Composer Vipin Mishra rides to Zanskar Valley with friends to record nomadic music

Music of the mountain

Composer Vipin Mishra always dreamt of combining his two passions — music and adventure activity. Though he grew up on classic rock bands, over the years, he developed a liking for Indian music. It led him to come up with the docu-series Folkroad, which has Vipin and his team travel to Zanskar Valley in Ladakh in search of nomadic music. Riding his Honda Africa Twin Adventure motorcycles, the composer is joined by actor Satyadeep Mishra and professional photographer Abhay Singh, as they travel on bumpy dirt tracks, stay in freezing tents, visit remote monasteries, witness flashy wedding functions and discover new sounds.

Folkroad was recently premiered at the Red Lorry Film Festival in Mumbai. Says Vipin, “ Two episodes, which represent the basic theme of the series were screened. I plan to release it on YouTube.”

The team chose to travel to Zanskar Valley, which is located at a high altitude as they wanted to do something challenging. “We had not drawn any schedule. We took things as they came. The terrain was rough, and the music, raw,” says Vipin about the experience.

The series was shot by two cameramen, Prabhdeep Singh and Ashish Sasane. The actual journey began at Manali in Himachal Pradesh, where friends helped them with the logistics. “There were people who helped us with tents and food. From the musical point of view, we went there truly as seekers, with the hope that we’d eventually find something. I didn’t want to create content set up earlier. One of the recordings came from a wedding party, which we came across during our travel. So we just recorded music as we discovered it.”

According to Vipin, two kinds of instruments are prominent in the region. “One is the Surna, a piped instrument like the shehnai. The other is a percussion instrument called Daman. It resembles the tabla, but is played with sticks. They often wet the drum to get the right tone. It is made of yak skin and copper.”

The challenge was to use these sounds and make them accessible to listeners. “Nomadic music is free-flowing. They don’t play in large ensembles, at least in Zanskar. The music doesn’t have a consistent tempo or structure. The singer may sing in one pitch but the Surna or Daman may be on another. But there are some brilliant compositions in these recordings. In the studio, I had to pull out those parts and place them in such a way that they came across like a song.”

Without tweaking the sound much, Vipin added some synthesisers in the studio. He says, “I didn’t want to use acoustic instruments, which is what often happens with folk music. I wanted to give a fresh flavour. It isn’t entirely electronic, but has a fair amount of synths. The music will be released on streaming platforms.”