29 Oct Amal | S1.1: Abhinav Agrawal
Hope, to us, is the spark that ignites a flame in the darkest of places. In today’s times, hope is the essence of what keeps us moving, and creating. We’ve had the privilege of experiencing the light and warmth of our #GMITribe this past year. And so, we’re proud to announce a new and exciting series, Amal. With Amal, we want to carve out a safe space for creating and listening.
The first season focuses on Folk music from around the country. While folk music in India is mostly an undocumented art form, there are a few organisations that are tirelessly working to shine the light on this forgotten style of music. One such organisation is Anahad Foundation that was founded by Abhinav Agrawal.
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On an extremely busy Monday evening for him, I got on a call with Abhinav to talk more about the GMI Blog and possible collaboration. His enthusiastic response reinforced the perception that I already had about Abhinav: a humble person who is passionate, and driven by his desire to create. We decided to have a chat in person, instead of doing a phone interview. I asked him one question and after that, I was completely wrapped up in his fascinating adventure of a life. Here’s the first part of that conversation where we’ve tried to document Abhinav’s early life and his drive to bring about change.
Sangeeta and Sangeet
His story started with him telling me about his mother, Sangeeta. (yep! Her name is Sangeeta!)
“She is an avid listener, and has one of the biggest collections of cassette tapes and records that I’ve ever seen in my life. She always wanted to learn music but her responsibilities did not allow her the time and space to do so,” he said. While Abhinav doesn’t come from a musical family, it’s his mother’s influence that really developed his taste for music. He grew up in a small village in UP, near Bulandshahr without much exposure to different instruments or music in general. A very young Abhinav was taken by Zakhir Hussain’s tabla playing in the Taj Mahal tea ad and at the age of 4 he started his journey in music with the tabla.
He explained to me that the initial experience of a Tabla player mostly involves Sangat and that’s what he did as well. This quickly developed his fascination for vocals too and he started learning Hindustani vocal music from Allahabad Gharana while continuing his tabla studies from Dilli Gharana. “Classical music is a discipline, and you learn this discipline through different things. For example, if you were to study classical music in the south of the country i.e. Carnatic music, you would be learning largely through devotional songs or Bhajans. Similarly, in the central part of the country, you would learn through Dhrupad, and in the north, through Chhota Khayal and Bada Khayal. In my town, I learnt classical music primarily through folk music and that’s how I got introduced to it,” he added.
Bringing back nature
While he continued his journey in music, his real passion actually lay elsewhere. “I think hundred percent of the folks that I was learning about were about nature. We sang about welcoming spring, about peacocks, about mangoes, so my music learning actually brought me closer to nature and that’s where I found my real passion. I always thought of music as a language of nature.” Shortly after he discovered his real passion, Abhinav’s town went through some unplanned urbanisation that led to massive deforestation. All the gardens and baghs were gone in a matter of two or three years. This, in turn, impacted the culture of the town. People stopped singing folks, they stopped celebrating festivals that celebrated nature. He goes on to explain, “my first objective was to somehow bring nature back, as I knew that if I bring nature back, I would be able to bring the music back.”
Abhinav studied architecture for his undergraduate degree and started researching a lot on how to design cities better without taking away from the culture of that city. Abhinav’s attachment to nature earned him a Child Scientist award from APJ Abdul Kalam in school itself as he formulated better ways of water harvesting to replenish the water table of his city which were later implemented as bylaws within the region. “There’s a quote by a famous architect that states, ‘Architecture is frozen music.’ All the principles of composition, design etc. that we learn in architecture are applicable to music,” he added. During his 5 year degree, Abhinav made the most music of his life.
“I was studying in Bhopal, which is the central part of the country, and most of the trains pass through Bhopal. During my stay there, I used to get into trains to anywhere with my laptop and my soundcard, meet random folk artists, record them, burn a CD of their track, and give it to them. I did this every weekend for the first two years of my degree.”
After this, something brilliant started to happen where these folk artists started calling him to help them get more physical copies of their music. Selling these CDs became a source of livelihood for them. “This is how the idea of Anahad came about. I didn’t really have a methodology, but I knew that I wanted to record and preserve folk music so it’s accessible to the generations to come,” he stated. In his second year of college, he registered Anahad Foundation but quickly realised that it’s quite a cumbersome process to run an organisation like that and that he would require funding. He started researching colleges to study Music Business and ended up auditioning for Berklee College of Music’s music business program at Berklee Valencia. Abhinav received the highest scholarship possible and there he started work on Anahad as a project for his masters thesis.
Abhinav’s hard work and passion has led him to work with some brilliant folk artists, as well as renowned musicians from all over the world. The next part of the conversation will cover his journey with Anahad and how he brought the studio to the folk artists instead of bringing them to the studio.
Stay tuned!
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Abhinav Agrawal is an ethnomusicologist, musician and social entrepreneur, while also being the Founder-Director of the Non-Profit Organisation, Anahad Foundation. He has been working towards creating and reviving the diminishing folk music industry in India, by creating self-reliant models that generate livelihoods, pride and dignity for stakeholders connected to this art form. In doing so, Abhinav is helping create a Folk Music industry that is a sustainable art form and an industry that is musician-led. Abhinav Agrawal is an alumnus of Berklee College of Music and has also made it to the list of Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2019 of young achievers under the Arts category.
By Charita Arora
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