19 Nov Amal | S1.2: Anahad Foundation
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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In the first part of this piece, we talked about Abhinav Agrawal’s early life and all that drove him to create an empowering space for folk artists that is Anahad Foundation. In this piece we will discuss the journey of Anahad Foundation and how it evolved into what it is today.
The First Studio
Soon after Abhinav registered Anahad Foundation, he realised that he wasn’t quite ready to take on this mammoth task. He needed to work more on his knowledge of how this body of work would function and that’s how he ended up studying the music business program at Berklee College of Music’s Valencia campus. His organisation and case was an interesting one for Berklee as it was the first non-profit that the faculty was working with. The Director placed Abhinav under the guidance of Boston Conservatory‘s then President so that he could get the relevant education that he needed. “While at Berklee, my hypothesis was that folk music isn’t being produced in the manner that Bollywood or Indie music is. These musicians don’t have the money to go to a studio or the equipment that can help them get better recordings. And because it isn’t getting recorded properly, we are unable to experience every element and also the arrangement of folk music. So based on that, I created a studio in Delhi, and then I started calling the folk artists to come and record their music at the studio free of cost. Unfortunately, that flopped,” Abhinav recalled. Free studio time wasn’t enough motivation for these musicians. Expenses like travel and stay were also unaffordable for a lot of these artists.
Disheartened by how the studio set up panned out, Abhinav decided to go back to how it all started. He decided to travel for a couple of months and again found himself recording folk artists in their familiar spaces.
“I took a really long train to Jaisalmer during this time and met a musician called Dapu Khan who plays a rare and ancient instrument called Kamaicha. I recorded him, made a website for him, created business cards for him, and taught him how to give them out as well. And within a month, he got a tour to Germany. That was the tipping point for me.”
Backpack Studio
That is when Abhinav decided to bring the studio to the artists. “As an architect, I was always taught that form follows function. So if we reverse the process, we should be able to take out the function from the form. In this case, it meant that I had to create a studio from scratch. I started reaching out to some of the top engineers of the world to create this mobile studio, and called this project Backpack Studio,” he added. At this point, Grammy award winner, Gael Hedding, came into the picture as well.
Gael came to India for a couple of months, stayed with Abhinav, travelled with him, and helped him design Backpack Studio. For 3 months, they travelled and explored the country, and designed this innovative technology. “It is something quite revolutionary. It operates on battery power and on a single charge, it can work upto three days. It’s a 12 multi-track technology. Even the mics are dust proof and humidity proof. We partnered with many supportive companies that helped us assemble our Backpack Studio and this has become the major technological backbone of Anahad Foundation,” Abhinav stated.
What does Anahad Foundation do?
Anahad Foundation provides doorstep production facilities to folk artists free of cost. For every artist, they record four tracks and make two music videos as well. They also create independent websites for all the artists. In order to empower these musicians, Anahad Foundation also teaches them about music business and how it works. Abhinav’s partner and Managing Director at Anahad Foundation, Shuchi Roy, is an IP lawyer and aids this process. Anahad helps these artists understand copyright, how they can protect their work, how they can earn royalties, how music publishing works, and also fights legal disputes for these artists pro bono.
The team at Anahad Foundation is dedicated to bring folk music and artists the credit that they deserve. Recently, the team published a huge catalogue of the music that they have recorded with the Backpack Studio on streaming platforms.
Here’s a playlist of a few tracks from this catalogue that was curated by Abhinav:
The journey with Abhinav and Anahad has been a rather pleasant one. We’ve also had the privilege of interacting with a few folk artists that Anahad works with. The next few chapters of this journey would shed some light on these brilliant musicians and their artistry.
Stay tuned!
By Charita Arora
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