Bangalore-based Gauley Bhai has been putting out quality content and growing in the indie space for some time now. Their blend of genres and musical ideas have allowed them to create a folk-y but modern and contemporary sound that is all their own. Their most recent single, ‘Morau’ is another well-crafted track with a frankly fantastic music video that elevates the overall experience to far, far more than the sum of his parts. 

The song itself deals with death and more specifically funerals. The interesting contrast in the track comes from the dark and bleak subject matter and the almost jazzy indie sonic palate the band uses. The song is produced in a lowkey fashion with clean guitar tones and a tight, funky rhythm section. The band also uses singalong vocals for the song’s hook to emphasize it. The lyrics deal with the sadness and general feeling of a funeral where an entire community comes together and mourns as one. However, the video flips the concept a little bit by using dark humour to great effect. We spoke to the band’s violinist and singer Veecheet Dhakal about the song, the band and the video, which he directed.

Considering the blend of genres you guys use, what sort of music do you listen to? Are there any common artists that all of you like?
 

We listen to a variety of genres, and that’s what we try to reflect in our music. We listen to everything from pop to jazz to funk to folk even. Our music isn’t particularly jazz or funk or anything though. We all do have some common tastes; artists like D’Angelo, for example, Chris Dave, John Scofield, and even some international music like Tinariwen and so on. We try to keep ourselves informed. Even in the drums and so on, there’s hiphop and funk coming in.

The song itself has a few sides to it; the video and the track together have an interesting combined experience. The video is shot in this muted way but there’s also some black comedy and dark humour thrown in. The song, musically, has a lighter tone than the subject matter implies. What was the songwriting idea at the start?

The song is actually from lived experience. It’s about our friend Wakhle who unfortunately passed away in Bangalore in a road accident. So, because of this we were part of and hosted a funeral with all the family members and so on. It’s also because of where we’re from; a funeral is essentially a community thing. It’s like there are wedding and there are funerals. You know, everyone comes together, and people are socializing, fighting, loving and everything. It’s a meditation on grief, in a way; we’re not going towards the darkness. Everyone grieves and deals with it in their own way too, some people are gambling and doing different things, because everyone’s coming to the funeral with their own experiences and lives. That’s funny in a way, and that’s the dark comedic space it occupies.
 

What was the process of making this video and what’s your filmmaking background?

So I love music and I love film; I studied film and am a working filmmaker. Me and my younger brother who plays bass for the band run a studio together in Bangalore. It’s a home studio and we make things like ads and so on for our bread and butter. For this video, our manager Angarika was the one who wrote the script and I directed it. We shot it in one of the actors’ houses. In fact, a few months before, we tried to do a small demo shoot and realized we had to downscale a lot of things to control the environment of the piece and we did it on a low budget. Some of the people in the video are also established theater actors, for example the two guys at the gambling table. The rest of the cast was made up of many friends. The crew was pretty much us as a band; when we weren’t acting we were organizing things, bringing food and stuff. The editing and everything else was done by me and my production house; we basically produced the entire thing ourselves.
This idea of doing an entire concept that’s close to a band’s heart from start to finish is extremely commendable these days, and Gauley Bhai has proved that it works without doubt. ‘Morau’ is an excellent song that has depth and meaning, and its video does an equally stellar job.