Get your groove on: Dhruv Ghanekar takes you on a journey across the world in Voyage 2

Be it through Jatra, where the invigorating Marathi folk dance Lavni with Brazilian samba or O Sorothia, an Assamese wedding song with reggae, dub, electronica and hip-hop. Or the celebratory Nacho, a mix between Rajasthani folk with African guitar and Balkan horns. Ghanekar doesn’t miss a chance to surprise and most importantly, make you groove.

Voyage 2, much like its 2015 counterpart Voyage 1, is an exploration of Indian ethnic, folk and indigenous musical traditions with those of the world. While Voyage 1 was heavily influenced by the African music that Ghanekar was listening to then, the second part offers a smorgasbord of genres that have just one intention: to make you groove.

“I wanted to create a party and I wanted the audience to participate in it. I love it when a band, for example, brings you into the music as opposed to, playing music at you. I wanted to keep things wicked and fun. Basically, have a blast when you’re making the music — if you have fun, then the listener will have fun,” says Ghanekar.

Voyage 2, much like its 2015 counterpart Voyage 1, is an exploration of Indian ethnic, folk and indigenous musical traditions with those of the world. (Image: Shivaji Storm Sen)

But all these compositions were fraught with risks. For example, with the first track of the album, a rendition of the evergreen Suprabathan, Ghanekar was scared for fusing rock and drum and bass with religious hymn. Apprehensive that it could be termed ‘blasphemous’, Ghanekar also sought authorities in the respective genres that he explored to ensure he was on the right track. “Supramatam is a deeply personal thing for most South Indian families. Everyone’s grown up listening to it first thing in the morning, especially the MS Subbulakshmi version. So I did a demo of it and just left it. I couldn’t bring myself to finish it. For some reason, I thought people might not like it. But then I played it to Somashekar ji (Jois), a Konakol master, who played and sang the rhythms of the song. Then Abhay (Nayampally) heard it, and they both were unanimously like, ‘Wow, this is incredible. Let’s do it.’ So I thought, okay, I’m on the right track. I’m not doing something blasphemous,” he says.

The genre-bending Voyage 2 has a stellar cast of vocalists and musicians. The album sees several Indian artists like singers Ila Arun, Vaishali Samant, Kalpana Potwary, percussionist Taufiq Qureshi, bassist Mohini Dey and drummer Gino Banks, among others. It includes international artists like American bassist Tim Lefebvre, drummers Gal Gershovsky and Tony Morra, trumpeter Sam Dechenne, Dubai-based saxophonist Artur Grigoryan and singer Gina Mirenda.

A genre-agnostic artist, Ghanekar recalls how during his days at the Berklee College of Music would help him approach each genre in a “rootsy” way. “I studied a lot of different genres — I took a Brazilian class, funk class and reggae class. For an entire semester, you’re playing only that one type of music. And then I played in different cover bands. By playing other people’s music, that music kind of goes inside and permeates into your bloodstream. So there’s a physicality of that,” he says.

You’ll run out of fingers to count on if you try to enumerate the genres that Ghanekar explores his Voyage 2 — drum bass, dub, funk, jazz, reggae, dancehall and samba to name a few. Talking about his creative process Ghanekar says that it’s important for me to try and find those bridges whether they are rhythmic, lyrical or melodic.

“In my mind, I see myself as a DJ. If I were to take a Marathi Lavani, what can I pair it with which has not been done before? So it’s like creating a cocktail and you live with it for a while. It plays in your mind and then, from your jukebox, you pull things out and say ‘let’s try this with that,” he says.

Exploring the themes of women’s empowerment through the album, Dhanekar says that women’s voices are important to him. “Women in India have different cultures and roles It’s important to have that woman’s voice whether it’s from Assam or Rajasthan have a global pedestal. It immediately features it in a way to the entire planet and not just on a scale of just playing folk music or doing film music. The women voices on the album are Calling the women vocalists are authorities in their own right,” he says.

A student of jazz, Ghanekar is able to marry a variety of genres with his meticulous production prowess. (Image: Shivaji Storm Sen)

One of the most important driving forces in Voyage 2 is its rhythm section. Be it the bass guitar or the brass section, they are authoritative and hypnotic. Groove is at the album’s core and that is no surprise because, for Ghanekar, rhythm is the foundational element of a song. “The bass guitar is a misunderstood instrument. Nobody knows what it does. But it’s the most important instrument for me because it subliminally creates the groove without drawing attention to itself. It’s a rhythmic instrument as well as a harmonic instrument. I’ve been playing bass now for almost 15 years. The way I work, I’ll pretty much play the entire bass track for the entire song the best that I can. And then I’ll give it to a really amazing bass player, someone like Linley Marthe, who played on Jatra or Lefebvre and of course Dey to take my ideas and my bass playing to another level,” he says.

Unique is a word thrown around too casually by uninspired marketing executives when they run out of adjectives to describe their product, especially if it’s music. Today’s Top-10s are conspicuously derivative, with a rising trend of ‘interpolation’, the newest phenomenon taking over music production. But Ghanekar brings a freshness to his compositions through a process of painstaking revision, which took “too long” to write the album.

“The biggest problem most creative people have is not letting go of their stuff because that’s a very dangerous thing. During Covid, I kind of had this epiphany, “Life is too short. If you’re going to try and be a perfectionist, nobody’s going to listen to your music because you’re not going to release your art. You can leave this planet anytime. You’d rather finish things and share it with the world in all its imperfections. I said, screw it. I’m going to finish it even if it’s good, bad or ugly — not overthink things. Otherwise, you can go into this loop, where you keep chiselling and perfecting. Even today, if I listen to the mixes, I still feel like I could have done this better and I could have improved upon this,” he says.

A student of jazz, Ghanekar is able to marry a variety of genres with his meticulous production prowess. Calling his Spotify playlist “horrendous”, the producer says he listens to music from all over the world. Working on films and advertisements also influences his work. “I’m influenced by a lot of stuff which might not be in the purview of let’s say, a normal musician. Generally, when you’re cultivating one sound, you tend to stick to that one direction for the rest of your artistic career. Fortunately, whatever the reason might be, that’s not happened to me. For me, Voyage is about finding bridges between Indian music, global folk and ethnic music,” he says.