On Thursday evenings, between 6.30 p.m. and 8.30 p.m., music fills the air at UST Global in Technopark. For the past year or so, every week, a group of likeminded techies have been gathering in a cafeteria inside the office for ‘UST Global Music Café’.
What started off as an impromptu jam session on August 1, 2013, by a handful of music buffs has now become an open platform where some 172 employees (or ‘associates’ as the guys at UST Global like to call them) get together to perform, listen to as well as appreciate all kinds of music.
“It’s a band, a platform for music and a community of music buffs and musicians rolled into one. And it’s very much an employee-driven initiative,” says software developer Vishnu Varma, who co-founded Music Café along with his colleagues Joseph Fernandez, senior manager (marketing), and Renjith Ramachandran, a technical analyst. Music Café rocked Bhavani building in Technopark yesterday with their brand of music.
The founding trio say that they started Music Café because of their common interest in Western music. “It started off as guitar lessons for associates, which quickly became guitar sessions and then music sessions and eventually a café for all and every kind of music,” explains Vishnu, who is also a vocalist and composer.
Joseph, who plays the guitar and the keyboard, adds: “It was only when we saw how quickly it evolved did we realise the need for such a space. For many who live the pressures of an IT life, it has become a stress-buster. Music Café reflects UST Global’s ‘Transforming Lives’ mission through compelling music performances for the company’s employees, clients, communities and CSR partner organisations.”
Music Café follows the same principles as the open source format [read platforms such as TED Talks, Ink Talks, YouTube, Wikipedia and the like], which invites people to contribute and is driven by contributors themselves.
Each weekly gathering typically draws some 20 to 35 associates, who often sit in a circle, pitching in with unplugged versions of songs in Malayalam, Tamil and Hindi, plus a smattering of Western soft rock as well as instrumental and classical music, which are either their own compositions or popular numbers.
“We’ve never missed a weekly session thus far and even though it has grown exponentially, we’ve tried to retain the flavour of Music Café by holding the gatherings in the cafeteria itself,” says Vishnu. “Though scheduled for two hours, some sessions have actually stretched into five-hour music marathons!” adds Joseph.
The initiative has grown so big that its members now include music buffs in the company’s offices in Kochi, Bangalore, the United States and the United Kingdom. The members here in the city have banded together to perform more than 25 shows within the company and also outside venues such as Park Centre, and Kanthari and the Mental Health Hospital [as part of the company’s CSR activities].
They have also done 22 music sessions for Kappa TV’s Moodtapes , a popular unplugged music show. “One of our highlights was performing for Chennai Super Kings (CSK) cricket team at the Impact India launch in Bangalore. Ten of us went to Bangalore and performed the song ‘Blowing Whistles’, which we ourselves had composed. Indian captain and cricketing icon Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who is also captain of CSK, had rich praise for the anthem,” says Vishnu.
Music Café even has two spin offs. At least once every couple of months, Carnatic musicians of the group host an hour of pure Carnatic classical music. Then there is ‘Composium’, a gathering of the songwriters of the group.
“People come together with lyric ideas and melody ideas, which we jam together into a song. In fact, six of the Moodtapes sessions that we presented were our own compositions,” says Joseph.
Let the music flow.
