Redefining their Kalimpong roots as Gauley Bhai returns to Bengaluru

Falah Faisal

Gauley Bhai started out in Bengaluru in 2017, when Veechet Dhakal met Siddhant and Anudwatt from his hometown Kalimpong and started jamming. They were later joined by Joe Panicker as a drummer.

They called themselves Gauley Bhai because it literally means ‘the boy from the neighbourhood’ in Nepali, their native language, which is also the language they make music in. “It started with us just jamming until some friends called us to perform at a festival. It was after that show we realized that this is a performance we can build upon and we started thinking of ourselves as a band. Someone recorded a video of that and that spread and got us invited to perform at the Ziro festival when we had just six songs and we played them all,” says Veechet who sings and plays violin in the band. Local venues like Humming Tree and Bflat supported them and helped them grow. “At one point we were performing two shows a month, one at Humming Tree and one at Bflat. Bengaluru had a really good scene back then and we got a lot of opportunities because the way we sounded we got invited to a lot of festivals,” adds Veecheet.

The band has a very contemporary sound mixing Nepali lyricism with rock rhythms. The crowdfunded to release their album Joro, which means fever in Nepali. Which was well received but fate had other plans as the pandemic hit just when they started touring.

“We landed in Nepal to start our tour when the lockdown was announced so we just got to perform a few shows in Kathmandu before heading back, but now things have started to open up again. We are really looking forward to playing in Bengaluru since we haven’t played here in a while,” says a hopeful Veecheet who believes the pandemic changed their trajectory as a band.

 In the three years since their last album was released they have added a new member to the band. Veechet explains, “One of the last shows we played we met Samuel Amulraj, a sound engineer.

 When we met we immediately hit it off and we started working together and now we are inseparable. Our set now is a mix of songs from our last album and 4-5 songs that will be in our upcoming album.”

 So fans of the band have something to look forward to their next performance that will happen at the Bira 91 Taproom this Saturday