|
Belting Out In Down Under The Tinku
Effect
WSN Bureau
 When
the Tinku Band played the Spectrum club in Darlinghurst on Saturday
night, people were asking what does a teetotaller Sikh priest have
in common with Led Zeppelin’s frontman Robert Plant? Apart from long
hair, not much, but this weekend Gurjit Singh, a priest at
Turramurra’s Sikh gurdwara, belted out Stairway To Heaven, Dazed And
Confused and
Kashmir. With the Tinku Band, a group of Punjabi musicians in
Sydney, the priest-turned-rocker combined Western music with Indian
rhythms and instruments.
Before he arrived in
Australia a few years ago, Singh had never heard of Led Zeppelin.
These days, he has groupies, who approach him after concerts with
tears in their eyes. “Women come up to me and tell me they went to
Zeppelin concerts years ago, and they get the same feeling from our
performance,” he said. Classically trained to sing and play the
tabla for kirtan, Singh can reach the highest notes in Led
Zeppelin’s hits with ease. “He’s got a range that’s bigger than
Robert Plant’s in his heyday,” says the band’s lead singer, Tinku
Grewal. But Singh is yet to embrace the rock’n’roll lifestyle. “He
doesn’t drink and he’s pretty much a vegan,” says Grewal. “When
we’re on tour,we wake up to him reciting hymns and meditating.”
Although the band (comprising two Sikh and three non-Sikh
Australians) came together nearly three years ago and has been
performing at gigs all over
Australia, its first album Full Circle was released in Sydney in
November 2007. Best described as a fusion between western rock,
bhangra beats and Sikh ragas, the Tinku Band creates a unique blend
for the new generation of multicultural Australia. Named after the
lead singer and bass player Sukhbir Singh aka Tinku, it evokes the
music of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Pearl Jam on the one hand,
and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan on the other.
 Tinku
was born in
Ludhiana, but moved to Sydney at the age of eleven and learnt to
play the bass guitar soon thereafter. He was influenced by authentic
rock music, but loves fusing it with Punjabi beats and bhangra
rhythms. He writes his own lyrics which are predominantly in
English; these are sometimes embellished with Punjabi lines too,
thanks to the other Punjabi in the band - Gurjit Singh. Gurjit is an
adept tabla player and a trained classical vocalist to boot -
dressed in a typical Punjabi kurta-pyjama, complete with an
impressive dastaar, he provides fine visual imagery, greatly
enhancing the fusion theme. But there are many others too. The Tinku
band only underlines the Australian Sikhs’ ability to hit the
airwaves with great effect.
28
May,
2008
|
Read Also