As someone who writes on music, Arjun S. Ravi thought that working on a documentary tracing the history and growth of the independent music scene in India would be a breeze. “I was, of course, sorely mistaken,” says the man behind Standing By , a six-part web series that covers this rarely-documented part of Indian music, which premieres online on Wednesday, October 14.
Nearly two years ago, his company, Only Much Louder (OML), tied up with Red Bull Media House, to develop the idea that would fill in as many blanks as possible in this musical history. This involved tapping several resources. Arjun says, “From first-person interviews, of which we did over 100, to raiding the archives of newspapers, magazines, music labels, news channels, et al. The credits and acknowledgements list at the end of every episode is quite long indeed!”
Over 400 hours of interview footage and archival media have been pared down to six episodes of about 20 to 30 minutes each. Since there are hundreds of stories stretching back to the jazz era of the 1930s, they obviously couldn’t fit all of it into the six webisodes. And so, for people who are looking for some extra information, the makers decided to create a digital timeline, which will be available for free on their website. This will feature over 100 more stories presented as videos, photos, articles and more, explains Arjun.
“As there’s not much recorded history of a lot of events and artistes, we had to get a majority of this information directly from the source. That’s why we interviewed so many people — musicians, promoters, band managers, venue owners, journalists. Books like Naresh Fernandes’ Taj Mahal Foxtrot , academic studies, and articles in numerous publications helped put pieces of the story together,” says Arjun. Considering it wasn’t just about one genre or one period of time, the scope of the project was quite massive.
While the independent music scene is generally considered a closed community, Arjun says that most people were incredibly supportive and were quite open, though a few did decline despite their best efforts. “But in general, I think, it has become a lot more inclusive over the past few years, which is also perhaps one of the reasons why it has become more popular,” he adds.
Talking about the research process, he says, “More than finding archival media, the tougher task was securing rights and permissions to use it. We’ve spent nearly nine months doing just that. We had only a limited budget to put this project together, but that didn’t stop us from thinking big. So first, we went out and sourced a whole bunch of archives from multiple different sources. Then, we had to figure out what material we could actually use, based on what we could afford and who would give us permission.”
Apart from this, it was a personal learning experience for him. “Every era, every genre, every sub-scene had much to offer in terms of interesting stories. Take the 60s and 70s in Calcutta for instance. It’s no secret that Park Street was a hub for live entertainment in the city, but the variety of live entertainers on the strip ranged from jazz and beat groups, to cabaret artistes, to magicians and a range of other entertainers. Then in the mid-70s, things started changing in West Bengal. A host of circumstances, including but not limited to the growth of the Naxal movement, political changes, and the migration of a significant number of Anglo-Indians, led to an almost complete shutdown of the live entertainment scene. It’s moments like this, where situations beyond the control of musicians have such a huge impact on how they practise their art, that we’ve tried to reflect in the documentary,” he says.
However, Arjun adds, “It has strengthened my belief that the best, and some may say even vital, time to be in this music scene is now. The project can never really be complete because I’m pretty sure there are hundreds of stories yet to tell.”
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