Taba Chake: Guitarist from the Hills
From Arunachal Pradesh, the land of the rising sun, comes Taba Chake, known for his eccentric way of playing fingerstyle percussive guitar chops. In 2014, he was awarded the title of runner-up in the All India Finger Style Competition in Bangalore. Chake comes from a Nyishi tribal family in Arunachal Pradesh. Inspired by tribal folklore and his intimate connection with nature, 31-year-old Chake began writing songs in 2007 and is known for his unique vocals, songwriting and performing style, singing in more than four languages.
VERUS FERREIRA met up with the charming musician at the recently-concluded Vh1 Supersonic 2024 in Pune. Read on.
We understand that your name was Chake and your real name is Taba, but you changed it the other way around and we know you as Taba Chake.
You are the first guy, the first one to ask this question. Thanks. So when I was submitting my paper for the board exam, I went to school and just changed my name. I came home and told my mom and dad that I’d changed my name; I didn’t ask anyone. It’s just that I didn’t like my name, because in the hostel and in boarding school, everyone used to tease me with that name. That’s why I decided to change it. My name is Chake. Taba is my surname.
Tell us about your family background and how you got into music.
My parents decided to put me in boarding school; that’s where I got introduced to music. There was this teacher who was teaching us how to play the piano at that time, so I started with that and then the guitar and then songwriting. He would teach us how to write melodies and how to write lyrics and songs of MLTR (Michael Learns to Rock). We thought at that time that it was a song written by him to teach us how to write melodies and tunes. (Laughs) So we practised a lot of MLTR for the longest time. But after around 2-3 years, I got to know that MLTR was actually a band and one of their hit songs was Sleeping Child. I was around 9 years old at that time.
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Verus Ferreira is a music journalist for over three decades. He is the author of The Great Music Quiz Book and The Great Rock Music Quiz Book and the founder of Musicunplugged.in