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News |  04 Jan 2014 09:54 |  By RnMTeam

Day One at India Music Week Conference

MUMBAI: Whether it is cutting of costs or a limited audience that led India Music Week to be held in just one city, the whole event certainly seemed to be concentrated, from the looks of Day one at the True School of Music (TSM), Mumbai.

The first day of the two day conference kicked off with a discussion on the challenges in bringing international artistes of different genres to perform in India and the trends witnessed in the audiences. Sharing their observations were OML co-founder Girish ‘Bobby’ Talwar, who moderated the session; Mixtape founder Naveen Deshpande; Gatecrash founder Emmanuelle De Decker; blueFROG co-founder Dhruv Ghanekar; InRoom Records director Laiq Qureshi; Mats Persson Hobson, producer and advisor at Concerts Norway(Rikskonsertene), a governmental institution that is financed by and operates under the Ministry of Culture in Norway and Krunk Live founder Sohail Arora on the booking trends and the increasing demand for international artistes to perform at college festivals, mainly engineering and medical colleges.

The panelists pointed out the base-line expectation that artistes should keep about their payment, when planning an international tour. The challenges were discussed in some detail, highlighting the visa issues faced by the artistes and the importance of embassy support. Hobson spoke about the government support that Norway enjoys when it comes to cultural exchange. TSM founder Ashutosh Pathak shed light on some tricks to arrange for visas easily, which everyone found amusing.

Bobby also spoke about the importance of government support for the setting up for venues for live performances in India, owing to a growing independent music scene. This topic lead to the partiality that the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) shows towards the dance forms and the obvious neglect that the indie-music fraternity faces.

After a series of anecdotes that united all the delegates and panelists as one enthusiastic lot of game-changers, the conference proceeded to topics like the relevance of music school for performers and producers with names like Warren Mendosa, Ranjit Barot, Sanjay Divercha, Dhruv Ghanekar, and Ashutosh Pathak, who moderated the session. Needless to say, this discussion had some very conflicting points made by the panelists, stressing that where their learning span could have been compressed, they were not sure that their originality and rawness would have lasted.

Post lunch, the discussion on the different jobs in the music industry stressed on the fact that the growing industry was a strong promise of diversified job opportunities in the music scene like, artiste managers (who are different from booking agents), producers, technicals, lighting professionals, sound engineers and so on.

The day closed to a discussion of the opportunities that Indian artistes have of performing abroad and what they would require. The take away points were understanding the music scene in the country the artistes wish to tour, being realistic about the destinations they choose and exploring closer neighbourhoods (closer countries) and music markets to showcase their talent and increase fan base.

The finishing acts were The Family Cheese and Blackstartblues .

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