Common Roots, a virtual music festival featuring Indian and international artistes, will be launched on May 9 and is scheduled to be held every Saturday in the month (May 16, 23 and 30) from 2 pm to 2 am.
The artistes scheduled to perform include Grammy winner Ricky Kej, contemporary folk musician and composer Raghu Dixit, progressive rock band The Tram Lines Project, Sufi singer Sidhant Deb, blues band The Chronic Blues Circus, Australian musician Al Parkinson, and internationally renowned sitarist Ustad Chote Rahimat Khan. Each musician will perform for 20 to 30 minutes each.
Designed to support the artiste community and those directly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the festival aims to raise money to support three not-for-profit organisations through donations by viewers. They are: Give India which works with daily wage workers, India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) who will be supporting artistes and researchers, and Voice of Stray Dogs (VSOD), a dog sanctuary dealing with rescue and treatment.
Bonny Fernandes
Talking about the festival, co-founder Bonny Fernandes says, “So, the name, Common Roots, suggests that no matter how diverse we are, we are all connected in some way. We didn’t want to focus only on certain genres of music or bands; rather, we wanted to include everyone. It’s also a global event so we have musicians from places such as the USA, Singapore, Australia, and France. At the same time, the donation partners are also diverse. So, therefore, we hope that we also get a diverse audience. It actually connects everyone beautifully and it will form that sense of community which we clearly lack now owing to social distancing.”
On where the event can be viewed, he says: “The idea was to treat it as a community inclusive exercise. Because the artistes are donating their time and skills, we didn’t want it to be performed only on our Instagram handle. The anchor point for the event will be our website. When you click on the online stage tab on the site, you will be led to the Instagram page of the artiste who is performing at that moment. So, the artists will be compensated in terms of followers, likes, and so on.”
With regard to the donations that one can make, Bonny says, “We are just the event organisers as such. We think that Give India, IFA and VSOD are better equipped to collect the donations. The other point is that if someone wants to claim tax benefits, they can avail of that if they pay directly to the organisations. And lastly, this is for the sake of transparency. The Common Roots website has links to each one’s fundraiser page.”
Visit https://commonroots.in/ or the Common Roots Instagram page for details.
