Brooklyn Raga Massive is an Indian Classical Music collective, formed by a group of predominantly desi musicians in their thirties.  As a vehicle to meet and perform, BRM uses some distinctly American ideas about presentation and collaboration. For three years, they have had weekly shows at various Brooklyn bars. Each show includes one set by a featured band followed by a jam session with both local musicians and visitors from India. The cover charge is a modest $10 (which goes to the band), drinks flow freely, and the fashion sense of the musicians runs the gamut from Indo-chic to Brooklyn grunge.

I asked one of the founders, the appealingly sincere and ingenuous Sameer Gupta, why it was called Brooklyn Raga Massive. He said:
“In 2011, we were just talking about how the density of musicians in this area is reaching a critical mass. That was the pivotal terminology that we were all throwing around. Neel [Murgai] kept saying it, I kept saying it: it was catching on in a cool way. It’s like a focused group but it feels like it’s building and growing, it’s being this universe almost. That sort of excitement like we’re getting into something way bigger than ourselves; which is the community.”

Gupta, the only jazz musician of the core group (he also plays drums and tabla with superb pianist Marc Cary) introduced the concept of a jam session to the BRM as a way for musicians from different gharanas and genres to interact.
“Once I saw how vibrant the music scene was here, I felt like this thing could really take off. It’s the jazz jam session tradition being moved over to Indian music.  You come to a new place, you’re trying to network, you meet some musicians, you play with them, you hand out some cards…”

The ideas about presentation came from all the musicians. The distinctly laid-back  New Jersey-born Carnatic violinist Arun Ramamurthy explains:
“What we’re doing is to take a lot of the formalities that are with Indian Classical Music and doing away with them. We want it to be more informal and try to cater to everybody. I went to the University of Maryland and had lots of friends who weren't musicians who wouldn't necessarily come to the concerts I would play at the temple. We wanted a more approachable space. People are used to going out and getting a drink. We wanted that to be the vibe. The music isn't on this pedestal. Even though the music is amazing and beautiful and deserves to be put high up, it shouldn't be unreachable”

Not just desis

The audience for BRM tends to be youngish with a healthy mix of Desi and non-Desis, men and women. I asked Arun about the social and dating scene. He laughed:
“It’s the meeting of like-minded people. I think it can be like shaadi.com, we can have a page on our website: 'meet your future bansuri-playing husband'. There’s a lot of young Indian-Americans coming.”

BRM presents many world music bands as well. When asked about the differences between musicians from India and the diaspora, Arun says:
“Jazz and hip hop and rock: that was normal for me to listen to growing up, that was part of my childhood. It might not be as much a part of the childhood of a Carnatic musician growing up in Chennai. I think it’s easier for us to toe this line between Indian Classical Music and other genres because it’s already in us.”

Their most ambitious fusion to date has been Neel Murgai’s arrangement of Terry Riley’s minimalist composition “In C” for Indian instruments. Here is the BRM version featuring the entire collective.



As Indian Classical Music has traditionally been a very individualistic and star-driven system, it will be interesting to see how the communal approach of BRM succeeds. At the very least, they are doing their best to keep an old form alive in the 21st century.

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Richard Bennett is a jazz and world music composer and pianist. He has two releases in stores this year:  Pure from Mystica Music and Mumbai Masala with Dhanashree Pandit-Rai from Times Music.