The drummer inside me is still alive: Sanjay Maroo

Singer, composer and all-round rocker Sanjay Maroo reconfigures his musical path in a new avatar. Back with a bang with a brand new progressive music project re-establishing himself as one of India's foremost drummers.
It's been quite a journey from drumming to composing and singing and now back to drumming...
The drummer inside was always alive and kicking.You see in those projects, I'd done everything from producing to mixing and making videos and so on. So, when I was awarded song of the year in a competition, I felt a sense of accomplishment which came with the urge to move on to a higher space. There was no real challenge left in my mind and heart. I'd already reached as high as one could go in the genre. Thereafter it would be a repetition of climbing the same mountain again and again. This was when I felt the need to move on and take my musical life to the next level.
How did you manage to fuse Carnatic violin with western drumming?
Indian fusion is respected all over the world for it's intricacies but generally the combinations have been primarily featuring Indian percussion with guitar or piano or sax. Somehow the Western drum sound has not been aggressively used. So when I hooked up with Hari Kumar and found that we were very comfortably matching each other note for strike, it gave life to the project. The tunes are complex compositions with heavy duty time signatures and riffs that are trademark of Indian percussion, so it was a challenge to perform the intricate parts on drums, while maintaining the ethnic sensitivity and nuances.
The band is called Blue Fire and features some top notch musicians. I like to call it 'Progressive Indian Music 2013'. It's fiery and feisty. Carnatic Violin on a progressive groove base. The composer is my partner in crime, Hari Kumar Sivan, a fourth generation musician who has had the unique experience of being born and trained with Carnatic roots and then also studied western classical in the UK. Our Guitar player is Boney Alex, a wild young talent from Goa. Our percussionist is Master Jayram - a guru to hundreds of students. Our keyboardist is a Malayalam film music composer. It's a unique combination of minds and styles. The amazing thing is that with all our diverse backgrounds, the music brings us together and emerges greater than the parts.
The music sounds quite amazing and its apparent that some very hard work has gone into it?
Thanks very much. It makes us feel really happy to see that our effort is being appreciated by those who matter and those who understand it. It's been quite a task getting almost an hour of pretty complex music together but it feels like it's been worth it when we get the type of compliments we have been receiving. Hari, the Violinist, is a President's Medal award winner and I'd set the Limca record for fastest foot drumming, so there would be some inherent craziness I guess. But there are some beautifully crafted melodies too which have caused people complete mood swings. We are still in talk with labels to see what best we can do to launch it in the best way possible. What heartens me is to see that there is lots of hope for quality music and those you least expect to enjoy serious stuff are the ones who fly with it. It's true that music has its own language and anyone tuned to it can understand.
So would the success of this project mean there will be no more vocal tracks from you?
Well I'm still composing and recording tracks but with a very different focus. I'm quietly working on a devotional project which is very dear to me and the details of which I'm not disclosing yet.