Seven years after launching Control ALT Delete, the country’s biggest crowdfunded gig series, Nikhil Udupa still isn’t sure how he got people to trust his taste in music.
Having previously worked with entertainment company Only Much Louder and Pepsi MTV Indies , he founded 4/4 Entertainment with Himanshu Vaswani, who has also previously worked on events for Rolling Stone India and music retailers Bajaao. Along with Rishu Singh, founder of indie label Ennui.BOMB, they have put together 10 editions so far, never once repeating an artist. The shows take place in Mumbai, Pune and Bengaluru.
With the next wave of festivals, which started last weekend with GoMAD, and continue for a whole month, there are at least six big-ticket music events taking place across the country.
Ask the artistes
Festivals such as Mahindra Blues have their own team curating where the bent is towards international music. But it gets even more diverse. NH7 Weekender, Enchanted Valley Carnival and Magnetic Fields aren’t exactly sitting and picking each artiste themselves — the curation is influenced by artist managers, record labels and very often, other artists.
Times Music’s COO Mandar Thakur says artistes who release music with them — Indian Ocean, Papon and more — are always on the radar. Thakur feels that since artistes are now releasing their own material as well as taking on commercial, mainstream film music, they don’t remain aligned to just one label or one group. “Lately, due to a large increase in pop / independent music singles and albums coming out, a lot of festival curators are increasingly choosing specific acts from those.”
For Vijay Nair, the founder of Only Much Louder, curation of a music festival like NH7 Weekender largely revolves around the simple stuff first — their budgets and the artists’ availability. He says, “It’s a bit of math and a bit of art.” Curation depends on audience perspective. Nair says that at their past edition of the festival in Shillong and Pune (which took place in October and December, respectively), “For 80% of the audience, this is the one show they attend every year.”
Planning to play
With about 150 to 200 artistes that write in to ask for a slot at Weekender, Nair agrees that even artist management agencies such as Mixtape plan their artist tours around festival dates so that they can stop by and play a set. For Nair, the fact that bands and firms come to them and pitch artistes has “made our life a bit easier”. He adds, “It cuts down our costs and if there are 10 more people going and doing A&R on our behalf, that’s not a bad idea at all.”
But Udupa calls this phenomenon “a cannibalistic process” and a “double-edged sword”. He prefers that his company is not aligned to any single venue, festival or brand either. “It is not the norm to have ideas allegiances. We’ve moved away from festival curation to brand properties,” he says. As for their own baby, Control ALT Delete, he says they’ve always picked “bands that can make people happy, than what brings us a crowd”.
Research matters
Picking those kind of bands is also Jehan Johar’s prerogative. After all, he’s head of programming and curating at SulaFest, which is India’s longest-running wine and music festival. With their 11th edition taking place this weekend at the Sula Vineyards in Nashik, this is Johar’s sixth year curating. “For three years I did it under the Blue Frog banner, and for the last three years, I have programmed the fest under my Ra Music banner, which specialises in festival curation and one-off events.”
While Johar also receives pitches and requests for performance slots on the regular for SulaFest, he says most of the research is his own and he does all the reaching out himself. He says, “The vision of Sula Fest is to be a high quality, genre-rich, world music festival.”
While wine is a big part of SulaFest, Johar says music is the centrepiece. He says, “So now it has come to a point where people can book their tickets to SulaFest with their eyes closed, and know for sure that they are going to have a great experience, musically and otherwise.”
Mark Your Calendars
SulaFest
Sula Vineyards, Nashik
Parov Stelar, Crystal Fighters, Bauchklang, Gypsy Hill, GRAIN, Amit Trivedi, Bondi.
February 3 and 4.
Mahindra Blues Festival, Mumbai
John Mayall, Coco Montoya, Layla Zoe, Walter Wolfman Washington and the Roadmasters, Blackstratblues.
February 10 and 11.
VH1 Supersonic
Laxmi Lawns, Pune
Incubus, Sean Paul, Alt-J, Major Lazer, Marshmello, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Nucleya, Parekh & Singh, Pentagram.
February 9 to 11.
The Humming Tree: Backdoors
Mumbai and Bengaluru
Anderson .Paak and the Free Nationals, Wolf Alice, Watsky, Danny Goffey, When Chai Met Toast, Divine, Prateek Kuhad.
February 14 (Mumbai) and February 17 (Bengaluru)
Ragasthan
near Jaisalmer
Lineup to be announced
February 23 to 25.
Published - February 12, 2018 12:23 pm IST
