BENGALURU: The ban on live music has raised the hackles of musicians and pub and bar owners in the city, but on the ground, many people who depend on the industry directly for their livelihood are suffering a great deal.
Full-time musicians are the worst-affected. Take the case of Anant Menon, guitarist with the band By2 Blues, who also plays as a session guitarist with few an other bands. "I would have at least four to five gigs per month, but after the ban, I have none. I have been a full-time musician for a few years now. I am lucky that I have a family that looks after me, so I am not on the streets, but there are many musicians who moved here to Bengaluru to play full-time," he says. Anant says he would make around Rs 40,000 to Rs 50,000 a month. "I worked a lot of jobs, from call centres to work in magazines, but I left all that to pursue music full-time. From getting paid `1,000 when I first started out fresh out of college, to playing at gigs for a lakh or two, I've done it all. For all this to be taken away is ridiculous," he adds.
Rumit Virmani, a freelance programmer and DJ, highlights that it's mainly the musicians who are affected, but the ones who do inter-city gigs are not affected. Famous artistes like a Raghu Dixit or a DJ Anish Sood who perform in other cities as well, would not be as affected as those whose gigs are based solely in Bengaluru. "I've already lost quite a few gigs in the past few days. On an average, I would normally play around two to three gigs per month. All my booked gigs have now been cancelled, and it's not like we get a cancellation fee. If you are in a full-time job, your money doesn't get deducted if you take a leave of absence. As an independent and freelance artiste, there is no such thing."
*Sound engineers, event managers also affected*
Even Rumit's programmer (curator of events) gigs have been cancelled due to the ban. As a programmer, he says that one earns around ` 20,000 per month for one venue. "My last two jobs as a programmer for two venues are on hold due to the ban. It's not only programmers, event managers, sound engineers and others part of the industry are also out of work. A few days back, some sound engineers came to me to ask for work. I didn't know what to say. If the situation persists, things will be very difficult for people like us," he adds. Rumit is now considering going to other cities like Hyderabad to increase his chances of getting work.
*Exodus of musicians in the offing?*
Sanjeev Philip Thomas, a guitarist and owner of Rainbow Bridge Music School and Studios, says that while the situation has not reached a point where there is an exodus of musicians from the city, it could surely come to that. "Years back, there was a situation similar to this and musicians from here went to Bombay and other cities," he says. Sanjeev plays live gigs from time to time and is not directly affected by the ban, but says that he might soon be. "If musicians don't plan to build careers here, it would affect me and my establishment such."