New soundscape on the horizon

Harish Sivaramakrishnan of Agam talks about the paths music may take in 2017

January 03, 2017 03:36 pm | Updated 07:11 pm IST

BANGALORE, 09/06/2012: Agam, Bangalore based rock band performing during launch of the music album "Utthaan", at Mount Carmel College, in Bangalore on June 09, 2012.
Photo: K. Murali Kumar

BANGALORE, 09/06/2012: Agam, Bangalore based rock band performing during launch of the music album "Utthaan", at Mount Carmel College, in Bangalore on June 09, 2012. Photo: K. Murali Kumar

The year 2016 has been an incredibly fascinating year for music, specifically, independent music. When we started playing music seven years ago, the circumstances that existed, and the ‘scene’ as we call it, was very different. Each year saw it evolve. And the last year was filled with opportunities for indie musicians.

New music was created and newer avenues opened up for musicians to showcase their music to the audience, and at places where it had never been before. What’s noteworthy is the way the audience’s perception of music has evolved. There is a much higher acceptance of radical musical experiments.

We also saw some amazing concepts that grew to promote indie musicians. Kochi-based The Muse Room — pioneered by Sumesh Lal, who is also the man behind the Music Mojo sessions — has featured an eclectic bunch of musicians, old and new, presenting art in an extremely personal and from-the-heart manner.

Alt and Pepper, another indie-at-heart festival, that I was a part of, featured metal bands and the traditional Thayambaka of Kerala, all in the same venue. Major festivals such as NH7 Weekender continued to attract great talent and phenomenal crowds. The Humming Tree — a performance venue in Bangalore — brought down some incredible international artistes and went in for affordable pricing — the sessions were well-received.

However, there’s still a long way to go for independent art and free thinking to find wings. In the realm of music, some bold musical experiments are taking place. Take, for instance, what Chennai-based pianist Anil Srinivasan has been doing, or Guitar Prasanna’s genre-breaking experiment of playing Ilaiyaraaja at a Carnatic kutcheri. These deserve to be amplified.

A lot of such experiments still meet with a lot of opposition and criticism from traditionalists and purists. Art of any form is free-flowing by design — it cannot be contained by rigid norms or rules.

For example, Carnatic music is supremely intricate, evolved and vast, and has stood the test of time. Its inclusivity comes from the ability to absorb and imbibe elements from contrasting musical styles and enriching it with its own tradition.

While acknowledging the increasing support for more musical experiments, it is disappointing that many such experiments are shot down just because they don’t fit into a pre-determined format, which we sometimes loosely and irresponsibly straitjacket as ‘tradition’.

Art always rediscovers itself and the generations will always do their part to enrich it — the opposition to change is largely stemmed by a small set of people that feels uncomfortable about the change that challenges its position of hegemony that makes it believe it is the custodian of tradition.

I hope that 2017 opens the doors to more new music, new musicians and prodigious musical experiments. Here are seven things I believe will take centre stage in the world of music this year.

Indie going mainstream

2016 saw a lot of independent artistes take to the mainstream — Masala Coffee made its debut as music composers, so did Thaikkudam Bridge.

I see a lot more of this happening in the coming year.

Crossover sounds

A lot more crossover sounds will be experimented with. Bands combining diverse/orthogonal genres will prosper. Something like what Amit Trivedi does, fusing Rajasthani folk with mainstream sounds.

Beyond borders

People will look beyond language and familiarity in consuming new music.

We will see more artistes find avenues to play at places they haven’t before — Raghu Dixit and Indian Ocean pioneered this. And, Agam toured West Asia and Africa.

Format change

A lot of mainstream musicians (film composers) will create music in a band format — a lot of established music composers now have live acts that are structured the way a band would do it.

A.R. Rahman, Salim-Sulaiman… all of them opt for six-seven-piece bands over orchestras when they go live.

Be original

Original music will find a stronger holding. That said, a good deal of covers will continue to be produced, but there will be more effort and thinking that will go into reproducing music.

‘Live’ income

Live shows will continue to be the biggest source of income for independent musicians. There is hope that better monetisation channels will open up for musicians to make more money with their released music — but I think it’s still early days.

Genre-bending

More cross-genre collaborations will happen. Many musicians from the West are looking eastwards for interesting sessions. For instance, Chris Martin performing with Rahman, Raghu Dixit working with a Turkish string orchestra… This presents a great opportunity for indie bands to explore musical boundaries. We at Agam are doing a bunch of these too.

The writer is founder-lead singer of Agam, and is design leader at Google. He calls himself a musician, engineer, son, husband, father and overall nice guy. The band is to come up with its second album in 2017

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