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JESSE SINGH, India winner of the 2006 British Council International Young Music Entrepreneur Of The Year Award (IYMEY), is all set to shake things up on the Indian music scene. Here he is giving The Record an inside look at his game plan.
On His Journey To The Music World…
I came to Bombay from Jamshedpur 15 years ago to study, went to business school, then joined an ad agency for 4 years, got really tired so I quit and went backpacking in South Africa. [Laughs] I liked it so much that I stayed there for 6 months. I then came back and joined MTV as marketing manager. 3 years there gave me a look at a different aspect of the music business. After that I realised that there was a lot that I could do by myself for the music that I was interested in pushing so I decided to go solo in 2004. My music consultancy firm is called Supreme Beings Of Leisure.
On The Activities Of Supreme Beings Of Leisure…
Since I started on my own and it was a new field for me, I tried everything. When I first started I did a project that brought together local Rajasthani musicians and UK musicians. I got UK-based Aki Nawaz and Sonic Guru down for that. We also did the World Social Forum. After that I didn’t have any work for eight months. [Laughs] I used to go to people but they didn’t know what to tell me because what I was trying to do was new. I guess my lucky break came ~ I won’t call it lucky actually, I worked really hard on it ~ in December, there were actually two breaks at the same time. One was with this American band called Dragonfly. They wanted to do something interesting with their album. I suggested that they do a complete British Asian remix of all the tracks. At the same time a project came through with the British Council. It was a big one, called The Union Project, where we worked with Howie B (producer, Massive Attack, U2), Matt Black (electronica pioneer) and Aki Nawaz. We took songs from the film Kal Ho Na Ho and got them to remix it in one day in India and we also got four Indian DJs to remix tracks by the three international DJs. I put that whole thing together with the British Council. I also manage a lot of artists. A few are based out of the UK ~ artists on Nation Records, Swami, FunDaMental, Dum Dum Project. From India there is Mukul Deora and a young kid called DJ Manish (who recently officially remixed a Shakira song). I also DJ as a hobby. So yeah, that’s what I do!
On The IYMEY 2006 UK Trip…
It was great! There were winners from 10 countries there. We went and met people from the industry, record labels, venues, artist managers, we saw Massive Attack, Gnarls Barkley and DJ Shadow in concert. We made presentations to industry people and a jury and they couldn’t decide on one winner so they gave three of us a prize! [Laughs] It’s heartening to see that someone recognizes my efforts. This award is going to be a yearly thing so whoever reads this, please apply next year. You have a lot to gain from this.
On The Music Scene In India…
I think it’s finally all coming together. People are responding to new stuff and the trick lies in how you get it across to them. I have never had any mass media support for any of my gigs. It’s all been through SMS, email and press write-ups and I have never had an unsuccessful gig. So all those doubters who say that only Bollywood works here, you’re wrong! People do turn up and it’s wrong to assume that people will not like new stuff. Once we had two 44-year-old guys coming to us and asking to play a punk rock set! They had never DJ’d in their lives but they did it, in front of all their friends. It was great. Music is definitely moving forward, but I think what we lack is a live scene here. I recently met this girl from Estonia, which has a population of 1.5 million people in total, which is smaller than some of our suburbs in Bombay! And I felt so bad because they have a more rocking live scene than Bombay does. Sponsors here assume that only big acts work. That’s not true! Till people in a position to sponsor understand this, things won’t change.
On What Aspiring Musicians Need To Know…
Things are better now than they were ~ there are more chances of people hearing what you do. Keep at it. See, nothing happens overnight ~ even in the corporate sector, no one makes it to the top in a flash. You can balance it out by doing something else to earn money as well. Passion for music is great but there has to be hard work and logic to where you are going. Find good people to work with and go to the next level.
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