Slapping the guitar

Even as he starts speaking to you about his love of the bass guitar you can notice Jayen Varma exercising his fingers. “Like your body needs exercise, your fingers need it too,” he says. And why not?

After all he thumps the strings on a bass guitar faster than anyone else in the world! And he developed this unique quality by practicing incessantly for seven hours at a stretch over a period of two years.
He finally got his reward when the Registry of Official World Records (Record Holders Republic) USA and UK accorded him the status of the ‘fastest bass player in the world’ a few months back. Now the artist has also been featured on MySpace’s new section called the music central as a talent to watch out for.

“There are very few slap bass artists in the world. I was only a part-time musician for many years as I was working as assistant commissioner with a government body. But then I realised I wanted to do something different and started concentrating on my music full time. Slap bass guitarist Adrian Davison who died in 2006 was the fastest (he could do 31 notes per second) in the world. I felt I could surpass his record,” says Varma. He ended up doing 36 notes per second. 

Jayen started out as an Indian percussion artist and studied the mridangam for a long time before he picked up the bass guitar. Since then he has done several solo acts and taken his style to a new level. He not only slaps the guitar but also his ghungroo-tied feet. “I wanted to Indianise slap bass, so I decided to use sounds of ghungroo through the tapping of my feet in rhythm with the guitar,” he says.

The main aim for this Cochin-based artist now is to popularize this lesser known style across the country. “I want to popularize it,” say Varma who will be coming to Mumbai to perform next month.