The show must go on

A musician adapts to the new normal

He would hardly be at home, and now he always is. But his music is going on in spite of that. In fact, you have to watch the acapella video he recently conceptualised of an iconic Pink Floyd song, bringing together dozens of home-bound singers... but wait, we can’t fast-forward our track.

Recalling the texture of the pre-corona era, Yeashu Yuvraj, musician and photographer, confesses he is “an outdoorsy person, for whom home was only about dinner and sleep... my schedule was always hectic… I always had so many things to do.”

The illusion that his life was meant to happen outdoors stayed with him for the initial days of the lockdown. But as time passed, Mr Yuvraj started settling down into the ordinariness of these extraordinary days. “I began to sit more often with my father and mother, I would discuss music with my wife .... I would write music.”

Mr Yuvraj is chatting on Whatsapp this evening from his home in Gurugram’s Sector 51. In this city of high-rises, he is one of the rare people living in a stand-alone house— the city you never see the ground floor is for his parents, the first floor for him and his wife, and the second floor is his studio.

A vocalist trained in the western classical tradition, he honed his skills under the guidance of well-known soprano Situ Singh Buehler, founder of the Lyric Ensemble of Delhi. But Mr Yuvraj, 36, is more of a teacher than a performance artiste, a choice that serves him well in the pandemic. He continues with his job as a music educator, teaching classes online these days. And despite being (happily) home-bound, he is not just doing the minimum required to get by. He continues to produce new work, including music videos. Since the pandemic fell on us, Mr Yuvraj has already made and released three music videos on his Instagram, working along with other musicians and singers to produce collective works of art. To do so, he would follow the modus operandi of our new normal: first, writing the parts for the music; then e-mailing the concerned fragments to select singers and musicians, who would send him back video clips recorded in their respective homes; and finally, pooling the bits together to create a smoothly flowing track.