One instrument that has fascinated me a lot is the bass guitar. That's because of just two people - A.R.Rahman and Keith Peters! I'm so very enamoured with Keith's talent that I exclaimed "Sir.. You are the reason that I love bass guitar", when I met him at the TOI concert in April!

In Indian music, there was hardly any importance for bass guitar. Composers have been using bass guitars for decades, i'm not denying it... But, it was more like it was pushed to the background. Rahman brought that change - he made bass guitar an important part of his compositions. And, thus Keith's extraordinary skills were exposed to the world, and elevated him to such a level that he is arguably the most wanted Bass guitarist in the country!

I'm planning to write about some of his exemplary work in Rahman's songs, and here's the first one!

The first song that comes to my mind is Thee Thee Thithikkum Thee (Thiruda Thiruda), one of my top favourites of AR. Everything in the song - be it Naveen's flute, or Thumba Raja's powerful jathis or the sensuous voice of chinese girl Caroline or the innovative percussion - is out of the world! But, let us push everything else aside for now, and focus on Keith's work.

Bass Guitar is definitely one of the main pillars of this song, which is very unusal in Indian music.
Right from the start when he plays the bass by plucking the strings hard(right at the start), then the normal bass guitar sound in most parts of the song, then the slap bass (during the swaras ma-pa-ni-sa.. ri-sa), Keith shows his class throughout the song.

The emhpatic fusion between Keith's bass and Naveen's flute (second interlude) is such a bliss, and takes me to a different world every single time I listen to it. The song ends with another brilliant bass piece accompanying the jathi.

This song is one of my all time favourites, for many reasons, bass guitar being the most important reason!