Morose musician

"A musician need not always be a performer,” says 30-year-old Bombay based musician Kaizad Gherda. During an interview with Parsiana in a South Bombay coffee shop on November 23, 2015, he stated that he writes songs for himself, and not necessarily for an audience. Gherda has been playing the keyboard with Alien Chutney, the five-member "comedy-rock band” led by comedian Vir Das since 2008. According to the band’s website, Alien Chutney is "a mix of sophisticated original music with insane and retarded lyrics.” The lyrics, says Gherda, are always written by Das, and the music caters to those who are in the under-30 age bracket. He says that it helps that all the other musicians in the band (Sid Coutto, Gaurav Gupta and Warren Mendonsa) are music producers in their own right, as they can give their comments on lyrics that will work and those that won’t. The band has played at multiple venues in India, including Guwahati, Calicut, Bangalore, Delhi and Poona. Since the lyrics have a very Indian content, they haven’t played overseas "as audiences may not be able to relate to numbers that refer to the differences between Delhi and Bombay girls, or pakodas (savory fritters) or tributes to the nasal-voiced singer Himesh Reshammiya,” laughs Gherda.
The Calcutta born songwriter says he writes "at my own pace.” Of all the numbers he has composed and provided the music for, and which are available on his YouTube channel, Gherda is proudest of Welcome which is about celebrating a new arrival in a family. "It surprises me because I am normally a morose person and I don’t like children,” he admits, straight-faced, about himself. He turned cynical at 21, he recalls. His I understand, he states is "advice to myself that the world is not about blacks and whites” and one should accept the grays while growing up. The video was shot by his photographer sister Farah (see "Photographic award,” Events and Personalities, Parsiana August 7, 2015) as a "stop motion video, which I have envisioned, directed and edited.” His composition Chemically arranged is about "being passionate to the extent that it will break you,” he smiles.

Gherda has composed the music for Howard Barker’s A House of Correction, directed by Rehaan Engineer for the Bombay stage in 2008 and had a leading role in Mahesh Dattani’s 2010 version of The Alchemist, for which he also composed the music.
As a six-year-old, Gherda took lessons in Western classical piano from Sam Engineer, "which I continued till age 20,” he reveals, before moving to Bombay "where the opportunities are immense, man.” An admirer of the Jamaican singer Harry Belafonte, the best "comedy-musician ever,” he also likes John Denver, the American singer and songwriter "though he is a whiny old guy.” And true to his training in classical music, he also appreciates Bach and Beethoven.
His advice for newcomers who want to make their mark in the field of music is: "Stay on course. If you are good, you will be noticed. Someone as lazy as I did,” he ends, tongue-in-cheek.