Live music and tea made for a perfect evening at the latest edition of PARKLIFE, hosted by Chaitown Community in collaboration with Whale in the Pond on July 24.
Four vocal artistes — Mayank Modi, Aamir Rizvi, Driftwood Band and Tathagata — performed their original music.
‘’PARKLIFE started in the living room of my Jodhpur Park home three years ago. I was still a student and every month four-five artistes would come and play originals unplugged. Performing originals is not a very prolific scene in the city. Gigs do happen in the city but they are mostly commercial. Back then the situation was even worse, there were hardly any gigs. We hosted a festival and then there was a break which coincided with the pandemic. We resumed with the Chaitown Community from December. The next gig will be happening next month, usually the last week,’’ said Sourjyo Sinha, organiser of PARKLIFE.
Mayank Modi kicked off the July edition of PARKLIFE with his original numbers
Modi, going by the name @moodymanjams on Instagram, began the evening with his originals written in 2020. His first gig with PARKLIFE saw him singing Spiraling Down, Tum Mili, You are the Reason and Pride Song to name a few. His was a mix of English and Hindi languages.
Aamir Rizvi performed his popular originals at the concert
Next came Aamir Rizvi, who has earned quite a popular place for himself among upcoming performing artistes. His second time at the event, Rizvi had the audience swaying to the tunes of his lyrical realism music. He performed originals like Its OK, Stargazing, Take 83 and Pink Sky to name a few.
Nabanita Sarkar and Atandra Chakraborty aka Bonnie and Buro from Driftwood Band had people swaying to their tunes
A short chai break followed before the Driftwood Band by Nabanita Sarkar and Atandra Chakraborty, going by Bonnie and Buro, took the stage and had the audience tapping their feet and clicking their fingers to some peppy numbers like Give Me a Call, I Like It, I’ve Got a Crush and What I Want.
“I have been performing for the last five years. But the band is two years old. It was founded in 2020. We didn’t play too much live but performed online. We sailed through because of the music. We are acoustic musicians. We never tried electronic before. We used to hear electronic but never tried creating any because it was too pop for us, we are into Blues and Jazz. But then COVID happened and we started brainstorming online. I made a studio in my home cupboard where I practised my vocals. We had a nice following on Instagram. We engaged in a bit of video and audio production. We learnt a lot these two years,” Nabanita of Driftwood Band said.
The last performer of the evening, Tathagata, entertained the audience with songs like Love in the Times of Getting Stoned.
