Men In Groovey shirts

I am catching up already. This act was not already a few weeks old. I feel it's a little special too, because of the music style; New and old Tamil/Hindi ballads and sing-alongs (if only I knew the language) brought by MIG ++. The Men In Groove must be familiar to a lot of you already, as a band but most certainly as individual performers. For those of you who do not know them, it is an eclectic band made up of:

Mohamed Noor (Drums and vocals)

Leonardo Mendoza (EWI)

Casey Subramaniam (Guitar)

Navin Kumar Nagpal (Tabla ++)

The ++ were:

Mohamed Rafi (Guitar, vocals, stories)

Pravin Saivi. (Guitar and vocals)

All names with plenty of reference to India, no matter the origin of the individuals, but in my experience, also names with a guaranty for entertainment.  I had not seen Mohamed Rafi perform before though, but his friendly face with generous smile and his groovy shirt indicated to me he was there for only two reasons one to make music and two to have fun doing it. 

He may have had a couple of smaller intentions on his agenda, like gluing the songs together with interesting narrative, but I’m clubbing that under the “have fun” chapter.

In all honesty it was difficult to say who was the largest animator on the stage, except for Leo, they were all laughs and smiles throughout when they were playing. I have never played an instrument, let alone this electronic instrument of wind, but I figure it is quite impossible to produce a sound while smiling ear to ear, and Leo was producing one solid solo after another, hence he had to forgo on the smiling, I’m sure, but... entertaining never the less!

To add more fun to all this, was to observe the various friendly battles going on on stage like Navin and Noor battling it out on percussion and drums,

Casey and Rafi  on Guitar

and the battle of the voices between Pravin and Mohamed Rafi.

Looking over my shoulder, around the well-filled floor of Blu Jaz’s 3^rd story… again I saw lots of smiles and singers, as people took every opportunity to happily sing along with whatever melancholic Tamil or Hindi love song they were familiar with.

I maybe a bit biased to Indian origin, so I enjoy listening to a lot of the music that has it’s origin in the cultures there, including the classical stuff.  It is great that bands like MIG are bringing the music in a blend of Indian originals together with a bit of “western” rock? Especially if there is an underlying intent to promote the Indian. All in all, Romba nanna irukku!!!!!