Today’s News from Mumbai

My thoughts go out to all those great people we met in Mumbai – since hearing the news today I have checked in with Tas – and she is ok – but it is still depressing to see the city I have become so familiar with rocked by this news.

Our thoughts are with everyone affected.

Results of the press interviews in Mumbai

The article in the Hindustan Times (with the hilarious photo!) was published on Sunday 23rd November – here is an e-version. I’ll try and scan it in properly too…

The DNA article is in today – click on this link and then click on Page 8 and you’ll find us!

 

Also – I’m off to the BBC on Sunday for an interview on the Asian Network – so be sure to tune in if you are still up at 10.30pm!

Tasneem

Tasneem Vahanvaty is a Project Manager at the British Council in Bombay. Tas has been the very best kind of host that Stephen, Adam and I could have hoped for. Claire from the British Council in London has also been a great companion on this trip – but I know that she won’t mind if I dedicate this post to Tasneem.

Tas has organised a really good tour for us here. We have met a real range of music industry companies and individuals – as I’m sure anyone reading this blog can testify.

On reflection we all feel that we have all benefitted from this trip and we all feel pretty confident that we will use the knowledge and contacts we now all have in the future. We will be feedback back more formally to the British Council but we have a lot of positive news to share.

But Tas has gone beyond the call of duty (her mum has hardly seen her!) and has taken us out for a range of different Indian cuisines – ordering for us – advising us on what to eat (and what NOT to eat!). Therefore we can all report no signs of Delhi belly and instead of losing weight – we have all gained a few pounds through the delicious food and drink!

She has also given us a really honest picture of the music industry in India and you can see that the relationships that she has with the people we meet are really good as they all have a lot of complimentary things to say about her…. and so now do we!

Thanks Tas!! xxx

 

This blog post would not be complete without saying thank you to Nerindra who was out driver in Bombay who put up with picking us up and dropping us off at endless meetings, restaurants and cafes and more! He also got up unfeasably early to take Stephen and I to see the early morning fish market:

Saturday at Blue Frog

Saturday evening we travelled towards the south of Mumbai to visit Blue Frog - Mumbai’s newest music venue. The club has been really well put together and is a quite beautiful venue. Although the clubs plays host to a wide range of musicians it certainly has the feel of an up market jazz club where you can dine and listen to music – or just come in and listen. Certainly the programme has its fair share of jazz and you can see why it would work:

Nice.

They have big screens in the roof and so I talked about the Mother India – 21st Century Remix that has been put together by Kalaphool in the UK – it would work really well here.

I also did a bit of a plug for Soweto Kinch – because I think he would work really well in this space too!

We also went behind the club where they have the Blue Frog record label and production studios. The studios are state of the art and really well put together so that they are nice places to hang out and do your recordings. Apparently A R Rahman loves these studios and uses them overnight when he is putting things together!

and you can see why:

Saturday and the press in Mumbai

On Saturday we had two press interviews. One with DNA and one with the Hindustani Times. They were both good interviews but the photoshoots were very different to anything I have been involved with in the UK. I’ll post up the results when they come out!

Send off for Claire of Braekeleer

On Friday night we were determined to go out to say goodbye to Claire de Braekeleer (or Claire of Braekeleer as she has been known on this trip) so we went to a local club called Poison as it promised lots of Bollywood tracks to dance to. We got there at 9.30pm and it was empty so we went out to find a bar in the meantime and they were all FULL! So after trailing about for a bit in the car we gave up and bought some beer and sat in the car (note Stephen trying to hide from the camera)!

When we headed back to the club and found that it was only playing retro music and a bit of drum and bass – so not quite what we had hoped for but I think Claire was happy with her send off…

Friday 21st November

This morning we met up with Anand Sorapur from Phat Phish Records in Mumbai. This was a really important meeting for me as Anand is doing a range of work that involves discovering and working with indigenous communities that make music throughout India. They have a commercial arm to the work that they do with the record label but also spend time looking for and nurturing musicians because they believe in what they do musically. So I talked to them about the work that Sound It Out does in Birmingham as Phat Phish seem to have a very similar ethos.

Phat Phish also have ambitious plans to give the music they discover a high profile platform on prime time tv allowing local music to break out of its local constraints and have a wider audience. I will be looking out for that on the internet!

 

In the afternoon we met with Vishal & Shekhar who are the highly successful Bollywood composers who have been involved in many smash hits (including Dostana which we saw at the weekend!). If you read their Wikipedia you will see just how prolific they are. Vishal is also the lead singer in Pentagram the successful Indian band that we keep hearing about and he sings many of the Bollywood tracks too.

They were able to talk more about the music writing process for Bollywood films and sill us in with a few stories from the stars too!

Thursday afternoon in south Mumbai

Tas had spoken to us about the south like it is a different city – and it feels like this. The first thing you notice is that the buildings get bigger and more grand:

and also the roads are wider and there are no rickshaws:

Went went shopping in the markets and bazaars and saw the famous gateway of India:

We also took a walk in the evening down to the sea front and as usual Adam made friends with the locals!

 

Thursday 20th Nov

We had a meeting cancelled today – so all we had on was a lunch with three local journalists. This was a really good and different insight to the people we had chatted to before. The journalists were from Rolling Stone magazine and Time Out Mumbai. 

We had a good chat about their perspective on the music industry in India, traded a few band names and talked about the rise of niche markets in India. We again asked about the kind of trends that were obviously visible with young people and it seems that the first niche to rise up visibly is Metal in that young people can be seen dressing in black with band t-shirts etc and affiliating themselves with certain bands. Perhaps there could be some good stories and material for Capsule’s Home of Metal project in Birmingham!

After this we went on the tourist trail looking at the South part of Mumbai – not really all that far – but the traffic could take over 2 hours so we went on the Mumbai trains:

 

Tas our brilliant British Council guide went straight the front of the long queues for tickets as we were buying first class tickets. This upset our English sensibilities – so we hung at the back and took pictures and tried not to look conspicuous!

Here was a sign we all wanted a picture of:

and the platforms fascinated us all:

 

and a bit of video for atmosphere!

Wednesday 19th November in Mumbai

On Wednesday we spent a really lovely day with Bobby Talwar and Vijay Nair at Only Much Louder. This company is involved in a many areas of independent music in India from being involved with the Big Chill in Goa through to managing a number of the more successful bands in India.

They are also positioning themselves strategically being the first people to mention the involvement of the Indian public sector in the arts. They are successfully making relationships with the Indian Centre for Cultural Relations (ICCR) and The Indian Foundation of Arts (IFA) amongst others to explore how they can further promote and develop their work.

Bobby and Vijay in their office:

They are making good relationships with UK agents and have created a number of companies (all housed in the same offices) to deal with certain aspects of music work. The first of these is Counter Culture Records. We met with Neysa Mendes who heads up this project and she talked passionately about the musicians that she works with and the ways that she finds to distribute and promote the cds that her bands produce. CD sales are clearly not big business in India as people expect to get their recorded music for free – but they are able to get licensing deals with films and advertising companies.

Also based in the OML office is Myspace India headed up by Tarun Tripathi. MySpace only launched in India in April 2008 and so is still growing in popularity. Their target is for a million users by early in the new year and Tarun talked about some innovative ways that he is trying to encourage more users to the MySpace service. Being based at OML is great for him as he is able to film and record music events that they run and broadcast original content on his site.

Before we left the OML offices we were also able to drop in on Babble Fish Productions who are the video production company arm of the operation. Samira Kanwar who runs the show treated us to a few of their documentaries and videos that they have made for musicians and a few for TV. They have had some good commissions so far and are important if the bands and events that OML are involved in are to appeal to the Indian market.

On Wednesday evening we ate in the Hotel – much to the disgust of our British Council Guide Tas – who could not believe that we paid £30 each for a meal and drinks!