This Weekend was an Eyeopening Experience
The Piano Man was invited to host a stage for Jazz in the Dungeon of Alsisar palace, by Magnetic Fields (Thank you Munbir and Sarah), which is essentially an Electronic music festival, but has some pretty awesome things going for it outside of its core product!
The most amazing bit for me was the fact that for the first time, outside of the venue itself and outside of the circuit of musicians, I had a chance to see what people think about the brand, the venue and the ideology we are trying to build and boy, it was beautiful!
It was humbling to see how many knew about us and cared about what we are trying to do. It was incredible to see the many people who knew nothing about us, understand and agree with our approach and really shower artists with love and respect.
I have said this often on stage while trying to convince occasional loud audiences to keep quiet: If we really think about it, we can chase all the money in the world, but would our lives really be worth living without music, fine art, theater, comedy, literature, science and so many of forms of art? Even the forms or expressions that we don't like or agree with, because they are someone else's source of expression, inspiration and emotion.
A special thanks to the amazing group of musicians who made up The Piano Man Team - Pradyumna, Rahul, Sonic, Reuben, Kunal, Manta, Parvati and Sanjeeta. We've played over 7 hours of music over two days and are pretty exhausted, but it was a truly wonderful experience.
It genuinely feels like we are at the start of a pretty intense resurgence of Art and Culture (from the perspective that people have the desire and patience to examine and understand a work rather take snap decisions based on preconceived notions), and onthe other hand there is an ever growing storm of an extreme conservative ideology (that whole painting debacle at the Jaipur Arts Festival just before we left for Alsisar really disturbed me, amongst many other things).
We need to be more vocal and supportive of the community and protective of the creators of art and science. Till we let people individually target and attack these thinkers and creators, we won't advance to the next step of this movement.
With love and gratitude
Arjun
P.S. I had the rare opportunity to talk for hours and hours with fellow artists and patrons about pretty much everything outside the context of my club.I found many common themes and concerns which I have touched upon this newsletter.
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