When journalism leaks into art: Interview with musician-journalist Carl La’Frenais

Two people are on an unknown terrace, lying with their hands behind their heads and gazing at the night sky, missing the stars because they are too immersed in their conversation and laughing at a joke. Carl La’Frenais listens as I describe this image that flowed into my mind when his song ‘Happy Place’ was played. He laughs and then shares the real story behind it, which unsurprisingly lacks a terrace, the night sky, and the joke, but has the comforting presence of two people watching the sea together. 

The Fort Kochi beach is where Carl used to go early in the mornings to let his mind float before a busy day as a journalist began. Every morning, he would see an old man cycle to the beach and watch the sea, much like Carl, in total silence. Once, Carl asked him about it, and he said it was his happy place. He used to come there with his wife, but she was no longer with him, and he wanted to relive those memories and remember her every single day. 

“He said the visit was like going back to his happy place,” Carl says, in a brief chat about his new extended play (EP), which contains ‘Happy Place’ and three other songs, all of which are tributes to his hometown, Fort Kochi. The EP is named after the Kochi pincode, 682001. 

Carl’s love for Kochi was much publicised in the past few days, not so much for the EP as for a video he released, to debunk a north Indian vlogger’s derogatory and communal accusations about Kochi. 

“It was not spontaneous. [Initially] I didn’t want to react to it, because I had spoken to the owner of Kashi Art Gallery [which the vlogger targets] and the artist related to the issue, and they said let’s let it go. But I got calls from news agencies and I thought I should address this before saying anything to anyone,” Carl says.

Carl has an Instagram page full of videos, mostly reactions to current issues, that he likes to keep separate from his music. However, his job as a journalist does not really allow that anymore, and the stories he witnesses on the ground – most recently the student protests in Delhi – leak into his art. 

“The new stuff that I am writing, in terms of lyrics, is very much influenced by what I am seeing on the ground, and around me, on the news and in person. Not this EP, as it was written a few years ago. It is normal when you are an artist. You write about things you care about, that’s always on your mind,” he says.

The shift to news journalism is recent, but he has been in a similar space before, working as a radio jockey for 15 years, and touching on issues and discussing politics as part of his job. Only now, he has begun to go on the ground and write about them, after he joined Mathrubhumi English two months ago. 

“I enjoy journalism, it is the need of the hour I would say. But sometimes I wish things were fine enough in this world so that I could focus on my first love, which is music,” Carl says.

Carl comes from a family of musicians. His father was a drummer, his uncles were in a band, and even though he was warned against turning to music ("See how broke musicians are!"), he sneakily watched them and picked up his first lessons. He can play a little bit of everything — guitar, piano, and most importantly drums, his first love. In Dubai, where he spent 12 years, he had a band that released two albums and opened for the likes of Bon Jovi and Sting. 

"But I was very homesick [for Kochi] and always thinking about moving back, and every time I came back I felt like leaving a piece of me here. The pieces started accumulating back in Fort Kochi, and eventually I began writing about my time there. The EP is about that, about my experience of growing up in Fort Kochi. It is an ode to my hometown," he says.

The first song in the EP, ‘Where do we go’, came out as a music video, artfully capturing the friendship of two children in quaint settings, painting a wall, playing football, and cycling. 

Even with an image in front of me, the idea I formed from the song was starkly different from what Carl had in mind, about a long term relationship that faded away. 

But perhaps it is all deliberately vague. He has not mentioned Kochi once in any of the tracks. "I would like people to receive it the way they want to, experience it through their own lenses. The song is only mine when it is made; as soon as it is released, it is everyone's."

Two more songs, ‘Thank you’, about gratitude to his family, and ‘You are my groove’, about puppy love, are on the EP. 

A few months ago, Carl also released a single called ‘We’ll call it home’, which, even with the same voice and folk sound, somehow becomes the kind of comforting music that pats you on the back as you walk on a terrace you imagined Carl's ‘Happy Place’ to be in. Little wonder then that it is his song to celebrate love and the space two people build together.