Bollywood may sing, but Bangalore rocks

On a damp afternoon on the outskirts of Bangalore, inside a cavernous warehouse that was once an auto-parts assembly plant, a local rock band runs a sound check.

After the lead guitarist of Solder shows up, band members belt out lyrics, and their loud, anthem-like music echoes off the roof of the venue that has hosted many international groups in the past. Only now, local bands are rocking the house.

Bangalore, a former manufacturing town known as India's Silicon Valley, is rapidly becoming one of the nation's hotbeds of rock music, buoyed by young, middle-class Indians who have money to spare and an appetite for headbanging music.

"What we are trying to do is to have Indian rock like we have American rock, Brit rock," said Siddarth Abraham, Solder's vocalist, who looks the part with a shaved head, beard and arms laced with tattoos.

The band gets together four times a week to practice in a shed behind the drummer's house, singing out lyrics like "The air of the morning, a summer night's dream, I welcome each day with Irish Coffee and Cream."

Some say the city has even given rise to its own sub-genre of music, "Bangalore Rock," which performers describe as an amalgam of classic rock, hard rock and heavy metal, with a bit of jazz and blues thrown in. All bands sing mainly in English.

"Before it turned into this 'IT' capital with a mix of people from all over the country, it had its own Bangalorean identity," said Rajeev Rajagopal, the drummer for Thermal and a Quarter, a top local group best known by its initials, TAAQ.

"Bangalore had this great vibe about it and there was live music here many years before we started playing. There were older folks we would look up to," he said.

AN EAR FOR ROCK 'N' ROLL

As the music scene in Bangalore has grown in recent years, its followers have offered several theories as to why rock music has taken hold of the city's youth.

Some say a local Indian army garrison popularized western music with its ball dances, a relic of the British Raj.

Others credit a sizable Anglo-Indian population with an ear for rock 'n' roll, as well as schools such as St. Joseph's College and Christ University, which is the source of some of the city's most prolific bands.

Many musicians said they were steeped in music from birth.

"For me, it was my household. My brother, my parents all listened to rock. We were brought up in that kind of environment," said Abraham, the Solder vocalist.

As a result of its love of rock, the city has welcomed big-name acts such as Metallica, Deep Purple and Iron Maiden.

"We have a theory that if Metallica sees 40,000 people, Steely Dan will bring in 500,000 people if they ever decide to come to India," said Umesh P.N., a theatre consultant and bass guitarist for the now-defunct band RoadCrew.

Another theory is that Bangalore's distance from the entertainment powerhouse of Mumbai and its Bollywood film industry has freed musicians of more commercial concerns.

Uday Benegal, who shared a stage with Chris Barron of the Spin Doctors during nine years in New York and is currently the vocalist for Indus Creed, claimed that for years Bollywood had been "steamrolling" the programming on Indian MTV and another TV music network, Channel V, for over a decade.

"The scene has changed and it has become very fertile. If you're not Bollywood, raising money is very hard, but it's a great time to be making music in India," he said.

Rajeev of TAAQ said bands in Mumbai tend to think only of "pure commerce." That seems less true in Bangalore.

"Everyone here has a little more of doing what we want and like to do," he added. "In places where commerce controls your success, the whole deal is 'Man, I need to pack in those seats' and it weighs heavily on artists' minds."

For bands eager to get a foot in the door, numerous rock shows and contests at colleges like the National Law School and organisations like Alliance Francaise provide a welcome boost.

Bars such as Kyra in the suburb of Indira Nagar, also hold open microphone nights that are hugely popular among start-up bands and can provide a launch pad for bigger gigs to come.

Clown with a Frown, a band whose members are still in their teens got its start at one of the open talent nights.

Barely 4-months-old and currently funded by supportive parents, the band practices daily at the drummer's house and is already fielding offers to play for money at concerts.

"There are tons of opportunities that push you forward and an environment that is conducive to building music," said Reuben Jacob, the band's lead guitarist.

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