BENGALURU: I also wanted to do my bit for society, just like our doctors who are out there on the frontline. But what can a musician do during this time,” says Yashas Shetty, who has adopted a new role during this lockdown period. The faculty ember at Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology now dabbles as a radio host with The Radio Quarantine, which began airing live the day the lockdown began. Having completed 21 continuous days of going live every night at 9pm, Shetty is now gearing up to start the episodes again this week on radio.artscienceblr.org.
Going live from his residence in Benson Town, Shetty’s radio show has managed to reach listeners in USA, UK, Japan and Germany as well. “There are listeners from every continent except Africa,” he says, adding that the show is conducted under the umbrella of The Indian Sonic Research Organisation, which is a collective of people who like to build instruments and experiment with music.
“To be honest, I don’t know where the idea for the radio show came from,” says the 42-year-old, who initially just wanted to share the music he was listening to. After the first day of free-flowing music, Shetty came up with themes for each day, and started curating music that catered to a specific topic. Day one saw music written about isolation, independence or loneliness, day six was Japanese compositions of ambient and new-age music, while day 11 had live poetry reading session by Arshia Sattar, Jeet Thayil and others, and so on.
“I realised that people also like listening to others talk so I started doing small interviews. One show had a discussion on the issues migrant workers are facing, while another was with a cosmologist,” adds Shetty, who will now host the show once in two days. Usually the duration of his shows is one hour but sometime, depending on the content, it can go up to three hours.
Though he relies on just a basic setup of a laptop and microphone, the work that goes into producing this show isn’t that simple. Emails with guests, discussions on the content of the show, and music compilation can take up all evening, with a quick sound test before the episode goes live.
“We always talk about how technology can alienate people but here it is, bringing us together,” says Shetty, who now looks forward to having his hands full again. “There’s something intimate about radio where you have absolutely no visual distractions. And I’m glad I have something to do now during this lockdown,” he adds. While feedback has been positive, a common query Shetty receives is where one can listen to an archive of the older episodes. Shetty has just one answer for that. “You can’t. Like old school radio, this is ephemeral. It’s nice to see people waiting for an episode now.”