India’s reluctant rockers will play their first gig in Hong Kong, five years after one-off TV appearance sparked their career
The 15-member Thaikkudam Bridge started out as just a group of friends for a one-off TV performance, but five years on they have a legion of fans around the world who love their fusion of Indian musical styles with metal, folk and blues
Five years later they’re still performing, including in Hong Kong at the Y Theatre at Youth Square in Chai Wan on March 3, and are about to release their second album after taking first India and then the world by storm.
Named after a landmark near where the band had their early rehearsals after forming in the South Indian city of Kochi, Kerala in 2013, Thaikkudam Bridge’s music covers both Carnatic (South Indian) and Hindustani (North Indian) styles. As well as metal, Western influences include folk, blues and all flavours of rock, with a result that at times sounds not a million miles from 1970s psychedelic rock.
They started off covering classics from various parts of India with their own, usually heavy, twist, but are also increasingly writing their own songs, including their best-known, Fish Rock. Their lyrics, in the Keralan language Malayalam, Hindi, Tamil and English, concern a range of serious subjects, including political satire, freedom and equality, mortality, traditional dance and the historical crimes of the Mughal empire.
The band formed as a collection of friends, who had all studied sound engineering at college together years before. They were all working as professional musicians before the band was formed to perform on the TV show Music Mojo, broadcast on the Malayalam-language Kappa TV.
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They got so much positive feedback that they decided to do a single gig at Kochi’s Model Engineering College. It was the reaction to that first gig that persuaded them there might just be something in this.