A musical evening in Bangalore

The crowds were crazy and even getting to the entrance seemed like the hardest ordeal ever! What awaited fans on the other side, however, made every extra minute of patience, well worth the effort. The evening began on time, as always, on the dot, at 7 pm and a line-up of several bands took to the stage with the first mind-blowing performance by Yodhakaa, a Chennai-based band. With an amazing mix of Carnatic vocals, global percussion, shloka-based compositions and a repertoire and style unmatched, this band was indeed the new sound that neo-Bangaloreans were craving. Bangalore’s love child — Esperanto, featuring Geetha Navale — then took the stage and opened to a soulful instrumental of Maha Ganapathim, which left the crowd in melodious raptures. After a few more new compositions, Gopal Navale gave the audience the best finale with his much-loved rendition of Subramaniam, a song that has now become, quite unofficially, the band’s anthem. City-based Bicycle Days were the next crowd stealers and while the amphitheatre was already packed, more people squeezed in for this performance, only increasing the energy levels and the warmth that was streaming through the venue. Soon after, Dr Siddalingaiah was felicitated on stage for his contributions to society and was also seen reading out a poem in fine, beautifully versed Kannada poetry. A regular and a favourite — Thermal and a Quarter — threw in quite a surprise, by opening their performance, with a brand new sound featuring a flautist and two new additions to the band in the form of backing vocalists. The crowds, needless to say, loved them to bits and it was only fair that the next band to take stage, Spinifex with Mysore Manjunath, added to the already built-up momentum and took the energy to a peak, unlike ever seen before at the festival. Swarathma then stormed the stage and drove the crowds into frenzy with their folksy-fast-paced Hindi and Kannada renditions followed by a dollu kunitha performance, but the true surprise of the evening came with the Mumbai-based Something Relevant, which offered Bangalore a sound it has never heard before. Their music, defined by them as fusion of jazz, funk, blues, reggae, rock, pop, soul and afrohighlife, worked wonders with a beat audience at 4 am and woke up anyone who had dared to doze off. Vedant and Bindu finally welcomed the morning sunlight with their elaborately vocalised Kabir verses and Basavanna hymns, and the all-night music festival finally came to an end at 7 am on Sunday, with a performance by Parvaaz, a Sufi psychedelic rock band. Thisyear’s festival was bigger; but not necessarily better than last year,though the quality and sheer variety in the performances made everyone forgetthe smaller, often easily ignorable woes of life.Follow us on Twitter for more stories