The day Viacom 18’s new channel took over Mehboob Studios, artistes and indie music fans alike, foresaw an expanding independent music scene in India. Performers as well as musicians came out to support their community of steadily growing talent. Amidst the surging crowds and the bright lights from the doll-house structure that was to be the Indies stage, folk-rock artiste and frontman of The Raghu Dixit Project spoke to Radioandmusic.com’s Aashay Dalvi about saving money to make videos to air on Pepsi MTV Indies, predictions for how the channel will fare and being inspired while collaborating with other artistes.
Now that the channel has been launched, will you be making music videos for the channel?
Oh, absolutely! It did not make sense when we launched the album to spend money and make expensive videos only to put it out on YouTube. And when you are on Facebook, the question inevitably arises, “Did you watch my videos?” Television is a forced medium and people are compelled to watch whatever is on their screen. We will save money and start shooting some quality videos now for songs that people have already loved, so whenever the videos come out, we know that it will be a success. So, yes, we plan to make the best use of Pepsi MTV Indies, and hopefully it will bear the fruits that we are expecting from it.
Do you feel artistes will be financially pressured to make videos aside from making albums?
There are artistes and then there are smart artistes, so there is always a smarter way to do it. It need not necessarily mean huge amounts of money to spend on making expensive videos; because now with a camera like Canon 550 D almost anyone can make videos. When I had to shoot a video for my first album, we had to hire a cameraman and a rig. It is still required, but, now an artiste can make “indie” looking videos as well. I think that is the charm of an independent musician, rather than a slick looking video with chicks dancing. If the artiste himself is talented enough, then that is great. At least, it will give rise to a lot more filmmakers now, a chance to make music videos.
How do you think the channel will fare? Do you think the channel will meet the expectations of audiences and artistes?
Well, I can only speak from the artiste’s point of view; for us, right now, I think it is a great blessing. Due to this channel, we have a visual medium to interact and influence our audiences, which we would never have imagined doing otherwise. These are the people who sit at home, watching TV, couch potatoes of sort, which would not have gone out for a concert. So, yeah, for those people, this is a great boon. And, I hope more people apart from just concert goers, enjoy our music. Eventually, we hope we will be able to inspire those couch potatoes to get off their seats and come to our concerts. If that happens, then you have a great translation of the intention and the result. As far as artistes are concerned, we just want to be on TV and get popular, we do not want actors to lip-sync our songs for us to be successful.
Do you plan on collaborating with any of the new performers in the near future?
Well, we have done things like that in the past. For example, I collaborated with Karsh Kale and Midival Punditz on the Train Song. The very aspect of the Raghu Dixit Project has been to collaborate with artistes who like to play with me, and who like me playing with them. That door is always open for those to walk in and say, “Hey Raghu, let’s make a song”!
That is the easiest way for me to make a song, rather than scratch my head and keep wondering. Other musicians always inspire me to make more music.
Pepsi MTV Indies will lead us to those avenues where people would say, “Arre yaar, yeh bande ka music achcha hain yaar; yeh item number bhi kar lega.