions were for 4 different streams, each stream went separately to each school. It had a process and the school was notified. The school sent a few kids that already showed some musical inclination or were part of the choir. They came in and performed something. They were selected not just on their performance but also on their overall confidence level, how they present themselves. Because the program could not accommodate more than 15 people, we had to have some kind of filtration. So the most interested kids came on-board, more than the best performers. It wasn’t restricted to international schools. It went to all kinds of schools.

Read our previous interview with Thermal and a Quarter here.

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