Bengaluru-Based Tulu Rock Band Alva Kuuto Explores The Anatomy Of Rage In 'Pageyta Pugey'

History has shown us that rage, when unchecked, can shift the course of nations. It has been both a spark and a scourge — igniting revolutions, fuelling resistance, and at times, birthing destruction. Anger, in such moments transforms into a wave, volatile and kinetic, capable of moving entire worlds. It is this fury that lies at the core of 'Pageyta Pugey (Smoke of Vengeance)', a searing new Tulu-language track by Bengaluru-based rock band, Alva Kuuto.

Pageyta Pugey is a portrayal of what rage can do to people. The track features heavy guitar growl and horn accents that echo the spirit of 70s and 80s's rock music. The music video, directed by Luke Sydney inspired by retro gangster movies, builds a narrative around an illegal cockfight. When a victorious rooster is spitefully killed, and its owners are thrown out of the arena, they set out on a quest for revenge.

We follow them as they wander through the town gathering their boys to retaliate. As each man joins, we see them at once leave their jobs and families behind, as if to flick a switch, and step into vengeance. It paints anger as an infectious force that rewires people, making them act in ways they normally wouldn’t.

Praveen Alva often sets himself a personal challenge: to explore different emotions through songwriting and see how Tulu can carry each of them whether it's a softer song, a heavier one, or something emotionally layered. With Pageyta Pugey, he turned to anger. 'Masepunnu', he tells us, is a word for staring in Mangalore. He recalls witnessing full-blown fights break out over nothing more than a look that lasted too long. That unpredictable edge that he has seen all his childhood, is something that he used as reference while writing this track.

Alva Kuuto was formed in 2022 by Praveen Alva with the intention of bringing the Tulu language into contemporary musical spaces. The band is made up of four members — Praveen Alva, Abhilash Shet, Anshuman Upadhyay, and Shashank, out of which Praveen is the only native Tulu speaker. As much a cultural bridge as it is a musical collective, Alva Kuuto is the only band making music exclusively in Tulu.

The language is native to Tulu Nadu which encompasses the Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts of Karnataka and Kasaragod in Kerala. Tulu itself is a linguistic relic, believed by scholars to have diverged from Proto-Dravidian over two millennia ago. It is older than Tamil in some linguistic estimates, yet survives today without official status. The language has persisted through oral tradition, ritual theatre, and everyday speech, held alive by its speakers.

In Pageyta Pugey, the band intersects one of the world’s oldest living languages with one of humanity’s most primal instincts. Anger, like language, is ancient. It is at times grandiose in scope and acts as both fuel for vengeance and a form of narrative symbolism and transformation. In their fierce, allegorical rendering of rage, Alva Kuuto creates an an almost mythic portrait of wrath that's true to its cultural codes.

Follow Alva Kuuto here and watch the music video at the top of the page.

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