Advait, The Dragon

Advait Redkar’s musical endeavors began playing Bollywood songs on a toy keyboard. But his first music teacher was a neighbor who lived across the street from his family’s home in Cincinnati. This neighbor, incidentally, had known Redkar’s mother years before, playing cricket together in India when she was a child. As remarkable as that bit of serendipity is, it wasn’t just fate but also recognizable determination that helped the young Redkar to discover his own musical acumen. “He saw me trying to ollie on a skateboard for two hours one day when I was 9 years old,” Redkar says, segueing into how this led to him learning Indian classical music on a sarod. felt right.” This led to him becoming a core component of numerous acts, with styles ranging from blues-rock and funk to neo-soul and jazz. While his current project, Advait, The Dragon, has numerous collaborators to help bring what he describes as “big band pop” to life, the arrangements of horns, strings, and other sumptuous instruments wouldn’t be possible without Redkar having both the vision for where and how to place them and the consideration to let them enhance but not distract from his songwriting. Redkar’s new EP, the 5-song A Labor of Love (Prologue), is precisely that: a culmination of two years of effort and coordination between Redkar and other talented individuals in the Cincinnati Music Scene