A word of thanks & gratitude
From the bottom of my heart I’m thankful and grateful to each and every one of you who supported DesiYUP to become a platform of sound and opportunities. Without your commitment and enthusiasm we wouldn’t be able to organize two concerts in Rotterdam and The Hague this year.
In 2014 we highlighted British composer Shammi Pithia and Dutch vocalist Sangeeta Bhageloe. In both concerts Shammi stole the heart of the audience with the authentic sound of his compositions. My personal and most precious memory of this year is seeing Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia sitting front row to watch the concert “Creation of Something Meaningful” at Lantaren Venster. It was indeed a very meaningful musical year for DesiYUP with some great developments. I will briefly summarize them for you.
DesiYUP on a global mission
DesiYUP’s main purpose is to recognize the talent of performing musicians. We approach artists who are “unknown” particularly in the Netherlands. We showcase their work through our social media platforms and website, and in this way we create a fan base for them. This approach takes a lot of effort and involves more than just research and understanding of the music market. It takes a dedicated team and great support of music-lovers to succeed or to make concerts happen.
Our next mission is to find talented aspiring musicians in the Netherlands. We want to cross-connect them with artists from abroad and professionalize them. Bringing their work on a higher (world) level. Our focus groups are professional musicians who follow higher education or have gone to a conservatory. We noticed that this is a pretty challenging mission, because most artists fall in the category of so called “informal music circuit” or “non-professionals”, which means: musicians who have not had a vocational training in music or are not full time working musicians. To be more precise, aspiring musicians tend to stick with Bollywood-covers, because it “sells” and is much more “appreciated” by the mainstream music audience. World music or cross-over music still has to gain more popularity in the Indian community in Holland. So you can imagine that this mission won’t be accomplished overnight and will take time, but more importantly, change of the mind-set of aspiring musicians is a necessity.
DesiYUP brings you music from all around the world, from traditional to urban music, with a recognizable Indian sound. Over the last year we have interviewed and highlighted some great artists who have earned or are creating their own path in this particular music field. Just to name a few: Papon, Niladri Kumar, Nitin Sawhney, Shammi Pithia , Ambika Jois, Rax Timyr, Rita Morar, Vast & Harker, Anuj Rastogi and Vasuda Sharma .
Most professional musicians that we have followed in 2014 also love to experiment with the sound of Bollywood. The reason that we highlighted them is because they have given their own voice or twist to the original song, but also because Bollywood music plays an essential role in people’s life. The most played opening song during weddings was “Tum Hi Ho” . That’s why we have posted acoustic versions of popular Bollywood songs on the DesiYUP Facebook Page. And highlighted artists who have a fresh style in performing these types of Bollywood cover songs, just to name a few Aakash Gandhi, Jonita Gandhi, SANAM, Vasuda Sharma, Ambika Jois, Shweta Subram, Varsha Singh, Gaurav Dagoankar, Priti Menon and Arjun
We also attended several events to showcase the versatility of the traditional Indian music genre. In London we visited the annual music festival Darbar at the Southbank Centre. The reason is that for centuries ragas have dominated the Indian music scene. It has been taken globally and modernized thanks to well-known artists like Pandit Ravi Shankar, Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia and Zakir Hussain. These maestro’s and guru’s inspired a new generation of artists. Some fuse Indian classical music with other genres like jazz, pop, folk, flamenco and urban. Two pioneers are; Maatibaani and Shankar Tucker. Sitarist Anouskha Shankar is doing this for years and with great success, her album “Traces of You” in which she collaborated with her sister Nora Jones, has been nominated for the best world music album at the 57th annual Grammy Award.
A small group of artists dedicated their musical career by singing and producing devotional music, which also plays a vital important role in the lives of people. It’s a form of saving cultural heritage or making devotional music universal. Artists like Shivali Bhammer, AKS, Manish Vyas and Prem Joshua are the successful motors of this particular music genre.
To rap up my summary, 2014 was a great year for the world and cross-over music scene. DesiYUP will offer you more music and concerts in 2015. Keep an eye on our DesiYUP FB page/Twitter/ Youtube. Win free concert tickets by sharing our content and tell your friends to subscribe to our news letter. Trust me it will only be bigger and better in 2015, because we all love free downloads. But to support talented artists let’s promote their music, by buying their single’s, EP’s and albums and shower them with appreciation.
I also want to thank every radio station, other media outlets and organizations for promoting and supporting DesiYUP events and artists.
Be the light in another person’s life! Spread love and music. Stay positive and have a great year ahead. Wishing you all the best in 2015.
Love
Mahesvari & team
