No venue like Bengaluru to host World Music Day, perhaps. For, the city has indeed provided stage for music from across genres.
The large music canvas has the city offering a host of platforms to the choicest of Indian and Western music throughout the year. The city also hosts a maximum number of music schools in several genres for a continuous stream of demand. “Forget the other sobriquets that Bengaluru has earned, it is today the City of Music,” the former IAS officer Chiranjeev Singh had said during Pt. Rama Rao Naik’s centenary celebrations.
According to mridangist H.S. Sudhindra, who also compiles a directory of musicians in Bengaluru, there are nearly 200 Indian classical concerts happening every year in the city, and the Ramanavami platform brings in 200 more, including light music. “Throughout the year, the city is seen throbbing with melody as there are nearly 25 active sabhas. The last 10 years have brought in a transformation that embraces every kind of music. Perhaps the cosmopolitan crowd, foreign visitors and the IT immigrants have added to each genre, maintaining its stance and demand,” he says.
While M. Balamurali Krishna had decades ago loved Bengalureans for their open-minded appreciation of his bold experiments, youngsters such as T.M. Krishna and Raghu Dixit too are equally accepted for being trendsetters with their daring endeavours.
On a different note, a place like Hard Rock Café is constantly pulsating with music as its very name suggests. “But metal and jazz is also catching on,” says Daniel Igloo, guitarist at Hard Rock who saw thousands of city aficionados head-banging to metal at the Cult Fest and the Bangalore Open Air festival that brought in Indian and international metal bands.
Varun Murali of the city-based fusion band ‘Swarathma’ says venues and opportunities for performing have increased in the city. While home studios too have started springing up, restaurants, pubs and club owners are opening up to live shows.
“In the absence of formal music education in schools, professional schools should come in to help sharpen one’s skills to look at career options in music. In fact, the online music school, Shankar Mahadevan Academy, has its off-line presence only in Bengaluru,” he says.
No wonder that a rare ‘Admissions Fair’ for courses in music was recently offered for students and music connoisseurs in Bengaluru from the True School of Music (TSM) in Mumbai, who thought it timely to entice the locals. “As the city scores in the number of institutions teaching music or the instrument sales, we thought youngsters should be informed of the host of opportunities open to them to pursue music as a profession,” said TSM co-founder Ashutosh Phatak.
According to a Nielsen report, India produces 19,000 commercials in a year that needs musicians to be associated with. Out of that, nearly 20 per cent is produced in Bengaluru.
The city is not just inclusive in its selection of music, but welcomes newer perspectives in presentation.
Kumaresh, violinist
It was violinist T. Chowdiah — Karnataka’s foremost cultural ambassador in Carnatic music — who bridged the cultural scene, while Gangubai Hangal and Bhimsen Joshi did it for Hindustani.
Suma Sudhindra, vainika
Bengaluru has nearly 25 western music shows happening in a week. In the absence of formal music education in schools, professional schools should come in to help sharpen one’s skills to look at career options in music.
Varun Murali of fusion band ‘Swarathma’
Where Bengaluru has gained
* Bangalore Gayana Samaja, the 110-year-old, one of the oldest running music sabhas of the country, has created the ‘TAG Digital Archives’ that offers recorded music from the 1940s for the public to listen to from its 10 workstations. “We have nearly 8,000 hours of music, edited and catalogued for listeners and students to make use,” says M.R.V. Prasad, president of the samaja. While Ananya Cultural Academy boasts of nearly 10,000 hours of archived Indian classical, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts recently set up a musical kiosk where the archives even offer Gauhar Jaan’s Hindustani flourishes dating back to her early 1900s recording.
* Bengaluru’s gain is also in having the Centre for Indian Music Experience, India’s first interactive music museum, which is all set to be a vibrant hub of India’s rich musical heritage by the year-end.
* With live music catching on, the True School of Music plans to bring its happening ‘blueFROG’, a restaurant which offers live music venue, to Bengaluru soon. The restaurant, to come-up on Church Street, will offer music venue for local bands and hopes to stir up the live scene here.
