Coke Studio Brings the Melody of Music to India - India Real Time - WSJ
Coke Studio, the hugely popular music show that is now in its fourth season in Pakistan, will make its India debut this Friday.
The Coke Studio project started in Brazil in 2007 and then went to Pakistan the following year. The show, sponsored by the Coca-Cola Company, calls upon musicians from different genres to jam together and records the resulting collaboration on the spot.
But some music lovers must be wondering if, like other television music programs in India, this one too will be dominated by Bollywoods bhangra-pop flavor. Wasim Basir, a marketing executive for Coca-Cola India, says Bollywood will have place at the tablebut so will other kinds of Indian music.
Mr. Basir told India Real Time that Coke Studio aims to reflect the aural culture of the country by capturing musical traditions from across the nation. Each one-hour episode of Coke Studio features six songs that could be a diverse mix of old Bollywood songs, classical compositions and folk music. The show will also aim to mix-and-match established musicians and up-and-coming artists.
The shows musical director, Leslie Lewis, said Coke Studio will be another direction for the music in this country. Mr. Lewis is known in India for his collaboration with singer Hariharan as part of Colonial Cousins, which was hugely popular in the 1990s. Across several albums, the duo mixed Indian classical music with Western pop sounds and English-language lyrics.
He said the show focuses only on musicand not on competition, as many music programs currently on TV do.
Coke Studio isnt a reality show. So there are no mentors, no anchors, no judges and no voting, said Mr. Lewis. Its just live music that has been recorded from the beginning to the end. I didnt allow artists to patch up later or make corrections.
The line-up of artists for the first season includes some well-known Bollywood names like singer Richa Sharma, who has sung popular numbers for films like My Name is Khan (2010) and Om Shanti Om (2007), and Shankar Mahadevan, who is part of the trio of Bollywood composers who came up with this years cricket World Cup anthem, as well as folk legends like the Wadali brothers, who are musicians from Punjab who sing in the Sufi mystic tradition, and Advaita, a fusion band from New Delhi. The line-up also features lesser-known musicians like the percussionist Bondo, from the former Portuguese colony of Goa, and Bihu musician Khagen Gogoi, who performs in a folk tradition from the northeastern state of Assam.
The beauty of Coke Studio is that well-known artists go outside of their comfort zone and come out to perform on a platform pushing their boundaries, collaborating with artists they havent worked with before, and taking their music to people it hasnt reached before, said Aditya Swamy, head of MTV India.
The show could have some similarities to the Pakistani version, said Mr. Basir, of Coke India, because of the long history the countries share, including in music and poetry.
India and Pakistan have different influences, yet we draw from the same sources of Sufi and Punjabi folk, said Mr. Basir.
One episode will feature Bollywood singer Kailash Kher, who was paired up with Tamil singer Chinna Ponnu. Mr. Kher told India Real time that performing with Ms. Ponnu was a beautiful experienceeven though he couldnt understand her lyrics. (One thing that will make the Indian Coke Studio different from the Pakistan one is the wider range of languagesMr. Kher usually sings in Hindi, while Ms. Ponnu sings in Tamil, while other performers are likely to sing in one of Indias dozens of other languages).
Mr. Lewis, the musical director, said one of his roles for each episode was helping to find common ground between the musicians.
Given the marketing might behind the showits a collaboration between Coke and MTV India, produced by Red Chillies Entertainmentexpect each episode to be heavily promoted, not just on TV but with CDs, a YouTube channel, a radio partner and mobile phone downloads.
Judging by the Facebook page of Coke Studio@MTV, the official name of the show, many people are looking forward to the India series. The page already has more than 220,000 fans, even though the show hasnt yet aired.
Coke Studio, the hugely popular music show that is now in its fourth season in Pakistan, will make its India debut this Friday.
The Coke Studio project started in Brazil in 2007 and then went to Pakistan the following year. The show, sponsored by the Coca-Cola Company, calls upon musicians from different genres to jam together and records the resulting collaboration on the spot.
But some music lovers must be wondering if, like other television music programs in India, this one too will be dominated by Bollywoods bhangra-pop flavor. Wasim Basir, a marketing executive for Coca-Cola India, says Bollywood will have place at the tablebut so will other kinds of Indian music.
Mr. Basir told India Real Time that Coke Studio aims to reflect the aural culture of the country by capturing musical traditions from across the nation. Each one-hour episode of Coke Studio features six songs that could be a diverse mix of old Bollywood songs, classical compositions and folk music. The show will also aim to mix-and-match established musicians and up-and-coming artists.
The shows musical director, Leslie Lewis, said Coke Studio will be another direction for the music in this country. Mr. Lewis is known in India for his collaboration with singer Hariharan as part of Colonial Cousins, which was hugely popular in the 1990s. Across several albums, the duo mixed Indian classical music with Western pop sounds and English-language lyrics.
He said the show focuses only on musicand not on competition, as many music programs currently on TV do.
Coke Studio isnt a reality show. So there are no mentors, no anchors, no judges and no voting, said Mr. Lewis. Its just live music that has been recorded from the beginning to the end. I didnt allow artists to patch up later or make corrections.
The line-up of artists for the first season includes some well-known Bollywood names like singer Richa Sharma, who has sung popular numbers for films like My Name is Khan (2010) and Om Shanti Om (2007), and Shankar Mahadevan, who is part of the trio of Bollywood composers who came up with this years cricket World Cup anthem, as well as folk legends like the Wadali brothers, who are musicians from Punjab who sing in the Sufi mystic tradition, and Advaita, a fusion band from New Delhi. The line-up also features lesser-known musicians like the percussionist Bondo, from the former Portuguese colony of Goa, and Bihu musician Khagen Gogoi, who performs in a folk tradition from the northeastern state of Assam.
The beauty of Coke Studio is that well-known artists go outside of their comfort zone and come out to perform on a platform pushing their boundaries, collaborating with artists they havent worked with before, and taking their music to people it hasnt reached before, said Aditya Swamy, head of MTV India.
The show could have some similarities to the Pakistani version, said Mr. Basir, of Coke India, because of the long history the countries share, including in music and poetry.
India and Pakistan have different influences, yet we draw from the same sources of Sufi and Punjabi folk, said Mr. Basir.
One episode will feature Bollywood singer Kailash Kher, who was paired up with Tamil singer Chinna Ponnu. Mr. Kher told India Real time that performing with Ms. Ponnu was a beautiful experienceeven though he couldnt understand her lyrics. (One thing that will make the Indian Coke Studio different from the Pakistan one is the wider range of languagesMr. Kher usually sings in Hindi, while Ms. Ponnu sings in Tamil, while other performers are likely to sing in one of Indias dozens of other languages).
Mr. Lewis, the musical director, said one of his roles for each episode was helping to find common ground between the musicians.
Given the marketing might behind the showits a collaboration between Coke and MTV India, produced by Red Chillies Entertainmentexpect each episode to be heavily promoted, not just on TV but with CDs, a YouTube channel, a radio partner and mobile phone downloads.
Judging by the Facebook page of Coke Studio@MTV, the official name of the show, many people are looking forward to the India series. The page already has more than 220,000 fans, even though the show hasnt yet aired.
