Jonny Greenwood wonders if India is the place to play Ranjha

Jonny Greenwood has played in India with Shye Ben Tzur and The Rajasthan Express only once, at the Sacred Spirit Festival in Jodhpur in 2015. He tells Anurag Tagat of Rolling Stone India that the country may be the way to take Ranjha on the road. The group have lost money on tours before, and it is very tough now. Maybe playing in India is the only way to do it... I don't know. We'll see.¹ They have played India without him since, most recently at Durbar by Godawan in Khetri in January.

Ranjha, their second album after Junun, has 11 songs in Hindi, Urdu and Hebrew. The article says its title track began as a soundcheck jam while the group were supporting Radiohead in the US on the A Moon Shaped Pool tour in 2018. Junun was made in a few weeks at Mehrangarh Fort. Greenwood says that this time they did the opposite and brought the Rajasthani musicians to his studio in Oxfordshire, out of their comfort zone.

He plays bass on it, and in his head the group become James Brown's backing band. He wanted none of the hard rock drums of Coke Studio, so Tom Skinner's drums are there to decorate the nagara. Zakir Ali plays a Moog on “Shiqwa”, which was Greenwood's idea, and Jyotsna Srikanth plays “Shemesh”, in raag Todi, on the viola Greenwood had as a schoolboy.

He worries about instruments such as the veena falling out of use. I'm not scared of change, but I am scared of loss.¹