MUMBAI: The Fanculos is a five-piece power band that was dreamt up by Italian/Guyanese, British-born musician Ramon Ibrahim. Ramon was heavily influenced at an early age by British SKA bands such as The Specials, The Beat, Madness, etc. He has just started writing an original set based on his own interpretation of SKA, reggae and other cool things.
His band The Fanculos live set is a mixture of high energy SKA, dub, reggae, funk and even more high-energy SKA. The band recently released its three tracks EP called, Gangsta TV EP.
The three tracks EP includes Gangsta TV, Nothing To Say and The Fabulous Fanculos. About the tracks, the creator of the band Ramon Ibrahim says, “Gangsta TV was originally inspired by watching a marathon session of Breaking Bad. But as the song evolved I began to see it as a commentary on the common man’s absolute belief and faith in the majority of the manufactured rubbish that spews out of the TV (and social media) all over the world. Some seem to want to believe the ridiculous fake news that’s been appearing simply because it’s entertaining.”
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He adds, “Nothing To Say is a very personal song that relates to me. It speaks my mind more than I should. The song was inspired by a friend of mine being denied their vote in the last major election due to some bureaucratic mess-up. I was so shocked that this could happen in a modern Indian city that when I started to write a song about it, I just got very angry and decided it was best to say nothing at all. Our third song the Fabulous Fanculos is about a troupe of somewhat deformed and unusual-looking, yet fabulous and very talented freak-show performers called-The Fabulous Fanculos. Set in winter 1954, the scene is a seedy fairground tent just before the main event is about to begin. The atmosphere electric, present tense beginning to fade, I’ve bought my ticket, going to join the crazy parade.”
The interesting fact to notice is that when the band started off it had a different name. They decided to change it to The Fanculos after they wrote The Fabulous Fanculos it seemed like a better band name.
The songs are lively and full of energy. The focus of the band is to entertain people, making them jump up and down and feel really good. Keeping this in mind all the songs are written.
He also reveals about the artwork, “I’m delighted that Priyesh Trivedi agreed to collaborate on this. I’d seen his Adarsh Balak artwork and decided that his somewhat dark and weird yet beautiful style would be an excellent match for The Fanculos. The cover pretty much speaks for itself – the obviously dysfunctional retro Indian parents seem to be completely oblivious to how their children are being affected by what they watch on TV. It’s very possible that those kids on the album cover could grow into adults who are brain-dead and blindly believe all that they see on TV and social media.”
Not just that The Fanculos will head to Udaipur next month and perform at Wonderflip A Magical Circus on 9-12 November. On this upcoming performance, the band said, “They are excited and looking forward to it. We have worked with members of the team before and they only deal in quality. The whole concept of Wonderflip also ties in very nicely with what The Fanculos is all about. In fact, the song The Fabulous Fanculos from the EP could have almost been written about Wonderflip.”
The EP is available on iTunes, OK LIsten, Bandcamp, AppleMusic and Spotify.
