Chennai to host a live arts festival with a focus on indigenous indie music this weekend

Chennai is opening up, no doubt about it. But a typical weekend at the club still means a rundown of the ‘top 50 global tracks’ from an audio streaming app. Or genre-specific music projected through the night. Despite the glut of live performances, Chennai is yet to celebrate the return of live performances in a big way.

Circle of Love Festival, a two-day multi-disciplinary arts festival that focuses on homegrown talent, attempts to do just that. Spread over two evenings in the radio room, it promises music, visual arts, sports and food: shrunken in scale, but vast and varied in talent.

“The whole point was to create an eclectic mix of music and put Chennai on the map,” says Sameer Sethi, who conceptualized a limited-capacity event with a larger theme, pointing to ‘simultaneous’ .

DJ and curator Manny explains, “The whole idea of ​​community platform Circle of Love is to break down barriers between genres, artists and everyone in the music community. Several genres of music are coming together in a festival and venue in Chennai, which usually has a different set of audiences for each genre. He added that this versatility can be expected in all artworks.

Says Sameer, “In two days you will travel from house music to commercial house, from independent artists to disco.” Two stages and over 20 artists are the USPs of the festival with an impressive line-up of performances: Nikhil Chinapa, JBBE (the solo project of F16’s Josh Fernandes) and Mali to name a few. The curation focuses on talent who haven’t got a chance to play in Chennai in a while.

“Nikhil Chinapa has not played here for three to four years. Mali, jababy, bread and jam are all the works of Chennai. And they book more gigs outside, which is disappointing,” says Sameer.

The main stage will be indoors and the second smaller outdoor stage will be open from 4 PM to 8 PM on both the days. Nikhil will be in the lead role on the first day, while most of the live events will take place on the second day, which will be capped by DJ Kayan and stalwart John.

Josh sees this as a “culture creation” rather than a phenomenon. “I will be doing a lot of new tunes which have not been released yet. Hopefully there will be some people in the line-up to join me on my sets.”

Not just that, the crew of F16s will be seen with acts of their own – “Harshan (Radhakrishnan), our keyboardist, is here playing his first DJ set under the moniker Heney. Abhinav Krishnaswamy (Booby), our guitarist, Open Hosting the mic and Shashank (Manohar), our bassist is creating the playlist for the focus group radio. All of us in the band are participating in the festival in very diverse roles,” says Josh.

DJ Manny has planned back-to-back sets on day one with Skip, currently ranked as the No. 1 turntablist in the country. This is his first gig in Chennai after the second round of lockdown. “We have been playing together for years and usually we do melodious techno sounds. We thought it would be a great place to create something different.”

There will also be an open mic targeted at young artists from 5 pm on the second day. 12 to 15 people will be selected from among the applicants. Apart from the music, the evening promises innovative creations in terms of art and decor. Without giving much away, says Sameer, “Inside the radio room, there will be projection mapping done on some of the walls by Bengaluru-based artist Black Fern. We’re also putting together some games like Giant Jenga.”

Showcase vows to take the COVID protocol seriously. Only those who have been fully vaccinated will be allowed to attend the event. The participating artists are also thoroughly vaccinated.

Circle of Love Festival will be held on 15th and 16th October at 4 PM at Radio Room, RA Puram. For tickets and further enquiries, please contact 9884109074.