MUMBAI: Kolkata based band Krosswindz, have been nominated for the international Just Plain Folks Music Awards, popularly called the â€?Grassroot Grammys’ — the only rock band from India to have been selected this year. Other nominees include notable composers like AR Rahman, Ilaiyaraaja, Doug Cox and Salil Bhatt with Ramkumar Mishra from British Columbia.
The Just Plain Folks Music Awards is an international, large-scale, non-profit music awards programme hosted by the Just Plain Folks organisation to recognise the music made by the other 98% of the music world often ignored by the mainstream televised music awards shows…. This year, Just Plain Awards received 42,000 albums and 5.6 lakh songs as entries from all over the world. The winners of the awards will be announced in Nashville, TN on 29 August 2009
Krosswindz, a Kolkata based Classic Rock/Folk Fusion band, has been nominated for the Best Indian Album award for their Bengali album Misiki Misiki, and for the Best Indian Song award for Jajabor Pokhi from the same album.
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“It sure opens up a lot of avenues for us,” says Vikramjit Banerjee, Krosswindz lead guitarist and spokesperson. “There would be media, music publishers and talent buyers who would be making a note of this,” he says.
Krosswindz was formed in 1990 and has toured all over the sub-continent and 6 cities in USA playing at major festivals,concerts and clubs and has officially released 12 albums. Two of the most famous Bangla songs of Krosswindz are ‘Prithibita Naki Choto Hote hote’ written by Gautam Chatterjee performed by Krosswindz in the album Abar Bocchor Kuri porey and ‘Jhiko Jhiko’from the album Jhiko Jhiko Krosswindz.
Being in India’s live music scene for a long time, Banerjee isn’t really impressed with the rock scene, “90 per cent of the bands in India copy their idols and have a sound which already exists. On the contrary, if the band focuses on creating their own sound, they can achieve a lot,” finding your own sound is the key, he says
Krosswindz has been singing in both bengali and english and is set to release two albums (in each language) this year. The band is yet to find a label for their english album, but the bengali album is already signed on to a label he didn’t wish to reveal.
From pubs, to festivals, to even paddy fields of far-off villages in Kolkatta, Krosswindz has made the connect,
“We like to connect with people, talk to them in their own language,” he says, “The experience of playing at villages was great because the listeners would connect to what we were singing about” he adds
On being asked if they would be going to take the awards, Banerjee says, “We are six of us, and going to America is surely expensive, at the moment, we are looking for some corporate sponsorships,” he says.
