For Arijit Datta, lead singer and guitarist of the year-old band Airport, his first-ever live gig as a part of the Bandstand Revival Project is his attempt to free music. “Music needs to breathe. It needs to be in our public space,” proclaims the musician. This March, he will perform at the third Bandstand Revival Project, which will be held every Saturday till the month of May.
The Bandstand Revival Project was started with the aim of “using heritage structures for the entertainment of the public,” according to Kavita Sharma, joint director, Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry, who organised the project.
“These bandstands go back to the 1800s and are a feature unique to the city. They were constructed by the British to accommodate crowds that would gather to watch the brass band of an Infantry regiment perform for the governor of the city every evening,” says Sharma.
The project started out by showcasing the cultural heritage of the Indian states through their dance and music. But, three years back, in a bid to do something for the youth and provide people the chance to listen to live music they would otherwise not be able to afford, the Revival Project became a music event.
As Stuart DaCosta, the project manager for this year’s event, explains, “This is a revival of the bandstand culture in outdoor spaces”. This year, the revival will feature live band performances at Malabar Hill (Kamla Nehru Udyan), Dadar Chowpatty Bandstand (Veer Prabhu Deshpande and Sant Dyaneshwar Udyan) and Bandra (Carter Road Amphitheatre).
The six-month-old Bombay Bassment are no novices to playing in open spaces, having performed at Bandra’s Amphitheatre, IC Colony and at BKC. Vocalist Robert Omulo credits his best performances to the fact that they were open-air ones.
“If we perform at a paid gig in a club somewhere, there is a restriction in terms of the space available and the atmosphere. In an open-air scenario, you are at the mercy of the elements, but nothing is restricted,” he says. The elements, say the musicians, just add to their performances, in the absence of fancy lights and special effects.
It’s an experience that Datta believes every band, new or old, should compulsorily be a part of. “The bands need it. We are all being shoved into rooms. The city’s music culture has been restricted to just clubs, which can get suffocating. It lacks oxygen and needs to breathe,” says Datta, who hopes that projects like this have a domino effect.
DaCosta, who is also a member of the band Something Relevant, credits the originality of over 200 Mumbai bands for the popularity of such events. “Mumbai owes this surge in live band culture to the dawning realisation that originality has a lot more character than its carboncopied counterparts,” he says. Audiences are no longer settling for just covers, they want original music, spanning different genres and hopefully, languages.
The lack of open spaces, silent-zone restrictions and high entertainment taxes are some of the hurdles faced by bands wishing to perform live. Although all the gigs at the revival are free gigs, money, however, is still the biggest hurdle. “When budgets are low, you end up compromising. And we are only as good as our last show, so it has to be good,” says Rohan Majumdar, member of band The Colour Compound, who will be playing at the revival. “We enjoy playing for new people; after all, we are making music to share it. But it needs to be a viable proposition; else we will love it a little less.”
The live music culture may still be at a nascent stage, but there has been an increase in the events that feature live, open-air music. And the Bandstand Revival is, hopefully, just the start.
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