So three Punjabis and a Korean walk into a bar. It’s St. Patrick’s Day, five years ago, and these four are high-energy makers of music — who know no Irish songs whatsoever.
No worries, St. Patrick’s party planner Doug Simpson told the men.
This was the international city of Vancouver, B.C., and their mission on that night was to make a new kind of Celtic music, spiced with whatever they chose to pull out of their cabinet of rhythms.
And so they did, and have done ever since. DJ Tarun Nayar, singer Sanjay Seran, sitarist Andrew Kim and dhol player Ravi Binning mix and mash up Bhangra, the dance music from the Punjab region of India, with Celtic fiddle, some reggae and plenty of club beats.
One-time shot to full-time gig
Nayar, in an interview from his Vancouver home last week, said that St. Patrick’s Day gig “was supposed to be one shot. But the public response was so strong, so positive,” and the buzz so intense afterward that the quartet got more dates at bigger clubs.
They got so busy, Nayar said, that they had to quit their other bands and form a whole new thing.
This is the story of Delhi 2 Dublin, which will bring its kaleidoscope of sound to the Little Theater at Peninsula College, 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd., at 7 p.m. this Saturday.
The concert, which promises to range from rock to reggae to hip-hop and breakbeat, is a joint presentation by the college and the Juan de Fuca Festival of the Arts. Tickets are free for Peninsula College students, and $18 for other adults; for youth age 14 and younger, admission is $10.
Nayar, the son of a Punjabi father and a Scots-Irish mother, did the production for Delhi 2 Dublin’s three albums, including “Planet Electric,” which will be released Tuesday. He’s also a DJ on Vancouver’s club circuit, and a player of the tabla — classical Indian drums — since he was 7.
To Nayar, weaving South Asian, Celtic and Caribbean rhythms together just makes sense. He doesn’t go into detail about why; he does say that he and the band are simply playing the music they love.
Canadian-born band
Everyone in Delhi 2 Dublin is Canadian-born; all of the members live in Vancouver, where they’re part of a cosmopolitan and creative community. People with mixed ethnic backgrounds are busy expressing themselves, exploring new forms of art and music and communicating with one another with great speed — so it was only natural that this band came together.
High technology is another partner in this, Nayar noted. We have computer applications now that allow musicians to mix and sample and do all kinds of heretofore unimaginable things.
When you’re the DJ at a club or a party, or you’re producing a CD, for example, you can use your computer to take any element of any song, and drop it into any other song. Seamlessly.
“It’s a great, dynamic system,” driving music production, Nayar said.
Delhi 2 Dublin recently grew from four members to six by adding a pair of fiddle players: Jaron Freeman-Fox and Sara Fitzpatrick. The sextet now ranges in age from 25 to 42, Nayar said, and as the surnames suggest, the players’ backgrounds cover the map, from America to Europe and Asia.
‘Create a party vibe’
Delhi 2 Dublin’s albums, like their concerts, are free-wheeling musical trips. “Planet Electric” has tracks titled “Laughing Buddha,” “Cabin Fever,” “Raise it Up” and “Bodega Ridge” parts 1 and 2, with guest performances by scratcher PhonoGraff, horn player Damien Walsh, singer Tanya Jacobs and tumbi player Rayman Bhuller.
On disc and on stage, “we create a party vibe,” said Nayar. “It’s a future-of-the-world party . . . Something special happens when these cultures come together.”
After Saturday’s Port Angeles concert, Delhi 2 Dublin will continue its U.S. tour, with dates in Seattle, Portland, Reno, Nev., Baltimore, Pittsburgh and, on St. Patrick’s Day, that international city of San Francisco. Then, Nayar said, the band will fly off to Indonesia for concerts in Jakarta and Bali.
Delhi 2 Dublin will return to Port Angeles on Memorial Day weekend for the Juan de Fuca Festival, May 27 through May 30 in various venues around downtown. The group is among some 40 acts to perform at the festival; a list of those booked so far is at www.JFFA.org.
The website also offers tickets to Saturday’s show; other outlets include Port Book & News, 104 E. First St., Port Angeles, and Pacific Mist Books, 121 W. Washington St., Sequim. For details about the concert and the festival over Memorial Day weekend, phone the Juan de Fuca office at 360-457-5411.
