This multi-city rock festival begins with a curtain raiser in Bengaluru on November 29
Members of the band, The Circus
Would you believe if we told you that there was once a festival that was massively popular sans the influence of hashtags, listicles and click-bait accesses? Believe it. This is the Great Indian Rock (GIR) festival, India’s first ever multi-city rock festival that pulled out all the stops 15 years ago! And now, they are back again – this time, bigger and louder, kickstarting it with a curtain raiser at the Indigo Live Music Bar on November 29.
Even with a legacy of 14 past editions, this festival has always meant a lot to Bengalureans, thanks to us nursing an undying love (and craze) for rock music. “As India’s first definitive rock festival with a nationwide reach since 1995, GIR has been a platform for discovery and showcase of the best bands that the Indian independent industry has to offer,” says Anirban Chakraborty, the director of Rock Street Journal, the organisers of the event. And now, it will also see a digital hunt for the best bands in India across Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Shillong.
According to those in the industry, this isn’t a celebration or tribute. This is a homecoming parade! The pre-party in the city on Sunday will see performances by the powerpacked electronic rock duo FuzzCulture, Delhi-based alternative rockers – The Circus and Pune-based post rock band, A Mutual Question. “It’s a matter of great pride and nostalgia for all of us to be a part of this because we’ve grown up with this festival,” says Abhishek Bhatia, the vocalist of The Circus. “We were a part of it when we were younger as a band, and now working on our third album, we’ll be testing out some tracks at the gig,” he says, also hoping to get a good dose of the “good looking” city’s urbane culture, “And being from Delhi, the weather too!” Until 2010, this festival has hosted the likes of USA’s Shawn Lane, Intronaut and DreamTheatre, the Swedish tip top trio Freak Kitchen, Jonas Hellborg and UK-based Tesseract. “It’s great to be on a stage that once hosted them,” says musician Arsh Sharma. “I think it’s best to do whatever you can to move forward as stagnating in terms of a genre is not too good,” he says, effortlessly switching from being a vocalist and guitarist with The Circus to mixing and programming for FuzzCulture.
The last edition may have been five years ago, before the advent of Electronic Dance Music (EDM) in Bengaluru, and since then, the world may have changed. But the mother ship from the cradle of rock is here and it’s calling.
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( Source : deccan chronicle )
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