BANGALORE: Bangalore treads an interesting path between uber-cool and traditional art with respect to favourite ‘hang outs’. Redefining all aspects of contemporary setting, lounges and bars today often cater to several distinctive genres both in music and art. Located in Whitefield, Counterculture too showcases the perfect blend of art and entertainment.
“A humble restaurant by design, it proposes to highlight music, art and culture by inviting artists from different spectra who can display their work, conduct workshops and have a great time. It offers a participative platform for extremely diverse sets of activities and experiences. Everyone is granted a space to showcase their individual pursuits, however, modest or ambitious in scale,” said Vishwaraj Mohan, the founder of Counterculture.
City Express sets forth on a journey on the busy streets of Bangalore to discover places that have redefined ‘the
art of chilling’.
Adorned with sapota and coconut trees, starlit skies and contemporary designs, Counterculture provides a platform for all artists as well as art enthusiasts to nurture their interests.
Apart from organising events ranging from Ode to the Blues, Soul Santé to Visual Music Festival, the ‘open space’ has been instrumental in promoting multi-disciplinary art forms, time and again. “This is a restaurant, bar and an open space. CounterCulture has come about through a series of conversations that revealed the need to create a space for alternative ideas and thoughts. It is a restored old factory converted into a restaurant that is located in a quaint part of the suburbs. In a city that is undergoing more makeovers than the residents can keep apace with, CounterCulture imparts a faint whiff of the quintessential Bangalorean — Relaxed open spaces. The idea has always been to provide a forum for all disciplines of art, let alone a genre of music. We always try to curate an evening of music based on different genres or styles. Blues has been a genre that we have worked more often with, and that’s just more of a personal preference,” said Vishwaraj Mohan.
Last year, Counterculture hosted The Himalayan Blues Festival, a Nepali originated artistic-cultural event and Bangalore’s very own The Big Mushroom Cloud Festival, an audio -visual extravaganza that offered music lovers a good dose of jazz-funk progressive and alternative music.
Sipping on beer and reminiscing good old times with your loved ones while shaking a leg or two to John Coltrane or Chuck Berry tunes is what Bengaluru is all about. Echoing similar sentiments, Vishwa stressed further on the importance of experimentation and versatility with respect to running ‘music hubs’ today.
“Experiments are critical but are never easy to execute from resource as well as an investment point of view. To experiment with various styles of music is quite simple, but we try to be different when it comes to production, exhibits, installations, food, drinks etc. The New Year was one such event when Teddy Boy Kill along with LAL (Canada), Nikhil (The Bicycle Days) Sulk Station and Suman Sridhar collaborated for a six-hour live electronic jam. We have quite a few events lined up for 2012 too,” he added.
Counterculture is located at 2D2, 4th Cross, Dyavasandra Industrial Area, Whitefield Road. For details contact the manager on 08041400793/4 or 9741210900.