Benign bluesmen of Delhi

They won the Mahindra Blues Band Hunt this year but BLU deserves much bigger plaudits

It’s a little after noon on a pleasantly sunny February Wednesday and the blues are about to break out in one of the many dense pockets that make up Delhi’s sprawling Vasant Kunj residential area. In the makeshift ground-floor rehearsal room, four young men are ready to begin. Pranai on lead; Kapil on acoustic guitar and vocals; Rahul on the bass and Chewang behind the drums. “Let’s do one of our originals,” says Kapil quietly as Delhi’s blues band with a minimalist moniker − BLU − launches into Fifteen Years, a song that seems as if it’s emanating from somewhere near the Mississippi rather than the Yamuna.

BLU, barely two years old, are as much a Delhi band as they are Darjeeling’s(Saumya Khandelwal)