BENGALURU: Vengaboys, Steve Aoki, French Kiwi Juice (FKJ), DJ Snake, The Aristocrats, Anne Marie, CKay and Martin Garrix are some of the biggest and most respected global musicians in their genre. But that’s not all that’s common between them. They have also come to perform in Bengaluru in the past few months. Recently, Garden City has been noticing an avalanche of famed international acts. And their coming is also giving the city room on the global stage.
Tirtha Patil, the programming head at Byg Brewski, feels the pandemic played a huge role in this shift. “Covid really set us back in terms of entertainment. Concerts had become a thing of the past. But once everything opened up, fans and artistes showed up. The live element was back, and we started hosting a lot of international artistes. We hosted Vengaboys, Michael Learns to Rock and FKJ recently. In fact, on June 4, we’re bringing out the Grammy award-winning band Gipsy Kings,” shares Patil.
Agreeing with Patil, Suhas VK, fellow programming head at Fandom at Gilly’s Redefined, believes there is a specific crowd for live music shows. “There is a specific audience for live gigs. They won’t go for a Bollywood night or a DJ night, for example. They love listening to live music. Recently, outside of international acts, we have been selling out a lot of tribute shows as well for bands like Linkin Park, Tool, and Porcupine Tree, among others. We have three international acts coming out to perform in the next month. We have acts like Vader, Hate and Thy Disease coming up,” says Suhas.
According to Amarjeet Singha, president - IPs & programming at SkillBox, they are bringing around 13 international musical acts by March next year. “We have some Indian acts as well, but there are only a handful of independent Indian artistes who can sell a lot right now. The reason we can play this gamble of getting so many international acts is because of how this city is. Bengaluru has a lively crowd for concerts. It has a cosmopolitan crowd who are fans of music outside of Bollywood, especially since there’s a huge market for English music here. It’s not a surprise that Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru are the first three choices for any international musician’s India tour. But the city also has a crowd that likes to buy tickets. This is where they separate themselves from the other cities,” says Singha.
Venkat Raman, a local city musician, finds Bengaluru to have the ‘highest potential’ to be a great stage for foreign artistes compared to other cities. “Bengaluru has a lot to offer musicians. The logistics are good so usually there are no problems. There are a lot of people here who listen to various genres of independent music. I went to watch The Aristocrats a few months ago, and the concert blew me away. Not just for their expert musicianship but the sound design was really high quality,” concludes Raman.