Back in the Groove

Delhi-based musician Donn Bhat will be performing in the city after a long time.

Donn Bhat performs at the South Asian Bands Festival at Purana Qila tonight. The event starts at 6 pm.

Anant Bhatt was 20 when he first began playing guitar with Delhi-based band Orange Street. In 2004, a year after joining the cult band, Bhatt toured Europe and Southeast Asia with them. The calendar was packed and there were gigs every month across the country. Anant aka Donn, as he is fondly known, had become the golden boy of the industry. His solo album One Way Circle (2006) was released from his bedroom in Delhi to decent reviews. Donn Bhat had arrived.

Then one day he packed his bags for Mumbai. Eight years after One Way Circle, he released his second called Passenger Revelator, an album that put him back in the scene. Tonight he performs at the South Asian Bands Festival at Purana Qila, along with sarangi player Suhail Yusuf Khan and composer Ashhar Farooqui. “This album is a collage of many things. I kept putting music online all these years and then got together with a few musicians and released it,” says Donn. At the gig tonight, he promises an upbeat set with guitar riffs, sarangi notes and a bit of xylophone. Every performance is marked with a new set of musicians. “It’s a malleable set up and it works for me,” he adds. It’s a task to box his music in a genre — it’s electro-rock fused with folk elements.

From being part of a band with 6-7 members to going solo, Donn has come a long way. He has watched the scene grow and shrink, all at once. “These are better times. Originality is being pushed in the industry, unlike back in the day when everybody only wanted covers. But we are still a small industry because we are competing with Bollywood,” he adds.

The eight-year-long gap between the two albums was spent creating music, listening to new sounds, and working in advertisements. Anirban Chakraborty, the vocalist of Orange Street, too moved to Mumbai in 2006 and the two got together as Donn-Bann to make music for commercial ventures, including the hugely popular film Vicky Donor in 2012.

While it appeared that Donn was on the fringes of the music scene, almost hibernating for a while, his music always stuck around, especially after three songs from his 2006 album were used in MTV’s Bring On The Night in 2012. “It felt good that even after six years, people remembered the songs,” he adds. He is now working on another EP with Farooqui and Khan, which he plans to launch in three months. “It will be heavy on acoustic guitars and mixed with electronic elements,” he says.

Donn Bhat performs at the South Asian Bands Festival at Purana Qila tonight. The event starts at 6 pm.

Entry is free

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