This maestro of Indian music started  his musical journey one fateful day in the early sixties when he found a echo super-vamper harmonica on Library-corner in San Fernando, Trinidad. Not long before, this eight-year old child had an unfortunate near-death experience when he was trying to scale pieces of wood.   The harmonica was his solace, comfort and companionship during the recovery period. Later on he grew more confident and played the harmonium and tabla in the Mandir at his grandmother’s home.  

His sick-bed proved to be the nurturing  soil for his fertile imagination and early love for melodious music and adoration for Indian musicians who excelled in various instruments like the flute,  violin, piano and accordion. This experience was nourished by four of his uncles who were avid collectors of film records especially the youngest uncle Baldeo Maharaj with whom he interacted more than the rest. While still quite a young man, he started searching    and listening intently to  India’s great instrumentalists, each one providing a different level of fascination.

One fateful night he listened to Acme Dil-E-Nadan Orchestra playing at a wedding house and he asked and was allowed to play with the instruments. This led to a most rewarding relationship with the brothers Bisram and Ramnarine Moonilal from whom he learnt many techniques. He successfully competed in Mastana Bahar, played the clavolin with Harry Mahabir and the BWIA  National Indian Orchestra. He then joined with some friends and relatives to form the Melo Bugs Orchestra with whom he played the keyboard until he migrated to Canada in 1972. In Canada he played with Bobby’s Naya Afsana for five years and then covered a wide spectrum of musical experiences.

Canada provided an wide-ranging avenue for the talents of this gifted young man. He has mastered the keyboard but remain fascinated with the tabla and has experimented with the bongos, dholak , guitar and even the harpsichord. The synthesis of this wide-ranging exposure to various instruments has resulted in him finding a common system in all instruments which allows him to improvise and innovate. He also learnt as much as possible about ragas and their qualities.

His musical creativity and personal magnetism has endeared him to artistes from India, Pakistan and the Caribbean for whom he provided musical accompaniment. These include Hemant Kumar, Manna Dey, Mehdi Hassan, Jagjit Singh, Pankaj Udhas, Mussarat Majeed and Rajkumar Rizvi. Caribbean artistes include Sundar Popo, Rehman and Reena Rajan, Anand Yankaran, Polly Sookraj, Ramraji Prabhu, Ramdeo Chaitoo and Chris Ramkhelawan. He has provided music for over twenty  musical albums for some of these singers.

Presently, Karamchand has now completed his fifth musical instrumental album. Innovation 5, which are entirely composed by him. Listen and enjoy a unique blend of Western Instruments set to a backdrop of Eastern Rhythms. 1-4 are previous film songs instrumentals covering a wide array of delightful music.

A personal audition with the legendary Naushad a few years ago sparked his creativity to a new dimension. This new album is Karamchand’s own musical composition. He has now acquired the ability to recognize, compare and classify music based on Ragas. This allows him to move away from other people’s music to his own composition.

His concept is modern and traditional rhythms,  melodies and songs. The songs are not based on individual ragas but rather an incorporation to produce the melody in each. Karamchand reflects his musical experience as playing, recording, mixing, engineering and now composing music. His latest production  is designed to provide rhythms and songs to appeal to the younger generation while the raga based melodies are designed to appeal to the older and more musically inclined listeners. Indeed, a truly remarkable musical  journey.