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Unearthing the Independent Music Scene in India: an India-Australia This may be the author’s version of a work that was submitted/accepted for publication in the following source: Kelman, Kristina (2020) Unearthing the independent music scene in India:An India-Australia col- laboration. In Partti, Heidi & Coutts, Leah (Eds.) Proceedings of the 23rd International Seminar of the ISME Commission on the Education of the Professional Musician (CEPROM):Ethics and Inclusion in the Education of Professional Musicians. ISME Commission on the Education of the Professional Musician (CE- PROM), Australia, pp. 114-125. This file was downloaded from: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/205716/ c International Society for Music Education This work is covered by copyright. Unless the document is being made available under a Creative Commons Licence, you must assume that re-use is limited to personal use and that permission from the copyright owner must be obtained for all other uses. If the docu- ment is available under a Creative Commons License (or other specified license) then refer to the Licence for details of permitted re-use. It is a condition of access that users recog- nise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. If you believe that this work infringes copyright please provide details by email to [email protected] Notice: Please note that this document may not be the Version of Record (i.e. published version) of the work. Author manuscript versions (as Sub- mitted for peer review or as Accepted for publication after peer review) can be identified by an absence of publisher branding and/or typeset appear- ance. If there is any doubt, please refer to the published source. https:// www.isme.org/ sites/ default/ files/ documents/ proceedings/ Heidi% 20Partti%20-%20CEPROM%202020%20Proceedings.pdf Unearthing the independent music scene in India: An India- Australia collaboration Kristina Kelman Queensland University of Technology, Australia Abstract This paper reports on a collaboration between the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) (Brisbane, Australia), the KM Music Conservatory (Chennai, India), and industry partner, Earthsync (Chennai, India) since 2015. The project is informed by an existing experiential learning model and research project, the Indie100, which previously ran for seven years at QUT. Within the Indian context, the project centres around an intensive, publicly visible, music recording program held over four days. Each year, twelve independent artists/bands are selected through an application process and invited to participate in the project in Chennai. These artists work with professional producers from both Australia and India to record a compilation album. The album and artists are promoted by both QUT and KM music business students, and distributed on major streaming platforms to an international audience. Indie 100 India, brings together knowledge and experience from industry partners, professional producers, students, academics, teachers, higher education institutions and local musicians. Insights into what it means to be an independent musician in India, has been gleaned through interviews each year with project participants. Many of our participants shared a general 114 optimism and a strong sense of dedication to the pursuit of music as a full time career, and acknowledged that the arts are becoming more widely accepted as career pathways in Indian society. It was also found that the majority of our participants learned about popular music performance and music business through engagement in their own informal communities of practice in the college years, culminating in performances at college rock competitions. Project participants stressed the importance of collaboration opportunities afforded by college festivals and projects such as the Indie100 due to the expense and scarcity of formal popular music education in India. Collaboration exposes local musicians to new practices, new audiences and new knowledge, and the high intensity environment of Indie100 gives students a real-world experience that will hopefully make them work-ready, entrepreneurial and resilient. These insights make a contribution to a very emergent field of research, and raise questions around the role that higher education institutions, and inter-cultural collaborations may play in the lives of local musicians. Keywords inter-cultural collaboration, informal learning, communities of practice, Indian independent music Introduction This paper reports on a collaboration between the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) (Brisbane, Australia), the KM Music Conservatory (Chennai, India), and industry partner, Earthsync (Chennai, India) since 2015. The project is informed by an existing experiential learning model and research project, the Indie100, which previously ran for seven years at QUT. 115 The Indie 100 is a large scale recording project that records and promotes 100 songs in 100 hours. It brings together local and national industry figures, three hundred to five hundred local musicians, and around seventy students from music, entertainment industries, management, marketing and law. It serves as an intensive ‘classroom’ for students, and brings them in contact with professional producers and local artists, and inducts them into the intensity of a commercial production environment (Graham, Dezuanni, Arthurs, & Hearn, 2015). The singer/songwriter rock tradition in India is very young. At the time of its emergence, perhaps 30 years ago, the industry was predominantly focused on Bollywood music, leaving the independent scene to emerge underground, without the affordances of a music industry structure we know in the West. Still today, according to Earthsync CEO, Sonya Mazumdar, the independent sector receives little attention and support, leaving musicians to have to work it out for themselves. After collegial discussions with Earthsync (independent music and film organisation), we decided that the Indie100 model may be a novel way to engage and expose Indian independent artists. In 2015, I received internal funding to pilot a condensed Indie100 at Earthsync’s Xchange conference and tradeshow in Chennai, India. The following year we received further funding through the Australia-India Council to expand the project, and include an Indian higher education (H.E.) institution, the KM Music Conservatory. Since 2018 the project is now sustainable, and predominantly run by staff and students in the guise of a study tour. The project (Indie100 India) centres around an intensive, publicly visible, music recording program held over four days. Each year, twelve independent artists/bands are selected through an application process and invited to participate in the project in Chennai. These artists work with 116 professional producers from both Australia and India to record a compilation album. The album and artists are promoted by both QUT and KM music business students, and distributed on major streaming platforms to an international audience (Indie 100 India, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018). Indie 100 India, brings together knowledge and experience from industry partners, professional producers, students, academics, teachers, higher education institutions and local musicians. Insights into what it means to be an independent musician in India, has been gleaned through interviews each year with project participants. These insights make a contribution to a very emergent field of research, and raise questions around the role that higher education institutions, and inter-cultural collaborations may play in the lives of local musicians. Discussion The music industry of economically emergent nations is more fraught, less developed, and more insecure than in the West (Arli et al., 2015; Dumlavwalla, 2019; Fink et al., 2016; Mascus, 2001; Olugbenga, 2017). This is often seen as a risky investment by parents of aspiring musicians, who may steer them towards more lucrative career choices such as engineering or business. One of our participants explained: the general tendency from our parents is, do your degree before going into music, because music is not a career, music cannot be a profession. Basically, it’s like your hobby or something. Like part time. However, in many of our interviews, there seems to be a shift in mindset, and this could largely be attributed to a growing, young population. In 2007, 65% of the Indian population were under 117 the age of 35, and by 2020 it is anticipated that the average age will be 29 years (Basu, 2007). One participant noted: the best thing about India is that we have a fairly young population of people – around the age of 25, is very large right now. A lot of people are trying new stuff, getting into arts a lot more. Moving away from what was conventional, in India, which was lawyer, doctor, or becoming an engineer or something like that. So, it’s like blooming right now. I think it’s just going to get better. Many of our participants shared a general optimism and strong sense of dedication to the pursuit of music as a full time career. At great expense, one band travelled from the north of India to participate in our project, emphasising, “it’s very difficult to be in India, like in this position, we’d love to live our life with music, that’s what we came here for”. Another musician-trained architect also shared his vision, “more than being an architect and a part time musician, I want to be a part time architect and a full time musician”. The Indian popular music scene falls into this category. Bonny Wade (1999) once said that India is such a vast and teeming country that, for any statement one makes of it, the opposite will be true in another part of the country. The music of India includes such varied traditions as the Carnatic and Hindustani classical styles, the dominant popular music of Bollywood, wedding music, Hindi EDM, Sufi rock and Western-influenced rock to name just a few. The singer/songwriter rock tradition more closely aligned with the Western music industry, is still in its infancy, perhaps only 30 years old. As this sector was emerging, India did not have the same industry scaffolding or support structures. There were only a few popular music record labels, no industry press, and no music colleges that catered for popular music traditions.
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