Bollywood nights

Bollywood nights 

She’s made famous friends/collaborating partners like A.R. Rahman, Yo-Yo Ma, Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Ricky Martin. She’s travelled the world, singing to tens of thousands of people in a variety of settings. Though she’s living the life of an international superstar, Falu – born Falguni Shah – plays music for far more sentimental reasons.

“Our orchestra was basically designed to bridge generations,” explained the Indian-born, New York-based singer/songwriter. “The first South Asian generation came here back in the ‘60s with all of these classic, beautiful Bollywood songs that they grew up singing and hearing. That music is actually now being put into a modern context. They can bring their children, their grandchildren and show them where they come from; the roots that they have left behind and they can make them understand the culture and the value of keeping this tradition going on.”

Falu is honoring that tradition with her Bollywood Orchestra, whom she will be performing with this Friday, March 31 at The Barns at Wolf Trap. Not only does Falu bridge a cultural gap across time, but across the globe with her culturally diverse band. This diversity she credits for much of the inspiration behind the Bollywood Orchestra’s original tunes.

“We have really amazing songwriters in the band,” she said. “Everybody comes from a different background and I bring in the classical, someone else plays Western classical, someone else is trained in jazz, and so on and so on. What we do is a songwriter would bring an idea and we would all then bring our influences and that becomes our original sound. We have a rich background of people from different backgrounds so that makes it very easy to basically borrow from all of these traditions and make our own sound.”

Not only does Falu hope to use her music to preserve the tradition for those of Indian heritage, but she also aims to make Bollywood culture more mainstream. Though the subcontinent of India is one of the more densely populated regions on the planet, many people are not familiar with Bollywood film or music.

“Bollywood represents a very big part of what our culture and heritage is. Not everything! Of course not; there are many other variations and styles of music. But at the same time, Bollywood has grown from the purity of the classical and maintained the same style in some songs… My idea is to make it mainstream. Even though it is mainstream amongst the South Asians, I think it can be mainstream among a lot of non-South Asians as well.”

That effort is looking to be successful so far as Falu’s past performances at Wolf Trap have been huge hits. Whether it was a full barn or full pavilion and lawn, fans turn out in spades with open arms and ears for Falu’s Bollywood Orchestra.
“The following and the audience they bring to their facility; it’s very open. The audience that comes to Wolf Trap has been exposed to so many different kinds of music that anything eclectic – anything different – is openly and warmly welcomed rather than questioned, which I really adore,” she said. “We’ve played at both [The Barns and The Filene Center] and both times we had a wonderful response and I’m hoping that the third time we get to play there, we also get the same reception because our orchestra is so geared up and excited to come back again.”