Musical tracks a journey from NYC to India

Still in Transit features 22 musicians, including five Indians. The film is directed by Abhijeet Tambe and Steve Clack 

NEW YORK: Everyone with a soul-crushing desk job has an itsy-bitsy fantasy playing quietly in their head about quitting and heading straight for the road.

A beatnik film, Still in Transit made by Abhijeet Tambe and Steve Clack shows it pays sometimes to play out wild fantasies.

“It was a period of transition. I was recovering from a messy breakup with my girlfriend and Abhi who was doing a high-tech job in America was getting burnt out,” Clack, who shot the film, said at the sidelines of the five-day Mahindra Indo-American Arts Council Film Festival in New York.

“I suppose both of us wanted an escape so we quit our jobs. We decided to drift for six months. Still in Transit started as a music project. We wanted to travel the world, compose songs, improvise and make an album along the way,” Tambe told DNA. 

The film tracks their six-month journey from upstate New York, to Argentina, Spain, Brazil, and Europe to end in Tambe’s hometown Bangalore.

Although Still in Transit shows the two friends goofing around drinking gallons of beer and hanging out with musicians; it stays interesting because it candidly portrays the growing tensions in their relationship.

Clack feels like a third wheel when Tambe finds a sizzling love interest on the road.

Some parts of the film can give reality television a run for its money. The two even lose each other briefly on the road when Tambe has visa problems. 

But they do reunite in Europe and one can see the musical project finally getting some shape.

“We would write a song and a musician would add a layer. We were looking for musicians all around the world who would get the vibe,” said Tambe, who finally mixed and mastered the album with nine tracks at Clementine Studio in Chennai.

The album, also named Still in Transit, features 22 musicians including five Indians as part of the collaboration. 

The Still in Transit world music album rocks, but doesn’t bludgeon. Tambe, who has a Masters in Music Engineering from Miami University, is not afraid of mixing accordions, strings, Latin drums, the sitar and other rarely seen wind instruments.

“They are integral to the texture of the album, rather than just grafted on. It is very world music because all the layers which are played instrumentally have come from different countries,” said Tambe. 

“The film about our musical odyssey is personal and candid. Steve and I do share our souls.”

He should be pleased as the audience in Manhattan has taken a shine to the openness of the traveller’s spirit captured in Still in Transit. Tambe says his life is still in transit but he is happy living in Bangalore;

“I have a day job which involves programming of audio and music related stuff. I am very comfortable in Bangalore.”