As pandemic forces cancellation of concerts, recordings and music festivals, musicians are finding new ways to collaborate and connect with audiences online.
Organisers of the mega Bengaluru Ganesh Utsav in Basavanagudi are hosting a confluence of musicians on Facebook live to brighten the lockdown evenings.
MD Pallavi, Mangala Ravi, Supriya Raghunandan, Sunitha S Murali, Sandeep Vasishta, Anuradha Bhat and many more artists are performing live at 6 pm, one at a time every day. They are also accepting requests from viewers and singing them.
The evening concerts are a big hit, with fans sometimes asking for encores. “I have never done anything like this ever before and it was a great experience. What was supposed to be a one-hour show went on for almost two hours as the listeners kept encouraging me to continue,” said Sunitha S Murali, well-known sugama sangeeta and film playback singer.
She missed the company of a team playing the background music but the encouragement from the virtual audience made up for it, and gave her “immense happiness.”
“The void created by the absence of concerts and stop in my job as a mentor on the TV show Haadu Karnataka has been filled here on this platform,” she says.
The hosts are thrilled with the response. “Ours is predominantly a music-based organisation, we wanted to serve people in our own way. All the artistes we contacted were enthusiastic and welcomed the idea instantly,” says Nandish S Mariyappa, convenor of the Ganesh Utsav committee.
The response from listeners has been phenomenal, and the organisers are bombarded with requests to invite more artists to perform live, Nandish says.
Another Facebook initiative started by music director and lyricist Praveen D Rao called ‘Someyochane’ allows anybody to write lyrics and pass it on for composing and singing. This enables the community of musicians to grow and explore new talent while enabling students to learn from and interact with many top-notch musicians.
Praveen, a well-known composer who plays a variety of instruments, is anchoring the initiative with help from a bunch of popular singers. Big names such as Ustad Faiyaz Khan and Rathnamala Prakash are participating. Mandolin Prasad, Puttur Narasimha Nayak, Sunitha Ananthaswamy and a host of reputed Kannada sugama sangeeta artistes have made tunes for #someyochane. Praveen encourages composers to explain why they chose a particular raga or style.
The idea, he says, is to learn and educate. In the process, many new Kannada poems are getting tunes and singers.
Bollywood initiatives
T-Series and Red FM are hosting a digital concert that will be streamed live on both their Facebook and YouTube pages called ‘The Care Concert’ on April 11 from 6 pm onwards. Hosted by RJ Malishka and RJ Raunak, the star-studded musicians including Neha Kakkar, Armaan Malik, Honey Singh, Adnan Sami, Jubin Nautiyal will be a part of this show, which also acts as a fundraiser for the PM Cares Fund.
A collaborative effort between Zoom TV and Oaksmith Glasses called #WeekendLive, is a series of live acts from some of the most talented bands and individual musicians performing from the comfort of their homes on Zoom TV’s Facebook page.
Zee5 has undertaken a new initiative #BeCalmBeEntertained to produce new original shows helmed by India’s finest actors for its users to stream across devices for free. With the shooting schedules halted of all televised shows, this innovative idea is aimed at keeping viewers engaged in such gloomy times.
NY event on April 18
The annual Global Citizen Festival which is a mega event organised at Central Park in New York, with the best musicians around the world, has also announced a virtual benefit concert called ‘One World: Together at home’ on April 18.
They have teamed up with the World Health Organization (WHO) to raise money to fund the frontline healthcare workers fighting the current COVID-19 pandemic and various charities.
This event is curated by Lady Gaga and hosted by Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, and Stephen Colbert and will have a long list of performers such as Chris Martin of Coldplay, Elton John, Billie Eilish, and John Legend to name a few.
The virtual concert will be broadcast globally on TV channels and social media. It will be attended by Paul McCartney, Priyanka Chopra, and Shah Rukh Khan among many others.