Spreading the steamy Chinese-Thai fare on china and serving it to the starving souls in the multi-cover restaurant makes the business only half-done at Nirvana Lounge. The rest is in filling the cravings of hungry souls badly in need of some bass-laden, high-octane music to headbang. This modest building in the capital has been a witness to an unconventional food-art rendezvous for over two years now.
Serenity overloads in an ambience with a striking Buddha relief on wall, the backdrop to stage performances. And it's double sundae for people who walk into this three-decade-old residence-turned-art space in the very exact heart of the city. Accessibility to state-of-the-art acoustics, light and sound settings and a packed audience being a pricey affair, these kinds of free performance spaces are popping up in many different corners in the state. You heard it right; they charge little from the artistes.
For amateurs, their career-defining springboard often hides in these tony spaces in limited floor space. If Thiruvananthapuram has this Nirvana Lounge, Muse Room has opened its doors in Kochi very recently, and Kozhikode has Groove Shack redefining the codes of entertainment.
The baby in the scene, Muse Room at Panampilly Nagar is just two-shows old and is run by the veteran band managers of the prominent labels Thaikkudam Bridge, Thakara and Masala Coffee - Aum-i Artistes. “As many as 250 to 300 stages of music bands went off after the state government put a ban on concerts in college campuses. Independent artistes were badly hit by the move. An alternative crept into our thoughts thus. A portion of our office space got converted into Muse Room studio floor and we launched it with a show of Ooraali. In future, we see Muse Room going places, to both big and small venues, thus creating 20 venues in another two years, where people come and buy tickets to watch a band performing,” says Sumesh Lal, director of Muse Room.
The performances at Muse Room are captured by a professional videographer team, done post-production and uploaded into a dedicated channel on YouTube. The cost towards affording these facilities is borne by Muse Room. The YouTube videos can later be turned into the artistes’ portfolio. Designed in weekly-once shows, the latest was held on last Friday.
Nirvana Lounge is experimenting on spicing-up the menu card and entertainment together. A group of like-minded friends are behind this venture where anything related to art-dance, magic show, live gig, poetry reading, stand-up comedy and much more can be presented. The building was hired from its owners, which can seat up to 70 people in the restaurant space alone.
“We don't charge anything for performing or hosting a programme here. For music shows, we provide the sound system and a sound engineer. Expenses towards maintaining this part are covered from the sales in the restaurant. From finance to setting up the interiors, our friends have chipped in and this is a collective effort,” explains Midhun J.S., who manages Nirvana Lounge. And what more, Midhun has arranged the wedding reception of his sister there to as many as 1,000 guests floating in and out.
Groove Shack is the brainchild of two friends, who are fully into music. Into the least sophisticated music scene of Kozhikode, they jumped on the bandwagon to unpin the eyes glued to the ‘idiot box’, as Sikanth Gopinath of Groove Shack puts it. In the one-and-a-half years since its inception, they set stage to over a 100 programmes in different music genres. The shows are held in the cafe. The launching performance was by Avial, the band.
“Most of the performers here are from outside Kozhikode. Sometimes there are sponsors, from whom we could manage remuneration for the performers. On other times, we manage it from our own pockets. On a few occasions, the audience were charged a nominal fee to pay the performers. We wanted to restart the music scene in Kozhikode and have accomplished it with Groove Shack,” signs off Sikanth Gopinath, the co-founder.
