Take the fiddle of Riverdance, a Bollywood soundtrack and electronic beats and throw them together and you have something that might come close to the unique music of Delhi 2 Dublin.
The band came together on stage at the Vancouver Celtic Festival when Tarun Nayar was given the task of curating a performance as part of his DJ collective Beats without Borders.
“I just reached out to these people that I kind of heard of in the Vancouver music scene,” said Nayar. “I think that moment where it all worked out was a magic moment and I think we all knew that on stage and that’s one of the reasons that we continued to work together.”
Delhi 2 Dublin is made up of Nayar on an Indian drum called the tabla and electronics, Sara Fitzpatrick and Jaron Freeman-Fox on fiddle, Sanjay Seran on vocals, Andrew Kim on guitar and electric sitar and Ravi Binning on the tabla and a South American drum called the Dhol.
“You never really know how the audience is going to respond,” said Nayar. “Sometimes you get a bunch of students who come out and just have a great time, and not to offend our older fans but sometimes you’ll get some older people thinking they’ll hear a nice acoustic show and then they’ll see 10 sub woofers and it will be their worst nightmare.”
Delhi 2 Dublin has taken the stage across Canada, Asia, the United Stages and Europe, but Nayar said the crowd in Nelson seems to get what they are doing.
“Some people just don’t get it, but Nelson gets it,” he said.
Even though Nayar’s roots are in Indian classical music, he said at the band’s core they are electronic music heads.
“Shambhala is one of our favourite festivals,” said Nayar. “We want to play there again. It’s just so wild and awesome. The sound is so incredible. PK Sound is just big and huge. Our music works at places like folk fests but we’re electronic heads so playing in a place where electronic music is appreciated and encouraged like a rave is a lot of fun. That’s what we write the music for.”
Delhi 2 Dublin is currently working on a new album which Nayar said is the most different and creative album to date.
“Each album has been very different and the one that we’re writing now — that will come out at the end of August — has been very collaborative. We’ve all worked on it together,” he said.
“The previous albums were more independent, but this one has been us sitting in a room together usually myself, Sanjay and Andrew and just spending up to 15 hours just jamming out on ideas and following where every the creative path takes us.”
Delhi 2 Dublin is playing a sold out show at Spiritbar tonight. But fans of the band can catch former fiddle player Kytami in her new project Violin vs. Vinyl on March 3.
