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This is an archive article published on October 13, 2015

On the Record

A new documentary, Standing By, goes beyond the stage door to trace an untold chapter in India’s musical history — the Indian underground.

A teeming crowd of almost 7,500 people, many of whom came in trench coats and mop tops, had gathered inside Mumbai’s famed Rang Bhavan at Dhobi Talao. Those who had assembled in the packed amphitheatre for this gig in the late ’90s had only one desire — to experience a moment of musical togetherness.

The story backstage, however, was a little different. Three important bands of our times — Brhama, Pentagram and Agnee — were squabbling over headlining that particular year of Independence Rock festival, then the big daddy of all rock concerts in India. A draw of lots threw up Vishal Dadlani’s Pentagram, a relatively new band back then. With Brhama staging a walk out, Arjun S Ravi, co-founder of Only Much Louder, which organises NH7 Weekender, recalls, “This is how a little-known band named Zero got its first gig at I-Rock.” The incident also explains how the festival came to be known as “Glastonbury of India” and how Rang Bhavan was the coveted venue if you “made great music”. Even legendary English rock band The Police performed there on their India visit in 1980.

Rang Bhavan shut down in 2004, after it came under Mumbai’s silent zone. With that, its stories too got lost. Until Ravi decided to share them. The medium is his documentary Standing By, which traces a blind spot in India’s musical history — the Indian underground. An encyclopedic exploration of independent Indian music, the film spans from the pre-Independence era, when jazz dominated the music scene, to the beat music of ’60s and ’70s, with bands such as The Jets and The Savages. The popularity of original rock was followed by metal in the ’80s, music video explosion of the ’90s and dance music boom of today. The film, presented by Red Bull Media House, will release on October 13 on standingby.in, as a six-part web series.

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In a nation where underground music took the route from “an inside joke to a legitimate industry”, Ravi was chronicling the journey of a few “unpopular” boys and girls who rocked out in the face of adversity. “We are talking of a pre-Internet era, imagine how difficult it would have been then, if it was so difficult to make it as an independent artiste till a few years ago, with YouTube in tow. There was always a bias: that original music stemming out from Indian bands was not as good as their western counterparts,” says Ravi, about music that a few heard and loved; and which was overshadowed by popular music genres such as Bollywood.

Comprising 120 interviews with a range of artistes, artiste managers, journalists, government employees at art and culture departments, apart from rare audio and footage, the documentary is an archival effort that journeys through rock venues and studios and features some of the best independent artistes in India. The film includes interviews with Uday Benegal, Amyt Dutta, Palash Sen, Naresh Fernandes and Devraj Sanyal among others. “Every time we did one interview, we wanted to do six more. We spent more than eight months on procuring footage and rights. From first person sources to institutional sources such as Films Division, recording labels and media sources, we went everywhere,” says Ravi, about the film that has been shot in Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Kolkata and Shillong.

While Usha Uthup, once Usha Iyer of the Iyer sisters, talks of singing at nightclubs on Park Street, Carlton Kitto speaks about playing with some of the finest jazz legends, including Duke Ellington. The film talks of many such stories, including how iconic guitarist Dilip Balakrishnan borrowed stories from The Lord of the Rings and turned them into songs and how Indus Creed, a rock band, travelled to the USSR as a part of an ICCR delegation alongside a plethora of classical musicians in the late ’80s, on PM Rajiv Gandhi’s request. A few months after a string of famous benefit concerts called Live Aid turned into a global jukebox, an India-based group called HELP, comprising a bunch of students, one of whom is now MP Priya Dutt, put together Aid Bhopal, which was India’s version of Live Aid and had a variety of rock bands come together to raise money for the victims of Bhopal gas tragedy, in 1985, eight months after the incident. AR Rahman might be India’s global face, but musician Nondon Bagchi of Great Bear, famous rock band of the ’80s, is spotted saying in the film, “The way he (Balakrishnan) puts melody, will take Mr Rahman (AR) 48 generations to create.”

The film, meanwhile, Ravi says, is an ode to the people who helmed a music scene from scratch. “It’s a repository of material on artistes, a lot of whom have been forgotten, just to say that this happened, they existed and gave us music that forms the foundation of what a lot of musicians are creating today,” he concludes.


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