HYDERABAD : Mohan Kannan and Koco co-founded the Agnee band, which has carved a niche for itself in the independent music industry in the last two decades. Both Mohan and Koco compose the music for the band and Koco is also a producer.
Excerpts from CE’s interview with Koco:
How do you feel about performing in Hyderabad?
I have visited Hyderabad since childhood, my maternal grandfather was a collector here. We have an ancestral home in Nallakunta. I have spent many winter and summer holidays as a child in Hyderabad. There used to be a well where we would swim in my ancestral home. I love the food and how the city has developed over the years.
How do you feel about the upcoming X-Festival?
It is always great to come and perform in a city that has a proper music festival with multiple bands and artistes. We are very good friends with Rahul Ram and Amit Kalam from the Indian Ocean. The fact that we will both be on stage on the same day is exciting.
What were the highs and lows of your journey as a band in the last two decades?
We have not had a ‘struggle’ struggle as such. Things just fell into our laps. I think, we were probably lucky and got our opportunities, which we took. We were at the right place at the right time, whether it was releasing our first album with Sony BMG at that time. We got a contract for two years and two albums. The first one was released with some four or five videos. It was good marketing and support from them. We were supposed to release the second album with them, but then we returned the advance and released our music free online because we wanted to reach more people. We started releasing singles online, free of cost. Eventually, Sony came back to us.
How do you view the difference between live performance and film music?
As a band, we have never really sat down and manipulated our compositions saying let’s make an item song. That’s where it differs from a film project. In 1995, I did a movie called Samara, a Kannada film, where Dr Rajkumar sang for me. If you heard the music in that film, you would probably not believe that the guitar player of Agnee made those songs. Cinema is a visual-first medium. You make the music for a particular visual. Whereas, in independent music, the king is the song, not the visual. The audio part is the most important thing.
What according to you, is the key to success for independent artistes?
There’s no formula for success. The best thing that any artiste can do is to have a certain honesty towards their craft. Now, I’ve said this to a lot of younger musicians — first learn to be a musician and then try and become a star. The audience is never stupid. They understand who’s a genuine artiste versus a manufactured one. We’ve not been the kind of people who could exploit the system. We’ve just gone along with our craft in all our honesty and always had a certain humility towards our craft. It’s the song that makes you, not the other way around.
What are your favourites among Independent artistes/bands?
Among the newer ones, I have heard Anuv Jain’s name a lot. Among those from our time, there’s of course Indian Ocean, Euphoria and Parikrama. When I hear stories of sold-out shows with independent artistes, I think it’s a big plus for the industry. We have paved a way for them. We started on a dusty road which has now become a six-lane highway.
Any upcoming projects?
We plan to release around four to six singles every year. We just released a song called ‘Mallah’ recently with Merchant Records. Also, a lot of our back catalogue, which we had released free online on SoundCloud, we’re now going to make it officially available. For example, the song ‘Aahatein’ is not available on Spotify or Apple music. We are now working on releasing our entire back catalogue over the next couple of months. There’s another song we are working on currently, where Amitabh Bhattacharya will be writing the lyrics for us. I keep saying that we are the lambi race ke ghode (horses for longer races), we have been here for the last 18 years and we’ll probably be here for the next 20 as well.