BENGALURU: The final month of 2023 is here and there’s a festive air around Bengaluru. While Christmas and New Year are just a couple of weeks away, the city is gearing up to celebrate art, culture, and music with various festivals throughout this week. One such is Echoes of Earth, touted as a green music festival, which kicks off today at Embassy International Riding School in Devanahalli.
“Bengaluru has always been receptive to some really great music. Earlier, the city was a bastion for rock. But as the scene evolved, the industry moved towards commercialisation. So there was this void of various genres of music, like electronic, rock, and more. At the same time, Bengaluru, which used to be this beautiful green city, moved away from that. So we decided to bring the two elements together with this festival, which stood for something larger than a typical musical festival. Essentially, using music as a platform for larger conversations,” says Roshan Netalkar, founder and festival director of Echoes of Earth.
He adds, “The initial focus was about sustainability. Large-format events leave behind enormous carbon footprints, they also generate a lot of trash through the use of single-use plastic and so forth. So the first edition of the festival was all about building a sustainable festival. We brought in solar power in stages, started to include junk as raw materials in our productions, and made the event plastic-free. As the
festival evolved, we realised that sustainability and conservation go hand in hand. So we started having a theme each year that served as a canvas for the whole event. This year, the theme is about the Western Ghats.”
The sixth edition of the two-day fest will see the likes of Tinariwen, Sid Sriram, Len Faki, Mansur Brown, 8 Kays, Giant Swan, Shail Vasudeva among others – all of whom will play an array of music, soulful melodies of jazz to the energetic beats of electronica. But all this with an overarching narrative to celebrate our planet. “Initially, we had to explain what we really are about to musicians. But nowadays, it’s easier for us to collaborate with musicians,” Netalkar says.