Bennet and the Band


Bennet and the Band is a backing band founded in 1998 by Bennet Roland, Guitarist/Music Director, from Kerala. Band specializes in genre based re-orchestration of popular melodies, Indian film tunes and traditional folk melodies for which the band uses session musicians lined up according to the type of music they need to play for the singer with whom they are jamming. Its performances with the singers often involve improvisation.
The band is not confined to a specific genre and it is easily understood from the various artists whom they have conducted jam sessions with, starting from Anuradha Sriram and Srinivas, to the young singers on block like Karthik, Vijay Yesudas, Vijay Prakash, Naresh Iyer, Swetha Mohan, Krish and Haricharan.

Early days

Bennet’s performance with Karthik in Wesley Grounds, Chennai was a remarkable one down the lane. The band along with the frontline singers Karthik, Gopal Rao, Kalyani Nair, Swetha Mohan, Mohammed Aslam performed in Pancham- "The magic of RD Burman, A tribute to RD Burman", playing hits from the 1970s. In the Rosebowl channel aired in 2006, they jammed with singers from South India like Karthik, Jyotsana, Gayatri, Franco, etc. and currently their show is being aired under the title “Music mojo” in Kappa TV, launched by Mathrubhumi, with singers Manjari and Haricharan.
Bennet Roland began composing music for films, beginning with the movie ‘Out of syllabus’ in the year 2006, for which he had composed four songs along with musician Veetrag. From there, the duo went on to compose songs for ‘Sooryakireedam’, Dr.patient, Gaddhama and August Club. As a guitarist, he has performed with the frontline singers KS Chithra, Udit Narayan, Shaan, Hariharan, Sujatha, Malgudi Shubha, Usha Uthup, etc.

Live performances