Music Becomes Eclectic

Note: Many of the snaps in this article have been taken from Jace who has shared it under a Creative Commons Liscence.

This time of the year, the thing I miss most dearly about Bangalore is its music scene. Having visited major cities on the west coast of the California, I can safely conclude that none of them parallel Bangalore’s spirit of creativity,experimentation & expression in music.

The California west coast is an affluent area, with many rich kids owning fancy musical equipment. Amateur bands are crawling all over the suburbs. But they all play the same crap: alternative rock. Most bands will have an effeminate vocalist with black colored hair, piercings and ‘red & black’ tattoos in visible parts of the body and he’ll gay with the microphone like he was seducing some other fag in the crowd, while the rest of the band jump around the stage and gesture at an incredibly small and bored audience! Alright, most of the bands are way ‘tighter’ than 12^th grade acts form Bangalore, but you see one, you’ve seen them all! What happened to punk, ska, reggae, jazz, blues, country & most of all WORLD music. What happened to originality, identity, creativity, novelty, freshness yada yada yada. Where is the California and LA Red Hot Chilli Peppers often speak about?

Typical effeminate Alt Rock vocalist

Things get better at the university level, where intelligent kids try and creative, but restrict themselves to alternative rock. My university’s annual music festival (bundled in a package called Mardi Gras) had some very creative acts. genres on menu ranged from classic rock to ska, from American folk to country, but these acts were few in number compared to the alternative rock bands hogging the main-stage. Most surprising of all, the acts were clean (no swearing what so ever)! Compare that to rage filled belligerent acts that one finds in every show you witness in Bangalore!

Heres the dope on Bangalore. We have a music festival on the first Sunday of every month! Free! Attendance to these shows are a lot more than one sees at big shows in the US!! My friend recently went to a Pearl Jam show in California, and only 6000 ppl had made it! The first Sunday Jam alone may draw anywhere close to a few thousand people in Blr! Then there is the mother of all free shows, the Freedom Jam on August 15^th, India’s Independence day. This is the Hippie convention of India, 20,000+ free spirited, intelligent & creative Bangaloreans huddle up in an area so small, that the term ‘population density’ is redefined every year! Three stages are erected for the event. One stage showcases the most popular bands on the national semi-pro/pro circuit, another showcases more amateur acts, the third is usually indoor and features alternative genres from fusion to jazz & ska! The show starts at 6 in the evening and goes on all the way to 6 in the morning. Between the wonderful (free) music, beautiful people, tasty food served up in the shacks & the cool August night, you start believing in the possibility of heaven OR the transcendence might have something to do with all the marijuana being smoked like we needed to send aliens smoke signals to save us!

Sunday Jam

Freedom Jam 2003

Karnataka School of percussion@ Sunday Jam

Long time 'La Dude' organizer of Fredom Jam: Siddartha (Not the Buddha kind :-))

Guitar Prasanna & Co.

Other huge shows to look out for: Strawberry Fields (NLS fest), IIMB fest, IISC fest, St Johns Medicos fest, VTU fest (changes venu every year) and some of the bigger engineering collages in town! Most of these span over three days of competition and culminate with semi-pro acts invited on the last day! Again, crowds may number in scores of thousands on the Finals day! And yes, they are all hippies indulging in underage drinking & smoking (pot & tobacco). Its as if the flower child generation arrived in Bangalore three decades late! Sex, drugs and rock and roll all the way to 2010 and more.

Bangalore based Folk-Fusion BandOikyotaan.

Old time Bangalore Jazzers 'Jazz Revival'.

Karnataka's folk dance-music : Dolu Kunita is also performed in shows!


Esporonto (Fusion band from guruskool, the organizers of Freedom & Sunday Jams) stage set up

Esporonto

Bangalore has a multi-ethinic, intelligent and musically very aware audience at shows!

It dawns after a full night festival of music.

The first rays of soft sunshine, Qawali & the lake in the background! Bangalore + Music = Heaven

My most memorable show: tough to choose between the 2000 Strawberry Fields. It featured our band (Shrapnel) on the 2^nd day of the competition. Heavy metal was new on the Bangalore musick scene and we embraced it like the desert embraces the rain. 25 minutes on-stage to offstage gave us time for three numbers and we played two covers and an original. Our day was made when the then metal army (Threnody, Kryptos, Mindsnare etc) complemented us and marked us as a band to watch out for the future. Of course, we disbanded a week after the show, so you never read of us in the papers today! The finals was one of the most memorable I’ve witnessed. Threnody, Zero, Cryptic, Kryptos etc were the semi-pro finalists while the invite band saw a blues act from Sikkim churn some good ol 4 by 4 numbers. The crowd (numbering upto 30,000) was enveloped in hashish smoke and love was ion the air, on the ground, in the parking lot, behind the bushes … you get the idea right? If not for birth control, we’d have a Y2K Strawberry Fields’ bastards’ association condemning their parents’ reckless night of passion!