Last week,some of the most popular musicians in the country played alongside some fairly unknown ones at the first edition of the three-day Ziro Festival of Music in Ziro,Arunachal Pradesh. This gave thousands of people the chance to visit a location they might not have otherwise. Apart from its success as a music festival,it also did a great deal for tourism in that part of the country. The tourism ministry wants to support it and make it an annual affair now, says Anup Kutty,co-organiser of the festival and guitarist for the Delhi-based alternative rock band,Menwhopause. The Ziro Festival achieved what it had set out to facilitate an exchange of ideas. The element of tourism was essential to the festival because,as Kutty puts it,You cant randomly descend on a village and have a festival there. The locals had to be closely involved. The Ziro Festival may have been a first in many respects,but it joins a growing list of festivals in the country. They range from multi-genre affairs to those that focus solely on electronic dance music (EDM),folk or rock. In February theres Sulafest in Nashik,Maharashtra,the fifth edition of which was held this year and was,for the first time,a two-day affair. In May,the fourth edition of Escape Festival was held in Naukuchiatal,Uttarakhand,and was as well-received as its first three editions. August saw the third edition of a lesser-known festival,the Indrasan Festival in Parvati Valley,Himachal Pradesh,which is an EDM-only event. The last few months of the year will see the fifth edition of the day-long Rock N India festival in Bengaluru in October and NH7 Weekender,which is being held in three cities for the first time this year. Among the new ones were Storm Festival in Coorg in January,the Mad Festival in Ooty in April,and the upcoming ones are the Aqua Jam Festival in Naukuchiatal in October,and the Indian Metal Festival in Bengaluru in December. The reason for this upsurge in the number of festivals,as Kutty puts it simply,is that theres an audience for them. We had people coming by train from Hyderabad,Bengaluru and Mumbai to Ziro, he says. For musicians,one of the primary attractions of these festivals is the exposure,says Raghav Diggy Dang,of the Delhi-based Reggae Rajahs. Its much more exposure than you would get if you were playing in,say,a bar because people from all over the country come to attend these festivals, he says. Also,a number of musicians get to watch one another play for the first time. Kutty is certain that collaborations will come off these acts. These festivals are one of the easiest ways for new acts to get noticed. Theres a ready audience as compared to a solo gig,where you have to work hard to get an audience. At a festival,all you have to do is make sure the audience enjoys itself, says Kutty. He also adds that when people go to a festival,they go with the idea of discovering new music,too. Though a number of music festivals are happening around the year,India does not have to worry about the problem of plenty yet. There can be a saturation point,but,as of now,its a good thing that these festivals are coming up, says Dang. Sachin Bopanna,Director,Liquidspace Entertainment,which started Storm Festival,says,As long as the festivals are carefully executed,we could keep off the boredom.
