The concept of a music city is quite lovely if you read the definition laid out in this Music Canada report.
A Music City is a community of any size with a vibrant music economy. Beginning with artists and musicians, Music Cities are home to a broad range of professionals who support artist entrepreneurs in their career development. They contain spaces for education, rehearsal, recording and performance, and foster a live scene with an engaged and passionate audience that provides artists with a fertile ground for developing their craft.
We want nothing more than the active creation of music cities in India, and are getting started with Bangalore because it is home, and where we have learned and gained everything related to our careers in music.
Getting to a point where music cities are real is not one company or individual’s work, but involves the coming together of multiple stakeholders over time to create thriving, resilient ecosystems that support music.
In Bangalore, we see glimpses of it when the Sofar Sounds and Rainbow Bridge booking teams talk to each other about the outstation artists they are in touch with and coordinate to hold two shows so the artist has more than one opportunity to perform, have their music discovered and make some money. We see it when artists jamming at GEL Studios are able to perform at The Raft, the venue upstairs. We see it when an indie artist like Mahesh who has been in the game for over a decade sets up REWIRE and shares his knowledge to coach new artists in the scene. We see the sparks, and Neon is inspired to build them up into something bigger and brighter.
With the Bangalore Music city goal we hope to build this into a powerful movement in our home city that can then resonate across more communities in India. Getting started is the most difficult part, and a broad goal like this will take dedicated work and cooperation at a large scale to realise. Complications also arise when there’s a lack of reliable, primary data to start to understand these music communities a little better.
So what is a music city and how do we get there?
For starters, if you are a fan, artist or industry professional working in and around music in Bangalore, you can participate in Neon’s Bangalore Music City Survey here. This will help gather the baseline information to dive into our music world, discover what makes it tick, and help shape its future.
If you are an artist, industry professional or someone interested to work in music, seek out platforms for education and upskill your understanding of what the music business is. It’s changing at a rapid pace everyday, and sharing what you know is the way to ensure we keep growing. Neon’s catalyst sessions are a small but definite way to contribute towards that.
Show up for gigs, not just for the artists you know but also for those you don’t know. This is because artists need to keep performing to hone their craft, and they can’t do that without an audience to play to.
And the final one is the main one - talk to each other, talk to us, and talk to anyone who is remotely interested in this vision. Collaboration and cooperation are the key to unlock a lovely (but vague) concept and find our unique way forward to realise it.
Our email is info@neonculture.in to start a conversation!