A nice succulent hamburger with some delectable laal mirchi anyone?Although Indian Rock Acts have not found their way into the International Markets yet, there certainly has not been a lowdown on people of Indian ethnicity plucking the six string with finesse or singing an F sharp note in a huge ass International Rock Band. These bands not only have grammies accredited to their name, but some of them have also received the coveted Rock n Roll Hall of Fame Honour. Even though a Parikrama or a Pentagram might not be a household name in a rocker’s house abroad, there is always a Queen to remind people all over the world about India’s strong musical traditions and that we can sure rock it up a few notches, when we need to! The most notable rock musicians of Indian origin that have had the privilege of topping the billboard charts and The Chordvine Charts of the 6 most influential International Rockers of Indian Origin are:

6. Jason Singh
The lead vocalist of Aussie band ‘Taxiride’ owes his Indian descent and Indian classical music culture to the use of harmonized sitar sounds and pounding tabla beats in the music of Taxi Ride. He loves listening to Lata Mangeshkar and has a fondness for Bollywood flicks. Jason Singh is considered one of the better comtemporary songwriters currently in Australia and although he started off in 1997 with a more of a pop-rock sound, his music has a heavier and more distorted touch to it now. Taxiride is widely remembered as the band that toured India in the summer of 2006.

5. Tony Kanal
At number 5 we have the energy behind No Doubt, Tony Kanal. Although No Doubt aren’t an out and out rock band and have various pop and ska-punk influences, Tony Kanal always portrayed a rock image of No Doubt through his frantic antics on stage or his zany style of bass playing and the energy that he brought to the band, whether it was in the videos or whether it was on stage. Kanal is known more famously for dating Gwen Stefani, lead singer of No Doubt. At 37 , Kanal has already done it all, whether its slapping his bass guitar for No Doubt, producing albums for Reggae singers or producing songs for the soundtrack of hit movie ’50 first dates’ . There is ‘No Doubt’ that the canal in Kanal’s life is gonna lead to even more accolades in the future.

4. Dave Baksh
Famously Known as ‘Brownsound’ for the band Sum 41, David Nizaam Baksh was born to parents of Indo-Guyanese origin in 1980 in Toronto. He revolutionized the modern punk sound around the world with his guitar licks and his trademark punk riffs. While most of the modern day punk bands play easy 3-4 chord songs on palm mute, Baksh changed it around with twin guitar leads in ‘Pain for Pleasure’ with Derek Whyte and with waah-waah guitar solos in his music, a sound that not too many MTV punk bands incorporate these days with their sell out style of music. Dave Baksh reached commercial success with songs such as Fat Lip that was no.1 for weeks on the U.S. Rock Charts as well as other hits such as ‘The Hell Song’, ‘Motivation’. Dave Baksh’s presence is definitely missed for Sum 41 as he gave a clean but at the same time raw sound to their music and gave backup vocals that epitomised the sound of Sum 41. He quit the band in 2006 to express his true guitaring dexterities through his songwriting and formed a band with his cousin called ‘Brown Brigade’ that plays reggae influenced Heavy Metal music.

3. Prakash John
Prakash has had a wealth of experience with a lot of different bands but is most widely known as the bass player for a brief period for legendary band Alice Cooper. Alice Cooper was one of the biggest bands in the U.S. in the 70s and are said to be the first band to have a theatrical horror set up in their stage shows. Prakash John played bass with Alice on ‘Welcome To My Nightmare’ , ‘From The Inside’ and on ‘Dada’. Born in Mumbai in 1947, Prakash migrated to Toronto in 1960. He has also played with various other bands such as Bush(70s) and Lou Reed. John left mainstream rock in 1979, returning to Toronto to found his second R&B band, The Lincolns, one of the last bands now remaining which represent the now-famous Toronto Sound of the late 1960s.John was  inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in 1997 as a member of Parliament Funkadelic. As a solo artist , John has amassed various credentials for having produced artistes such as ‘Godfather of Soul’ -  James Brown, Paul Shaffer and The Blues Brothers. He also appeared in the movie ‘Blues Brothers’ (2000).

2. Kim Thayil
The countdown is getting hotter, infact its getting so hot that I think our no.2 candidate for most influential rocker of Indian origin might just have sparks flying in all directions from his amp right now. At no.2 we have the lead guitarist of the pioneers of Grunge Music, ‘Soundgarden’, Kim Thaysil. Kim  was born in Seattle in 1960 to a couple from Kerala. Kim is regarded as one of the creators of the ‘Grunge’ genre with his heavy riffing coupled with a dirty sound. He is one of the more ingenious writers of the 90s as he would often shy away from the Standard E Tuning. He tuned his guitar to Drop D for a lot of songs and for many songs he would tune his  E string all the way down to B and would use some more unorthodox tunings on songs such as  ”My Wave” and “The Day I Tried to Live” which are both in a E-E-B-B-B-E tuning. Kim also had weird time signatures on various songs such as a Outshined” in 7/4, “My Wave” 5/4, “Fell on Black Days” on 6/4, “Never the Machine Forever” on 9/8 and “Rusty Cage” on 19/8, Kim attributes the odd time signatures to coincidence and nothing else. After Soundgarden broke up , Kim teamed up with Kris Novoselic (bass) of Nirvana fame performing  as the ‘No WTO Combo’ . He also cameod for ‘The Presidents of the USA’ and special appeared on Dave Grohl’s side project ‘ProBot’ . Whilst Kim has been in the shadows since Soundgarden, we certainly hope he comes back to produce some more original and kickass material with his chunky riffs & super unique style which will forever shred/rock thousands of Grunge lovers’ lives.

1. Freddie Mercury
It is but obvious that the crown will ultimately end up with the ‘Queen’. The queen of all vocalists, Freddie Mercury makes it to the list at no.1 for making millions go ga-ga over his vocal abilities and song writing capabilities. Freddie also known as Faroukh Bulsara (5 September 1946- 24 November 1991) grew up in India and attended St.Peter’s school in Panchgani and and completed his education at St. Mary’s High School (Mazgaon). Freddie moved to England at the age of 17. In 2006, Time Asia named Mercury as one of the most influential Asians in the last 60 years. Freddie owes a lot to his musical roots in India, where he listened to a considerable amount of Indian music and was an avid fan of Lata Mangeshkar. He was criticized to a certain extent for keeping his Indian ethnicity a secret. Freddie Mercury is said to be the most versatile singers in the last century and has an all-time record breaking range of four octaves so there is no surprise that people vocalists consider him ‘GOD’ on all fronts, whether it is writing a love song, being a sheer entertainer on stage or sounding like a factory siren when it’d come to hitting high notes. This Freddie definately has the ‘Mercury’ rising on everyone’s thermometers and its no surprise that he’s no.1 on the list!

At the end of this countdown, I think we all can maintain that India in its own indirect way has contributed vastly to rock music, especially with fusion being the need of the hour whether its INXS using the Sitar and Dholak on ‘Afterglow’ or Kula Shaker having a completely Indianised sound on the track ‘Govinda’. One thing’s for certain, even though Indians are sporadically placed all over the world, they have a stern message for all the firangs out there  – We will  we will ROCK YOU!

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Rooshabh Doshi is a student from H.R.College. His writing exploits began in 2005 when he interned for ‘The Afternoon’ after which he was hired as sports reporter for the magazine ‘Switch-Outsource This’. Rooshabh is a rock enthusiast, a critic and the vocalist/guitarist of ‘Down Up Down Dowm’. For him rock and metal music is neither a hobby, nor a passion, nor an obsession , but religion and life.