One thing that stands out is becoming a TED Fellow, a dream I have cherished from the first time I heard and read about TED a couple of years back!  I have always dreamt of speaking like those people on stage at TED, or atleast, sitting down and listening to them first hand and it seemed so unreachable until TED decided to hold a conference in Mysore in November!

I had a whole plan of getting in by hook or crook, my last resort was to try and convince the sound guys at TED to take me on as part of the crew! Which could have well worked :p – but becoming a TED Fellow seemed a much better way to do it!

I applied on a whim, not expecting to get in at all, but the selection was a dream come true and with a week to go for the conference, I couldn’t be more excited

Kiruba Shankar started the TED Fellows project trying to get all TED fellows profiled and Rohit Awasthi interviewed me a couple of days back as part of this project. Here are my answers to his questions originally posted on his blog at – http://www.rohitz.com/2009/10/keeping-the-groove-with-gaurav-vaz-ted-india-fellow/

1. How did Raghu Dixit Project help you in getting more perspectives about music and expectations of people?

The Raghu Dixit Project completely changed my perception about how the music scene in India can work. At a time when bands are complaining about the lack of gigs and various things that are “wrong” with the scene, we’ve played almost a gig a week last year!

When I joined the Raghu Dixit Project, I came from a much smaller band (my college band Phenom) and had a very constricted view of how things worked and about the type of music that I listened to and played. Infact, before I started playing with Raghu, I had never played a Kannada song on stage EVER! All that changed and how! Over the past 4 years that I have been actively involved in the project, we’ve toured 7 countries and played over a 100 shows and have taken our own original brand of music to places very few Indian bands have. The learning for me has been immense.

The Raghu Dixit Project is a testament to the fact that regional music works in India and also, the importance of being original with what you do. A decade back, a bunch of South Indians singing in Hindi and Kannada would have been brushed aside as a bad idea, but what we have managed to achieve in the last 2 years after releasing our debut album is quite extraordinary.

But frankly, that has been the easy part, these were songs we’ve played over a long time, and with them, have set the expectations of a LOT of people. Exceeding those expectations with the next album (due in the first half of next year) and giving the audience a whole new experience live is where we are focussing our energies and I am quite confident we won’t let people down there!

Q.2 What did the IT Industry (un)teach you?

When I was in Engineering College, I was told that I would not use most of what I studied there. I do was skeptical about that statement, but now I can completely vouch for it

Yet, it’s not that I didn’t learn much from the IT Industry. In reality, I learnt a lot from my first job at NetScaler; a dream-company, now called as Citrix. One of the most important things I learnt was that there is a LOT of money out there to be and it can be earned if you do things the right way.

Moreover, I was never the someone who could be coupled to his desk-job. I pursued my music and other passions along with my first job. My bosses there were most co-operative of my other pursuits and allowed me to take time off work. They redefined the concept of “flexible work hours”, i.e. all’s well as long as you get the work done. This is something I will never forget!

That job made me a happy man as I had the flexibility to work without interruption; was very productive at work then. I had a point to prove and the folks at NetScaler let me prove it! I will carry that work ethic with me wherever I go.

Q.3 Has Radioverve become profitable? What are the future plans? Is there any update about MuckWork?

RadioVeRVe was never meant to become ‘monetarily profitable’. However, the profit that we have gained is that we have achieved what we set out to achieve, i.e, to provide a platform to the Indian Indie scene and make “Indian Indie” a recognizable genre. This is an achievement because we started RadioVeRVe at a time when there was no other platform like it. Today there are similar, well performing platforms and that in itself is brilliant because we too are working towards the same.

Although, RadioVeRVe has been lying low for a year now (as Shreyas and I are figuring out our careers, and that there have been recent developments in the Indie music scene), I am working with OML Digtal (Part of Only Much Louder, founded by Vijay Nair). OML is supposed to be an evolved form of RadioVeRVe. The project has been named as NH7; after the longest national highway in India and should be ready by the end of this year. With NH7, we will work on Indie music, all over India.

MuckWork is currently on the back burner. But will be up soon as it is a fantastic idea; as some brilliant people alongwith Derek Sivers (my idol) are involved.

Q.4 From Phenom to TED India Fellowship, what has been the most challenging phase of your life?

I’m not sure I can point to one phase of my life and say, there, that was the most challenging! My career has shaped in such a way, that I am jumping from one challenge to the next. Managing my IT career, creating and running an online radio station and at the same time playing in one of the biggest bands in the country was quite challenging, but it was nothing compared to quitting IT and with it, letting go of that financial security blanket to work with someone you have admired for years! And then to the next challenge, building a brand new start up, setting off on a very ambitious dream and hoping to make a difference with it while working on how to take the band to a whole new level with our music and the way we market it in a music industry that is in such a state of flux and a world where physical boundaries are inconsequential.

All of these phases have been critical in helping me become the person I am today and I am lucky to have gone through all these phases because they ground you! The perspective you get when you carry your own equipment, wait for your turn, perform the show of your life, pack up and then go sell CDs to people after your gig can never be substituted when you try to build a store that will sell music!

Gaurav in a concert

Q.5 You mentioned in one of your interviews, “Be true to yourself”. Easier said than done. Has there been any time when you have given or almost gave to the easy way out?

Many times! There is always the temptation to stick to the “formula”. But today, its much easier, you can actually categorize and hold a ‘job’ that pays the bills when you work on what you are passionate about and have a good working balance between the two until you are actually ready and confident to go one way or the other. I’ve had a lot of things fall into place for me and that has helped me be true to myself but things just got started!

Q.6 The independent music scene in India is quite fragmented and you have been part of taking some initiatives to bring it together. How do you see it shaping up in the few years to come?

The Independent scene in India is all set to explode. It just requires the right trigger and its all building up now. The gigs have increased, the clubs holding these gigs have increased, there are a lot more original bands, musicians and most importantly, music has finally started to become an actual career for musicians and that is a sure sign.

People have started realizing that there is music beyond Bollywood, and infact, Bollywood has started recognizing that there is music beyond Bollywood.

Bands need to support each other and get more serious about their music, release quickly and release often and get more professional about how they go about their careers. The tools for all this are being put together by various people in the scene and very soon I am sure it will all come together very soon.

Q.7 Lastly, does the ring on the finger now makes it difficult to play the guitar or it is easier than before?

Well, I’ve played half a dozen gigs now with the ring on the finger and they’ve gone well, so I guess the ring is staying :p

But seriously, Shilpa has been the most amazing thing to happen to me. She has finally gotten used to the musician / entrepreneur lifestyle and even pretends to like it sometimes! and at this point, I can use all the support I can get. Also, guitar playing is never easy, it takes a lot of hard work!

The new year was brought in just the way I like it! I went for midnight mass with the family and then headed to spend time with Shilpa. We even made pizza ourselves! I like this over the partying and the madness! And the rest of the year was going to get crazy anyway .. and it did

It was by complete accident that I started taking photographs at weddings. I carry my camera around with me all the time and when I first took some photos at my friend’s wedding, it was because I wanted to keep myself occupied! Some of the couple’s friends had made a movie about their life together and wanted to show it at the reception and since I had both my camera and my mac with me, I took a couple of hundred photos (like I do always), transferred them to my mac and ran a slideshow on the projector that was set up for the movie! This became such a great hit because a typical wedding photographer would take a month after the wedding for you to see the photos even and here guests who came in a little later could see what had happened earlier in the reception!

I started getting offers to shoot weddings which I still don’t take up for money. I am just not good enough yet and am still doing this as a hobby and for only my close friends. But then, sometime later this year, I should possibly start charging for it

Much to my liking, a LOT of music happened this year, with the new project (tentatively named – Allegro Fudge) that is making some very interesting music, to playing with old friends at Opus and other places around the city to the lovely ‘Raghu Dixit Project‘, its been a time when I grew a lot as a musician and I hope that will continue right through.

February 26th, 2008 was when The Raghu Dixit Project’s debut album was launched and from there its been a crazy ride with the band this year. From being MTV’s artist of the month, to seeing our album for sale in stores, to playing all over the country and some parts of the world, being part of the Roots Music Festival tour of the North East of India, to travelling around 5 countries in South Asia, to being part of a superhit movie score, my journey in music with Raghu has been tremendous this year! And I only hope next year will top it and will see me get better with the bass guitar!

This is my favourite picture of the band on stage taken this year. This was taken by Sayan ‘The Red Bantoo’ Datta, who is one of the best concert photographers I have met in the country!

The trip to the North East of India that I went on with the band, was more than just the music for me. It was a great lesson in management and I learnt more on that one trip about how to organize concerts, negotiate with people, delegate work, get work done, and just manage things than I have learnt in the past 25 years of my life! From the accident to having to set up promotional deals with radio stations in the North East and making sure things were on track in a place I have never been to in my life, in a language I don’t understand was quite an experience!

It was on this trip that I spoke extensively with Vijay Nair about the various things that we can in the realm of Indie music in India. Many of those ideas are being brought to fruition as we speak . This was also the trip that fuelled my leaving IT and eventually landing up where I am today. We’ll come to that in a bit.

2008 was the year that I was finally able to do music and work in the music biz a little more seriously and a large part of that was because of winning the IYME award for India. That was one of the best experiences I’ve had all year. I got to go to London, Liverpool and Manchester and see how the music industry works there and make friends and contacts that will be invaluable to me as I continue on this path in the music biz.

2008 was in many ways, the year for travel! Most of this was not purely travel, but I did get to see a LOT of the world and I am thankful for it. I will seriously invest time and money in travel over next year and the years to come. Its just the best thing in the world I should tell you! I used to be this person who completely disliked travelling on IT work because you are going to be stuck in an office in another country like you are now and it will only be a change of location. But I strongly urge you to travel when you can and do it NOW! go to as many places and see the world .. there is a lot you will learn

2008 was the year I finally quit IT! to pursue a life and career in the music industry and as a great first step, a series of co-incidences and great timing made me the VP for MuckWork and getting to work with Derek Sivers can be a great start to a career in the Music Biz and I can’t tell you how thrilled I am for it. More updates on how everything progresses will be made as things happen. But I am finally doing what I LOVE from my heart and its a great place to be and I am determined to make this count

There are a lot of interesting projects I am part of in the Indie Music scene in India and I will tell you about them as they happen. Right now its all just concepts but they will come together soon.

The project that started it all was relaunched late this year and I am really proud of what we have got here. The brand new RadioVeRVe now has more music and a LOT more features. I strongly recommend that you check it out and tell me what you think about it. This is just the start for the new RadioVeRVe. There is more that will go there and it will happen soon!

Another great project that I was part of late this year was FOSS.in. It was haphazard to start with, ambitious when it came close and finally when it happened, it was grand! there is a lot we did right this year, a LOT we didn’t and we learnt with everything that din’t go as planned. The team ‘bash’ after the event was quite an event and I hope that it makes us strong as a team together because there is a LOT of good that will happen with the event next year

Finally, Shilpa and I have been together for almost 5 years now and I could not have been happier about it! this has been the year when we grew a LOT closer to each other. When it was smooth sailing almost all year long The year when we started respecting our own space and learning or rather getting used to each one doing our own thing and not having to be around each other all the time. In many ways, that has been the secret to how close we’ve become.

This was also a year when I reconnected with a lot of old friends, made new ones, started many new projects and got qutie a bit of work done and enjoyed every moment of it. In a tremendous number of ways, this has been the best year of my life yet and I see a lot of good happening in 2009 as well. There have been many things I have forgotten to mention and I am sure they will come back to me soon and I’ll probably make new posts about it!

For now, cheers to a great year and here’s another one hoping for an even better year ahead

This is one hell of a story! and it has to start with this story! Because this is the coolest story of my musician life yet

Sometime late in 2006, I was travelling back from Delhi (after playing at the India Social Forum) with The Raghu Dixit Project and on the plane back to Bangalore, I bumped into Debbie.

See, at that time, I hadn’t travelled too much by flights and so I was not too familiar with how things work and for the first few flights that I took, I was stuck to my seat and just looking out of the windows most of the time and reading my books or listening to my iPod.

So anyway, being bigger than average Indians, I usually don’t fit too well in airplane seats and so try to sit next to the aisle and put at least one leg out and stretch it! so there I was stretched out and trying to get the most comfortable position I could find and the guy next to me had to go to the loo. Instead of getting out and sit right there and have to move again for him when he returns, I just moved off to the next row of seats and sat next to Debbie!

Debbie was trying to get her bottle of mineral water to open with no avail and asked me to open it for her. From there, we started talking and she was coolness personified! right from being in the US navy in operation desert storm to being a roadie for tons of rock bands on their tours including at one time, “Grateful Dead” to being an art school major to getting tattooed to the complete blonde act to earning obscene amounts of money in the IT industry!! “Groovy!” was one of her phrases along with “Yeay!! Whooo” and she used those for every little thing!

So we land in Bangalore and the hotel had forgotten to send her a cab, so I end up dropping her to her hotel and she forgets her wallet in the car which I promptly take back to her hotel and return to her. We chat some more and then decide to meet for dinner! So Shilpa and I took her to Samarkhand that night for some food she has not eaten! And we had a blast!

So anyway, I told her about the band I played for and how I was planning to at that time take music more seriously and getting myself a good guitar was part of that plan. And she told me how she knew a friend of hers who ran a music store in California and she’d see if she can help with it.

Once she went back to the US, she got her friend to arrange for a couple of different models of Warwick Guitars to be present in the store, and then drove over 200 miles to pick up my very good friends and bandmates from Phenom, Mrinal and JD and took them to the store where Mrinal picked this guitar from the different models that were available.

Debbie then paid for that guitar and drove Mrinal and JD back to their place 200 miles away with the guitar! A total journey of close to a 1000 miles and she has paid for the guitar at this point!

When I heard what happened, I din’t know how to react!! I’ve never known a relative stranger do this much for someone they met over a weekend in another country! Debbie later told me that she just had this very good feeling after meeting me in India and that this was her way of paying me back for the ‘help’ I had provided when she was in India – which included taking her out for dinner and dropping her from the airport to her hotel! I was blown away by this gesture!!

I did pay her back in full and Shilpa’s (then to-be) brother-in-law Dominic, got the guitar down with him when he came to India from the US and I was able to hold the guitar in my hands on the 22nd of December 2006!

And that was just the start to the brilliant journey I have had as a musician with that bass guitar! Its been the most cherished thing I have ever bought in my life and I am sure it will be for a LONG LONG time!

The show has been postponed to the 24th of December, 2008.

[End of Update]

After a LONG LONG hiatus, The Raghu Dixit Project is all set to play in Bangalore later this month. We are playing at Opus on the 24th of December 2008. There are other shows that might happen which are not confirmed yet!

I will update you chaps with information about the shows that are open to public and while I will remind all of you again, please do keep yourselves free and if you are in Bangalore on those days, please make it for our shows and stop by to say Hi! after.

I have been an amateur musician for about 8 years now and a large part of my education as a musician happened playing in the various venues in and around Bangalore. These were either college fests where my band Phenom competed or pub gigs where we played for measly sums of money, some places where we even had to pay and play but play we did! and we loved it and it was well worth it!

In a city where venues to play musc are few and far between, the few places that allowed bands to play were our saving grace! to us, the 20 people who were our audience, most of them friends we had dragged there, were the closest we would ever get to those videos of our favourite bands who would woo stadiums filled with people!

In one swift and stupid move, my city was culturally slaughtered last month! in a very strange twist of events, the Bangalore police banned live music in places that serve alcohol. Bad enough, they had banned dancing in clubs, they had to go do this ..

In many ways, I got out of this situation with my band now playing largely outside Bangalore inspite of being a Bangalorean Band! but its the worst feeling for those kids who put their heart and soul and every penny they can muster into their music. Like Girish Karnad, one of the finest playwrights from Bangalore had to say at the protest last weekend, “How on earth will listening to live music cause anything untoward to happen?” and just because accidents happen on the road, will you ban driving?

This is the 21st Century and we live in a free country but are still subject to such ridiculous restrictions that it makes me question the ability of the people who we have elected into power!

A bunch of us have put up a petition for online signing that we would like to take further once we have enough people supporting the cause. So if you feel what is happening in the city now is unfair, please head to http://bengalurubleeding.com/petition and support us!

We are playing at the following venues over the month –

ROOTS 2008 TOUR DATES:

May 03 Saturday ROOTS Fest IMPHAL @ BOAT
May 04 Sunday W’SHOPS IMPHAL

May 24 Saturday ROOTS Fest SHILLONG @ FIRE BRIGADE Ground
May 24 Sunday W’SHOPS SHILLONG

It has always been my dream to travel to the North East, right from when Sashi in college described the place to me. This is one trip I shall not want to miss for the world!

I shall do my best to keep in touch, but expect me to pop up at the most inappropriate times! … So wish me luck and I shall miss a lot but I hope I will be able to catch up and more importantly .. regale you with stories from the North East!

I landed up at the Taj Land’s End hotel in the morning for some a interesting discussion with Mr. Jasbir Singh, who is *THE* biggest music instrument dealer in the country and who has the who’s who of brands with him and has big plans for music instrument retailing in the country! The discussion led to very interesting ideas which if executed, will absolutely change the way music retail is carried out in the country!

That was followed up with a music networking lunch at the Zenzi club where we met a whole bunch of interesting people from very very diverse areas of the music industry! lets hope something comes from that also …

It all ended with some more meetings about endorsing instruments and finally a party at a friend’s place with some Tequila!!

So I go to bed now and wake up early for a 4 hour drive to Pune for our first gig there! That promises to be fun

On other fronts, the British Council finally announced the award last week. Check it out! I am supposed to meet with them next week for some discussions and some interesting projects both of us have in mind

RadioVeRVe looks dormant to the world but there has never been so much action happening in the background as it is now … and the fruits of it will be seen very very soon! Don’t lose the faith yet

On the music front, the band is taking a well deserved break before we launch into tour mode again by the end of this month and from then on its going to be madness!!

So this phase of my life can be called ‘the calm before the storm’!

So without much waiting .. I present to you .. http://theraghudixitproject.wordpress.com

This is where I aim to document the journey of a band that just released its first record internationally, what happens on tour and off, how things proceed etc .. Keep this marked, a LOT of exciting things are expected to happen!