This is a great month of music for the Ultimate Ears Artists to Watch program. We have music from a modern jazz giant as well as from the dancehall bandleader from the Palladium in the 50's. Both Stefon Harris and Blackout and Tito Rodriguez combine perfectly to give you a month of ear candy.

But even more importantly, this month we feature music from one of our own Logitech employees, VK Vijayakumar. VK is the cofounder of PALLAVI - a bay area based Indian band that performs Bollywood songs. He plays the keyboard, sings, and whistles. And in his free time, he provides free keyboard notes and chords for famous Indian songs on his personal website Keyless Online.

The song that won our contest is based on a south Indian raga called CHARUKESI. On this recording, VK plays all the various tracks (bass, pads, strings, etc.) using a Korg Triton keyboard. As for percussion, that’s VK thumbing the desk with his palms and fingers – not a tabla. And he’s whistling the lead melody directly into a laptop using the built-in mic. Pretty amazing really.

VK won a contest called the Music Makers Match Off and it was open to all Logitech employees from around the world. We had fantastic submissions from as far as Norway and from Nashville. It was hard to choose a winner but sometimes whistling just needs to be acknowledged for the art form that it is.