Bands on the Balcony

“ We want to give listeners one track every Friday that they can listen to through the week,” says Pragya Tiwari,who operates Balcony TV Delhi with Rishi Majumdar and Kavi Bhansali. Their focus is on “fresh,original sounds” of indie bands,many of them unknown. The roster of artistes who have played on Balcony TV Delhi in the past weeks includes Avi and the Uprising,Adil and Vasundhara,Sajid Akbar and Kunal Datta.

“ It’s like sitting down and playing for a friend in an intimate setting. What you see is real talent,not marketed and packaged products by music record companies,” says Avijit Mishra of Avi and the Uprising,a band that sings of reincarnation and telepathy as well as political idealism and climate change. Sometimes,there are no roads/some roads just have no time/some rhymes are understood/some lines may circle back,went the opening lines before the chorus on Wahe Guru in this peppy number about faith. The background shots of the city from the balcony merge in,giving the indie song a sense of belonging to the neighbourhood. “The city is a part of the song,” says Tiwari.

She adds that “shooting on the balcony comes with its own challenges. Stephen O’Regan’s Dublin balcony clearly did not have the sounds of the kabadiwala ,roaring vehicles or barking dogs”.The songs are mastered well,and presented according to international standards. The number of hits have been increasing,even from music lovers in countries such as Spain and Poland. “Most of them knew of only Pt Ravi Shankar and AR Rahman. Indie music from India has been a surprise for them,it is a new sound yet familiar,” adds Tiwari.