Tracks
  • 1
    1
    04:03
    Ishke ho gaya
    Olli and the Bollywood Orchestra
    27693 27694
  • 2
    1
    03:56
    Govinda (Be Happy)
    Olli and the Bollywood Orchestra
    27693 27694
  • 3
    1
    03:13
    Ishke mantra
    Olli and the Bollywood Orchestra
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  • 4
    1
    05:25
    A Forest (Bollywood Remix)
    Olli and the Bollywood Orchestra
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  • 5
    1
    04:24
    Tere bine
    Olli and the Bollywood Orchestra
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  • 6
    1
    06:55
    Dub to Ashram
    Olli and the Bollywood Orchestra
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  • 7
    1
    04:14
    Salam alaïkum DJ
    Olli and the Bollywood Orchestra
    27693 27694
  • 8
    1
    04:55
    Distance
    Olli and the Bollywood Orchestra
    27693 27694 27695
  • 9
    1
    04:36
    Ludhiana Girl
    Olli and the Bollywood Orchestra
    27693 27694
  • 10
    1
    08:28
    Bhajan
    Olli and the Bollywood Orchestra
    27693 27694
  • 11
    1
    06:10
    Distance 2 (Remix By Shri)
    Olli and the Bollywood Orchestra
    27693 27694
  • 12
    1
    05:58
    Bhajan 2 (Remix By Smadj)
    Olli and the Bollywood Orchestra
    27693 27694
Cover
Olli and the Bollywood Orchestra

ALBUM TANTRA

Ollivier Leroy, alias Olli, does not belong to the generation who, guided by the music of Ravi Shankar, used to hitch-hike all the way to India on a soul-searching quest in some remote ashram (retreat). His passion for one of the oldest civilisations in the world has its roots in Brittany, where he was born and bred. It all started in Rennes, when the American musician and producer Bob Coke introduced him to the art of the tabla and gave him a glimpse of what would reveal itself as an incredibly rich and varied culture. Made curious by this first experience, Olli, trained as a classical pianist and member of a rock band, decides to find out more about this terra incognita. Simultaneous studies of lyrical song, Indian raga and musical theatre will become his passport for a trip that is only just starting. In 1992, he leaves for India, where he meets the Dagar family in Bombay and perfects his mastering of the austere Dhrupad, the most ancient song of Northern India. Back in Paris, he pals up with singer Kakoli Sengupta, who specialises in Khayal, a very ornamented song including subtle vocal variations which explores the various moods found in raga. Following a degree in Musicology, Olli wrote a dissertation on the Influence of Indian Music on French Composers after 1945. He then moved on to learn Sanskrit writing as well as the Hindi language thanks to the teachings of Aparna Narayan, a poet and painter native of Bengal. She is also the artist who, a few years later, wrote several of the texts that he set to music. Very quickly, Olli has sought to turn this plethora of teachings into something new and profitable. He is seduced by the American minimalist movement, more precisely by the extended repetition of simple musical forms; the stretching of sounds and the use of vocals as an instrument, all of which are found in ragas (melodic themes), traditional Bhajan worship songs, Indian strings and the extreme rhythmic complexity of Indian music. Olli spins these elements into hybrid creations of his own, thus acknowledging both his Western cultural origins and the teachings of his ?adopted? culture.
His first musical experiments took place when he was a member of the bands Shafali and Pandip, where he combined Hindi song with rock orchestrations or Breton melodies. In 2002, he decided to take things further. His inspiration stems from Bollywood (the contraction of Bombay and Hollywood), the fortress where over a thousand Indian films are produced every year, 200 of which are musical comedies. Olli fell in love with the soundtracks from those kitsch and colourful films and still considers them to be the key to appreciating Indian culture, in the same way as the sacred song or the complex and skilful music might help to understand the collective psyche of the Indian people. He used them as the raw material for a new and original musical arrangement. This does not leave a lot of room to manoeuvre. And yet, Olli manages to both avoid the traps of exotic mimicry and find a tone and a style of his own. Without giving in to the temptation of creating a simple collage of his influences, he goes his own, inventive way, which lead him to found Olli and the Bollywood Orchestra. The band is but a concept at this stage, but after a few visits to Calcutta, where Olli picked his musicians, recorded and tested his compositions and song in situ, the reality of it all soon started to take shape. In 2004, a music-video-spectacle was created and presented at two prestigious Breton music festivals: Les Tombees de la nuit in Rennes and Les Vieilles Charrues in Carhaix. The outline of the show was inspired by the romantic themes which characterise all great songs in the Indian cinema since the seventies. These ?hits? were reinterpreted and combined with compositions which foray into the universe of those electronic sounds about to transform the landscape of the new ?bollywoodian? blockbusters. The bass, electric guitars and keyboards mingle with the tabla, mridigam, santur, sitar, and sarangi, all of which belong to traditional Indian music, and are fused into a whole new sound experience. On stage, Olli performs a duet with singer Mou ?Jojo? Mukherjee, backed by an orchestra of excellent instrumentalists, both French and Indian (some of whom take part in the British ?New Asian scene?), while a video-mix is screened live by video-DJ Jesse Lucas, recreating the atmosphere of a cinema somewhere in New Delhi. Both the public (counting 20 000 spectators) and the media were immediately seduced by this unique show, to such an extent that the band decided to organise a tour throughout France, Europe and Africa. In 2005, Olli concluded this unique and amazing challenge with the release of the album Kitch?en, which was recorded in the Prime Studio in Calcutta (which specialises in film soundtracks), and consists of two parts, one listing acoustic songs and the other introducing a fusion of song and electro.
With the release of his new album Tantra (derived from the Sanskrit verb to think), it became clear that Olli was still pursuing his quest. With the exception of two tracks ? Govinda (the name of the famous deity) and Bhajan (Gandhi?s favourite song whilst fighting for Indian independence), both inspired by traditional worship song ? the album was made up of compositions in Hindi. Whereas his first album was inspired by the musical themes from the ?cinema Massala? (Indian spice-mix), this one is rooted in the Hindi Pop movement, a local equivalent of Brit Pop, with impulses derived from Hip-Hop, Dub and Rock. Perfect examples of this mix of influences can be found in the tracks Ichke ho gaya (I fell in love), based on a text by Atarna Narayan and set to music in collaboration with Swamy, an electro-DJ with a Bhangra background; Ickte Mantra, a mix of electro and Penjab Bhangra; or Dub to Ashram, a jungle-style mantra-composition. This time, the references to Bollywood, such as melodic violin themes and the alternation of verse and chorus, are woven into an invitation to dance, as on Salam Alaikum DJ (Greetings, DJ). Beside these, Olli also provides an insight into a more intimate aspect of the culture, as he speaks of distance and estrangement in tracks such as Fire bhi or Distance, a recurrent theme for inspiration in Indian music. On his own version of The Cure?s A Forest, Olli, who used to be a fan of the band in his youth, has replaced the guitar with the sitar. Robert Smith was so thrilled by this adaptation that the song was added as a bonus track.
In this type of musical patchwork, the mix of different influences which presides over a blend of such varied ingredients has to be carefully proportioned. It comes as no surprise that the album was produced under the wing of senior engineer Marco Migliari (who has worked in collaboration with Afro Celt Sound System, Baaba Maal, Susheela Raman, Massive Attack and Peter Gabriel, to name but a few), and what?s more at Peter Gabriel?s Real World Studios. In fact, Olli found himself at the centre of a musical approach which revolved around a mix of the genres, a path followed by Peter Gabriel himself in the last two decades. The relation between the two artists is highly symbolic, to say the least. As a matter of fact, it was precisely at Real World that the Soufi Gawwali song of the great Nusra Fateh Ali Khan ? yet another idol of Olli ? first took on a definite Pop twist, back in the eighties.
It soon became evident that the Breton artist does not lack a certain amount of courage. Or is it candour? To him, his career is but a sequence of lucky events, linked by chance and submitted to the laws of fate, an ever-present element in Indian philosophy. But whether or not luck had its part to play, Olli's talents won him the 2007 scholarship for the programme Villa Medicis hors les murs delivered by CulturesFrance, the agency which operates on behalf of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. And the icing on the cake is that Tantra will be the first ever album by a Western musician/singer to benefit from a nation-wide promotion across India, conducted by the prestigious Indian label Saregama and followed by a tour throughout the country in 2008.

French original by Frank Tenaille