Indie-cision

“This is honestly the best crowd we’ve seen in Hyderabad so far,” Pranav Kumar says on stage, as he leads his band The Tapes into the final song of their set at Hyd Indie: V 1.0 on Saturday night, to a full house of an equally thrilled audience.

Featuring four bands from the city — The Ragamuffins, The Songsmiths, Ferdinand D’Souza Trio and The Tapes — the event, organised by Mad Parrot, brought together acts that played sets featuring original songs with a few covers thrown into the mix, to promote the independent music scene in the city.

What made this gig special, however, was that instead of a fixed entry fee, the audience could pay what they felt like while entering as a “contribution” to the indie music scene.

“You have to make the people feel involved,” says Pranati Khanna, a co-founder at Mad Parrot.

“You have to tell them that they’re not coming here just as a guest, you’re coming to support a movement. You’re not an outsider... you’re part of this music scene and your contributions matter,” she added.

Mad Parrot was formed just a few weeks ago, when Pranati and her husband Abbas Razvi — both of whom play for their own bands — along with their friend and freelance photographer Nirbhay Kuppu decided to get the city on the indie music map.

Pranati, who’s also a graphic designer, says, “We always talk about doing something for the music scene and Abbas (who has his own audio equipment company) had suggested we get the indie bands to come together and we do everything by ourselves — and we had a team right there, just the three of us. I went inside, made a logo in 15 minutes and started the page.”

With the help of their friends in the music fraternity and the bands themselves, the three managed to pull off the show within just a couple of weeks of the group’s inception.

“After I went around, all I could see were smiling faces. It was very heartening to see a lot of people want to hear original music in the city, and everybody said great things about the bands,” added Pranati, who says that their next event will happen within a couple of months.