One of the few bands to be signed by a major record label, and perhaps one of the very few bands in India to have released an album prior to touring around, Agnee is a band which have worked wonders in a relatively short amount of time.
Their debut album, also titled Agnee, was released on May 15, 2007 under the Sony BMG label along with music videos for five out of the eight compositions. Since then, there has been no looking back for the band. In addition to touring extensively, they’ve composed for MTV’s Roadies, Splitsvilla and Teen Diva, and Prakash Jha’s film, Dil Dosti Etc.
In an interview, Agnee’s lead singer Mohan Kannan explained how the Splitsvilla track helped them garner a really positive response. “Now, one-and-a-half-years down the line, there are people from as far as Thailand, mailing us to say that they love the music,” said Kannan. “The track helped us increase our visibility."
The band has several hit songs to their credit, including “Sadho Re,” an adaptation of Kabir’s poem “Kabira,” an extremely philosophical song with a folk touch to it, “Shaam Tanhaa” and “Keh Lene Do,” which are lovely soft romantic compositions, and “Raanjhan Yaar Di,” also known as the Splitsvilla Season 3 theme song, which is an extremely catchy and soulful Punjabi Sufi rock song.
Agnee’s music draws from folk, pop, funk, jazz, Carnatic and, obviously, rock music elements. The band continuously explore various platforms of reaching out to and involving audiences creatively – in 2010 they collaborated with Radio Mirchi for “The Maruti Generation A-Star Mirchi Create with Agnee Singers’ Contest 2010,” which promised the winning singer an offer to sing on stage with them and record for their upcoming Bollywood project Gulaab Gang. Prior to that, in 2009, Agnee also formed the “Create with Agnee” initiative to involve audiences in putting together lyrics for their Splitsvilla song.
Earlier Mohan, the band’s lead vocalist, percussionist and guitarist quit his comfy job as an AVP at Deutsche Bank and jammed with Koco, the band’s lead guitarist, for a band named Sankara. In fact, their popular tracks, “Sadho Re” and “Kabira,” actually started from their Sankara jam sessions. The other Sankara members were busy with their day jobs at the time and gave them the thumbs up to go ahead on their own – So, they recorded a few demos. Within one moth of their recording demo, which only took a day and a half to record, Sony BMG had a contract ready for them. The band was named Agnee, in honor of the 1987 band Agni, for which Koco was the chief composer and lead guitarist.
Currently, Agnee consist of Mohan Kannan (lead vocals) and Koco (lead guitar) – the two of them compose, arrange and produce all of the songs, while Pradeep Ratanjankar is the band’s music technician and Nitin Joshi and Ajay Parkhe are on sound. They are joined on stage by Hrishikesh Datar on drums, Among Jamir on bass and Michael Pereira on keyboards and guitar. Mohan Kannan hails from a family of Carnatic classical musicians, is a skilled Mridangam player, and has sung “Khanabadosh” from Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy’s London Dreams, “Naav” from Amit Trivedi’s Uddaan, and a duet with Rekha Bhardwaj for Amit Trivedi for Onir’s film I Am, and will also be singing for composer Pritam’s film projects, as well.
Agnee doesn’t have a manager or solicit business, yet still have a huge fan following of over 50,000+ fans on Facebook, and have people approaching them for shows and films – this is significant in a nation where non-film music doesn’t sell much and TV channels and radio programs are dominated with Bollywood songs. After their debut album released, Agnee took the independent route and have been releasing singles on their Web site for free.
In addition to touring, Agnee have a few more Hindi and Marathi film projects coming up including Aalaap, Gulaab Gang and Shala.