Over the past couple of days, a version of British rock musician Eric Clapton's Layla has been enthusiastically forwarded by Indian users of social media sites. The recording, by Krish Ashok, retrofits the rock classic with Sanskrit lyrics and presents itself as Leela.
On his Soundcloud page, Ashok describes his musical endeavours like this: "I take the ridiculous and the sublime, add cellos, violins, guitars and random internet collaborators to make music of sorts." In this instance, his collaborators are SP Suresh and Vaishnavi Sundararajan, who wrote the Sanskrit lyrics. Ashok has most of the credits on the track for himself: vocals, guitars, violin, piano, bass, drum programming, mixing and mastering.
As it turns out, this isn't the first time Layla has been given subcontinental roots. In 2007, writer-musician Amit Chaudhuri reinterpreted the same tune on his album This Is Not Fusion. Chaudhuri's take is titled The Layla Riff to Todi. As the writer explains in his liner notes, this recontextualisation is the result of a "moment of mishearing". One morning, as he was practising Raag Todi, he heard the notes of Layla in them.
Here's what Chaudhri came up with.
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On his Soundcloud page, Ashok describes his musical endeavours like this: "I take the ridiculous and the sublime, add cellos, violins, guitars and random internet collaborators to make music of sorts." In this instance, his collaborators are SP Suresh and Vaishnavi Sundararajan, who wrote the Sanskrit lyrics. Ashok has most of the credits on the track for himself: vocals, guitars, violin, piano, bass, drum programming, mixing and mastering.
As it turns out, this isn't the first time Layla has been given subcontinental roots. In 2007, writer-musician Amit Chaudhuri reinterpreted the same tune on his album This Is Not Fusion. Chaudhuri's take is titled The Layla Riff to Todi. As the writer explains in his liner notes, this recontextualisation is the result of a "moment of mishearing". One morning, as he was practising Raag Todi, he heard the notes of Layla in them.
Here's what Chaudhri came up with.