Roysten Abel and Ranjit Barot present ‘Beat Route’: A modern twist on traditional Indian percussion

Beat Route, premiering in Bengaluru, fuses folk percussion of Kerala and Rajasthan with modern music in an innovative audio-visual spectacle

Chowdiah Memorial Hall in Bengaluru, on October 5, will host a performance seeking to bridge the tradition and the modernity of Indian percussion. Beat Route is an audio-visual performance conceived by Roysten Abel, noted director and playwright, and Ranjit Barot, a renowned drummer whose resume spans everything from film scores to global jazz stages. Together, they have tried to reimagine Indian folk percussion in a contemporary context, with 10 master drummers from Rajasthan and Kerala at the heart of this project.

Gayathri Krishna of Bhoomija Trust, an arts organisation, approached Roysten to create a program with percussion. “I wasn’t interested in the typical percussion ensemble,” Roysten explains how Beat Route was born. Then, he remembered a Warli painting — a tribal art in Maharashtra — depicting dancers with tarpas (a kind of trumpet). The image sparked an idea: what if folk rhythms, the beat of the earth, were transformed into a modern sound, a kind of rave grounded in tradition?

At its core, Beat Route features a set of instruments rarely heard outside their cultural regions: the resounding thud of the chenda, the metallic clinks of the kartaal, and the hypnotic hum of the morchang. Instead of simply presenting these sounds in their traditional form, Roysten sought out Ranjit to “combine folk drummers with electronic music and find the best of both worlds.”

Though Beat Route is an experiment in fusion, it respects the origins of its material. Ranjit has built his compositions around the patterns that have existed for generations, letting the folk musicians take centre stage.

“I’m merely reacting to all the joyous music happening around me. My job was to create contemporary music that would provide a vehicle for these unique musicians to express themselves. They have to take to all the compositions instantly, and not only that, they have to own the moment. This is a beautiful thing to witness and be a part of,” says Ranjit.

This respect for tradition is what sets Beat Route apart. Roysten, who has worked with folk musicians extensively in past projects like The Manganiyar Seduction, knows how to create an immersive experience. “When you’re working with performers like these, you don’t reinvent the wheel,” he says, “You just let their skills speak, but you give them a new frame. We’ve taken what they already do and heightened it with electronic elements and visual storytelling.”

The visual component is just as critical to the production as the sound. Award-winning filmmaker Kabir Singh Chowdhry has created a vivid stage environment to match the rhythmic intensity, combining the arid, sandy tones of Rajasthan with the lush, green vibrancy of Kerala. “We try to tell a story with these elements and see what experience it creates. Instead of trying to create a new story, we narrate existing ones and see if a new story emerges on its own,” says Roysten.