NH7, a winner: A festival by music lovers for music lovers

Magarpatta city in Pune is an intimidating place. Vast, packed to the brim with apartment buildings and reminiscent of a mini Gurgaon, this ‘city within a city’ entirely redefines the concept of a gated community. But for a brief three days it lost its old self, playing host to thousands upon thousands of people in Bob Marley hats (complete with dreads), oversize blue plastic glasses with blinking lights along the rims, fluffy pink halo’s and red devils horns. Most of them were carrying buckets of booze, and all of them were there for the Baccardi NH7 weekender — described as India’s ‘happiest’ music festival. And happy it was. The completely sober danced as wildly as the mildly inebriated and heavily intoxicated, and everything seemed to be running like clockwork.

And music there was in abundance. In fact people were completely spoiled for choice, because there were six different music stages with some very well known artistes playing simultaneously. So you simply had to make some tough choices, depending on which genres you were most interested in. That Saturday we stuck to the Dewarists stage which was featuring many of the better known indie and fusion artistes such as Advaita, the Raghu Dixit project and Indian Ocean. In fact Saturday was a particularly big day because Grammy winning artiste Imogen Heap was scheduled to do a headline performance at the end of the day.

The Raghu Dixit Project was as entertaining and energetic as always, even stopping their performance midway because the “pritty pritty lady” in the front row was not dancing. But fusion band Advaita was arguably the best Indian outfit on the stage that night. Sarangi player and Hindustani vocalist Suhail Yusuf Khan was an absolute show stealer and the band gelled effortlessly. Soulmate lead singer Tipriti Kharbangar had an amazing voice reminiscent of Janis Joplin that had the crowd screaming with every note she belted. But the songs they performed all began sounding the same after a while. Very very well sung, but just a tad monotonous.

Imogen Heap on the other hand was show stoppingly amazing. Cute and quirky, wearing her black and white sari a tad too short and pinned to one shoulder, she vowed an audience that was made up of a lot of people who had never even heard her before that night. Amazingly creative, she experimented with sounds - recording various beats and percussions (including off the rim of a few wine glasses) on stage and looping them into her music. She would dash wildly from her percussion to her piano singing all the while, and then suddenly break into a funky dance to a techno beat. And when she organised the crowd into a three part harmony there was no going back.

Music aside, the organisational prowess of those responsible for NH7 was fantastic. On the ground the ticketing system was well organised. There were lots of well informed and helpful volunteers on hand,plenty of well detailed, clear maps and signboards, the food and drink was under control, and the acts were tightly regulated for time. It takes a brave man to come on stage and tell screaming fans of the Raghu Dixit project that they could not have a encore because of time constraints. It was also clear that most of the people manning the stalls and ticket booths were music lovers themselves, and it was refreshing to see that they did not strictly insist on photo identification for online passes, or antagonise people by spouting rules that no one ever takes that seriously anyway.

Which probably proves that music festivals and concerts should only be organised by people who are passionate about music. Big corporate entities like those responsible for the two Metallica concerts in October should just be asked to politely stay away. Now we can only hope that the NH7 never loses touch with true blue Indian music lovers and does not lose its soul to big bucks and sponsorship (Though we wish that they receive both in abundance).