Grunting with music

These guys are an absolute laugh riot and their music videos which have gone viral online have been generating plenty of chuckles while also driving home a message for change. Meet the appropriately titled Waking Grunt, a group of musicians, who are using music and humour to grunt and grumble about the issues confronting the state while calling people to wake up before it's too late.
It all began with The Matka Anthem, a song in Konkani set to Ed Sheeran's popular tune Shape of You, which debuted a little less than a month ago talking about the illegal game of gambling that continues to prevail in the state despite being illegal. Following the great response to the track, the band then came out with the hilarious Pedru song which was set to the Sonu song, that went viral nationwide courtesy Mumbai RJ Malishka whose version, ‘Mumbai tula BMC var bharosa nahi ka' took a dig at BMC with regards to the poor condition of roads in Mumbai during the monsoons. Waking Grunt's version on the other hand speaks of a number of issues from the pothole ridden roads to the obvious absence of Goan faces in the workforce in the state, the casino debacle, the stinking issue of garbage and the farmers plight. The oddly catchy lyrics are bound to get stuck in your head, gently chiding you to get up and ‘sarko uloi re'.
Goa's abysmal roads received further attention with their next track titled Khaddyaan Podlo. "Following the previous tracks, people began requesting us to do a parody on Despacito. We thus came out with our very own tribute to Goan roads with this new number," says Amit Naik, the vocalist of the group. Naik also provides the lyrics for the tunes and plays acoustic guitar. Apart from Naik, the group comprises of Prajyot Mainkar on the bass guitar, Vasudev Gaonkar on the drums while the music production, mastering and cinematography is done by Vaibhav Tari. Khaddyaan Podlo, a mix of English and Konkani, tells the story of a guy who goes all out the impress a girl with a cool ride, only to get into all kinds of trouble after they both falls off the bike due to a big pothole. "We don't want to start any controversy so we haven't put the blame on anyone in our tracks," admits Naik.
Interestingly though, while The Waking Grunt has just recently begun getting a whole load of attention, the group has been around since 2015. "Back then we were doing songs that were about our reality and our emotions. But after this failed to pick up, we decided to try to instead do what people wanted to listen to like social issues," states Naik, who himself is a mining engineer and was affected by the mining issue previously.
Finding inspiration for the lyrics is not that difficult, he adds. "You just have to take a walk and look around you and there is so much to talk about," he says, while one again illustration the condition of roads to drive home his point. "Roads which were hot-mixed only last year now look as if they were last done up at least ten years ago," he says.
After finding a sizable listener base, the band is now looking at coming out with their own original music again. "We have been criticised for using other people's music to get famous. It isn't that we don't want to do our own music but if people want us to do parodies then we have to give them what they want," he reasons. Even so, they are all set to give it a try. " We don't want to be known as a parody band and we will be coming out with a new original track titled Stop Child Labour which we hope to put out by the end of this week," he informs."Let's see how it goes. At the end of the day our main goal is for music to reach people and for them to be able to relate to it."
Apart from this, the group also has a few other projects lined up. " We also want to come out with a song about a world with no war, no racism, gender discrimination and this will be called Dreamer," says Naik, adding that they have also collaborated with members of a Facebook page ANM to give food to underprivileged and encourage others to join the movement.
And while Waking Grunt is still a part time project, Naik, hopes to turn this into a full time gig soon. "We are trying our best to raise our voices against injustices although we are aware that our voices can be crushed anytime," he says, while urging other youngsters to also wake up.
"A lot of youngsters today are not bothered about what is happening in the state. Although they have the right to vote they listen to others with regards to who to vote for. They don't think for themselves. Many of them don't even know who the Prime Minister or President of the country are. They have no general knowledge whatsoever. They need to become more aware and learn to contribute to making the world a better place," he states.