Brahma: Spreading the sound one step at a time. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

Call it ‘alternative folk’ or what you will; the raw and timeless appeal of traditional folk music and spiritual songs is what Brahma — the newest entrant on the city’s folk-rock block — promises to deliver.

A brainchild of former Cactus guitarist Sanjoy Bhattacharjee and his wife Malabika Brahma, Brahma was conceived back in 1999. While Sanjoy is known for his blues-laced six-string sound, Malabika is trained in Indian classical and Rabindrasangeet. The couple’s abiding common interest, though, remains Baul music. And Brahma is a long-time plan to bring those songs of the earth to the fore. The band — with Malabika on vocals and Sanjoy on guitar, khamak and dotara, along with Rajkumar Sengupta on guitars and dotara, Sourav Chatterjee on drums and Afro-Cuban percussion, Amit Ray on bass and Aurobindo Biswas on Indian percussion — debuted on the Princeton Club stage on August 23.

A journey into the heart of these traditions provided Sanjoy and Malabika a first-hand view of the culture that lies beneath. They embarked on a breezy tour of village fairs and festivals in Bengal and south India. “For five years, we went around different folk festivals like the Joydeb mela at Kenduli and Baul akhadas, trying to study and understand the feel and flavour of these songs,” explains Sanjoy. The two also organised the first Baul Fakir Utsav in Calcutta in 2004. “We brought in nearly 80 Bauls and Fakirs from all over rural Bengal, including Birbhum and Nadia, who were joined by noted musicians from the city,” smiles Sanjoy. It’s no surprise the couple is known among its Baul brethren as “Brahma Khyapa”.

In their quest for the richness in folk culture, the two spent months under the tutelage of Sadhan Das Bairagya and his Japanese disciple Maki Kazumi at Hatgobindapur, close to Burdwan. On one such expedition, the couple got noticed by British producer-guitarist Sam Mills, working on Baul and Fakiri music, who tracked them down and invited them to perform in Pondicherry at The Songs of the Madman concert in January this year. Rewinding to her experience, Malabika gushes: “We shared the stage with Subal Gosai, Biswanath Das Baul and Kartick Das Baul, apart from bassist Paul Jacob and Sam’s wife (nu-soul diva) Susheela Raman.”

That concert turned out to be a stimulus for the duo to form a larger band and weave in Western rhythms to lend a fresh style to the transcendent charm of folk music. “We want to call it world music because of the Western strains, but the basic sound is very Indian. The scales and breaks in the music are based on raagas and tehai,” adds Sanjoy.