Zahra Gor­don

Rahil Ba­booram's ve­g­an lifestyle has had a strong in­flu­ence on his mu­sic lead­ing him to de­vel­op the term "ve­g­an mu­sic" for his songs that deal with an­i­mal rights.

Ve­g­ans do not use an­i­mal prod­ucts in any form and there­fore do not eat meat or dairy prod­ucts or wear clothes and shoes made from leather or fur.

The 33-year-old mu­si­cian re­cent­ly re­leased his fourth al­bum, Cu­a­tro, live on Talk City 91.1FM's In­dige­nous ra­dio pro­gramme. His song, Heart­less, has held the num­ber two spot on the pro­gramme's lo­cal mu­sic chart for the past four weeks.

Ba­booram al­so re­leased the songs Kalau Nasty and All on You. Kalau Nasty is a re-re­lease and was pre­vi­ous­ly part of an al­bum of en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly con­scious mu­sic pro­duced by the NGO Green Light Net­work in 2007. All on You is a song about a past re­la­tion­ship, how­ev­er. Apart from an­i­mal rights, Ba­booram al­so sings about re­la­tion­ships, life ex­pe­ri­ences and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. Be­ing heav­i­ly in­flu­enced by groups like The Bea­t­les, Pink Floyd and Elec­tric Light Or­ches­tra, Ba­booram de­scribes his mu­sic as rock and folk.

He em­pha­sised the folk mu­sic style on Cu­a­tro by record­ing many tracks with on­ly his vo­cals and an acoustic gui­tar.

Ba­booram learned to play gui­tar from his fa­ther, who was a recre­ation­al mu­si­cian. In a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian on Thurs­day, Ba­booram ex­plained: "I ac­tu­al­ly start­ed learn­ing to play at 11 and played through­out high school. Play­ing the gui­tar made it eas­i­er for me to learn oth­er in­stru­ments as well." Ba­booram has worked with many lo­cal bands play­ing key­boards, drums and bass.

The mu­sic on Cu­a­tro is a long way from Ba­booram's first al­bum Guara Vani. "When I start­ed, my song­writ­ing was to­tal­ly spir­i­tu­al. I was heav­i­ly in­flu­enced by the Vedic per­spec­tive of the Hari Kr­ish­nas and ac­tu­al­ly de­vel­oped a close re­la­tion­ship with many lo­cal devo­tees. I ac­tu­al­ly got my roots in per­for­mance style from do­ing ear­ly gigs for their cel­e­bra­tions."

He said Cu­a­tro is a "fresh al­bum," how­ev­er, that dis­plays the long road of his mu­si­cal jour­ney. Ba­booram said he sees Cu­a­tro as his con­tri­bu­tion to the al­ter­na­tive lo­cal mu­sic scene and the plight for more lo­cal con­tent on the ra­dio.

Lis­ten to Rahil:

Rahil Ba­booram's al­bums in­clude Guara Vani (1999), Sim­ply Rahil (2005), Or­ange (2007) and Cu­a­tro (2013). He's al­so been a mem­ber of var­i­ous bands such as Kru­ci­fix, Bro­ken Mir­roz, and So­laris. To lis­ten to Ba­booram's mu­sic on­line you can vis­it his Web site: www.rahil.is­cool.net You can al­so check out his Face­book fan page: Rahil Ba­booram.