ALL-BLIND Indian orchestra Black hopes to inspire audiences with their talent and raise awareness about blindness within the Asian community.
In one of the most inspiring celebrations of Indian cinema’s centenary, the orchestra delivered shows in London and Leicester last week.
The 12-member band, comprising four singers, paid tribute to Hindi cinema by delivering heartfelt renditions of classic Bollywood songs from different eras.
A spokesman for the orchestra said, “This is not your typical Bollywood musical concert, rather, this is an outstanding phenomenon enriched with bags of talent and blessed with flair that will mesmerise your heart and soul.
The band of internationally successful artistes has done previous tours in the UK and was brought back by Leicester-based concert promoter and philanthropist Jayesh Kotak.
Kotak hopes this mini-tour will be a springboard for them to achieve even bigger things on the international stage.
“They really are extra special because the musicians cannot visually vibe with each other. It’s all from listening to each other, feeling the music within their hearts and relying on their raw talent,” said Kotak, head of Jay’s Entertainment.
One of the ways he is hoping to achieve this is by getting the orchestra to potentially record an album of covers.
“I believe that Black’s immense talent should lead to an album release. I would certainly be delighted to enjoy an evening of music performed by Black in my home and am confident many others would too,” Kotak said shortly after the London concert.
Black was born from an idea by Sachin Shah, head of the National Organisation for Disabled Artistes (NODA). Since then, the band has appeared on television and delivered live concerts internationally.
One of the members, flutist Kiran Vinkar, has even performed music for a Bollywood movie.
Kotak, who has previously delivered shows with A-list stars such as Hrithik Roshan and Shreya Ghoshal, thinks the biggest challenge of promoting a band like Black is getting audiences to see how talented they are close up.
“Once the audience come to their concerts, they forget the band members are totally blind or with partial vision. They focus only on their talent. That is how it should be with all those who have disabilities – focus on all the things they can do instead of thinking about what they can’t. In reality, they are far more talented than you or I,” he said.
Hot on the heels of Black performing in the UK is a national tour by renowned musician Baluji Shrivastav and his Inner Vision orchestra. The tour starts on June 14 at Octagon Theatre in Somerset and carries on until October.
