What powered all this was anxiety
I would like to share a new initiative from The Hindu Group (THG).
The Hindu Fridays: the space for an intimate, interactive musical experience that goes beyond the traditional boundaries of genres and brings new people into the fold.
Rewinding! ⏪ It starts with one.
I was around 7 or 8 when I found an audio cassette labelled ‘Colonial Cousins’ in my home. My grandfather was into music as well. He had two large custom-built speakers installed in our home, along with an audio system. I put the cassette in, and I remember hitting the ‘play’ button.
‘Krishna Ni Bhe Gha-Ni, Baroo,
Krishna Ni Bhe Gha-Ni, Baroo’
Colonial Cousins: Krishna (video)
Hariharan’s vocals felt like a lullaby at that time. I remember feeling very curious once the song started playing. My ears hadn’t heard such new sounds till then! I remember standing between the two speakers to feel the effect of the ‘Stereo’ sound.
After a few days, I found another cassette. It was labelled ‘Michael Jackson’. I immediately knew this sounded different. So I took the cassette to our neighbour, who was running a church band. He had a full-spec professional audio system. That was the first time I knew music could sound ‘that’ good!
Then came my teens. My father brought a DVD player from the Maldives with some CDs. I played a random unlabelled CD. The first song on the list was named ‘Dido: White Flag’. A very new sound for my ears. Probably because I was tired of hearing the same songs from ‘All India Radio’ all the time. My mom worked there. Then I found Marc Anthony’s I Need You and You Sang to Me, Crazy Town’s Butterfly, Matchbox Twenty’s Push, Avril Lavigne’s Nobody’s Home, Ronan Keating’s When You Say Nothing at All and then some more on that CD.
And then… I clicked on a track named ‘Bryan Adams: (Everything I Do) I Do It for You’. What I thought was a great piano-based song was exactly how my obsession with guitar music began. IFYKYK :-)
Back to my teens. I hated school. One day, I came home and switched the TV on to catch up on SWAT Kats. If I remember correctly, I stumbled upon the SS Music channel. VJ Craig was wrapping up, and he played a music video. It was Linkin Park’s ‘In the End’. The anger, that heavy distorted guitar sound... everything about it got me hooked.
Then came the internet. So did Metallica, U2, RHCP, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Pantera, Led Zeppelin, Dream Theater, Porcupine Tree, Meshuggah, SOAD, Audioslave and ambient post-rock bands. It’s been a perfect 90s journey! (check out the playlist below)
I kept avoiding LIVE music for so long just because I was anxious about doing new things, going to new places and, of course, the money involved. I remember being sad about not being able to go to the Metallica and Meshuggah concerts in India.
I wanted to overcome this anxiousness. So, in the last two years, I started going to local metal gigs in Chennai’s restobars. I just wanted to listen to music LIVE at an ‘affordable’ cost. I wanted to see artists do soundchecks, I wanted to look at guitarists’ pedalboards, I wanted to see how they do the pinch harmonics, all the while trying not to die inside the mosh pits in the already cramped restobars. I had a constant desire to connect with the artists, talk to them about their thought process, their gear, why they do what they do. The effort was worth it because LIVE music ‘hits’ different. I found some like-minded folks, and I even considered volunteering to run these events.
And then one day my boss at THG asked me, out of the blue, if I was into ‘music’. Then I met Mathivanan Rajendran & Nikhila from StoriCulture, and now we have The Hindu Fridays (thanks, Ashok, for the name).
Things happened, and here are the videos from our first event. Brilliant stuff from Sikkil Gurucharan and Madhan Karky.
From ideation to execution to promotion, all we wanted was to make the audience feel a bit ‘closer’ to the artists (exactly what I wanted from music events too). We wanted to keep things organic. It eventually led to moments of vulnerability and serendipity between the artists and the guests. A huge market gap lies between mega LIVE music events and intimate, limited-audience music events. Do you remember that A.R. Rahman event in Chennai which made attendees furious? There were so many frustrated families with kids there. If ARR played a limited-seating, closed-door, intimate event at a premium cost, I think they’d consider paying for it.
For me personally, ‘The Hindu Fridays’ was a ‘flow state’. There was nothing in my mind for those two days. I just did everything and anything to get the event done right.
What powered all this was anxiety! Yes. I was very anxious because this was something new for us, and for me personally. I always tried to stay away from working on events because of all the ‘variables’ associated with them. One small mistake can ruin a brand’s reputation. I can’t afford that.
I now remember a conversation with my ex-boss in my previous organization. Almost seven years ago, I was trusted with a new project. A very interesting but ‘costly’ experiment. I was very anxious in the initial stage due to all the ambiguity. My ex-boss sensed it and checked in on me. He said something that I still remember: ‘You are doing something new. It’s the anxiety. And, it’s ok. One thing about anxiety is that you can always turn it around and use it as a driving force. It can be used for doing good, great things too. I know you can figure it out!’
I now think about how I got introduced to world music, how anxiousness can be a driving force for doing new things, how you can channel your passion into helping others enjoy their passion.
In the end, it does even matter!
Everything!
Thanks to my boss for the trust and the opportunity. Thanks for the support, Sriram Srinivasan, Chitra Swaminathan and her team, Ashok Subramanian, Shikha and her team, Karthik Nagappan, Jagan and others.
Great work by Sarabhi, Nikhila and Sonia from the StoriCulture team. I learned a lot seeing them obsess about designing the experience, creating the atmosphere and engaging the guests.
One thing that I found very interesting at THG was how I was able to find support from unexpected places, especially the maintenance and security teams. For example, our maintenance team’s head, Mathivanan, and his team (especially Sekar) ensured our conference hall looked like a Kutchery hall in no time. They had to change the Kutchery hall back into a conference hall in one day too! Thanks to them!
It’s true… everything, everyone matters!
Alexa, play Advaita’s Meinda Ishq