Vachan Chinnappa will be playing at the Storm Festival in Karnataka and was here recently for the pre-event party. He spoke to I Kaur about the EDM revolution in India
There are times when the only thing that adds peace to silence is music. And sometimes you just want to backpack and traverse to a land in the middle of nowhere to attain that peace. This dream came true the day camp-out music festival Storm began in Coorg and this year it is back, but at a different place with a fresh line up. This time the festival will be held in a village at Sarjapura Hobli, Karnataka. Vachan Chinnappa was recently in town to kickstart the festival at Turquoise Cottage and decided to play Funk instead of his usual Drum and Bass (DnB). “I saw the venue online before coming and I realised that it was more of a live music venue. I usually play DnB but then I thought of playing some funk as the place was fit for the genre. The music was a mix of some 70s funk music like James Brown and Bobby Byrd with new age funk-induced music that had more of saxophone bass and funk guitars. It was very groovy, bouncy and tightly packed playlist. It made a 25 and a 40-year old groove together,” he said.
According to Vachan, he always looks at the venue and then decides what kind of music he will play. He elaborated, “I do these two styles — drum and bass and funk. Since funk is usually the old school kinds with music from the 70s and 80s, the venue I play it at really matters. So I look at the venue and decide whether I will play funk, DnB or both.”
At Storm, Vachan will be playing DnB, he said. “At Supersonic in Goa last year I ended up playing both funk and DnB, but at Storm we only have slots for one hour and I can’t mix it all up,” he added.
The biggest thing that attracts most artistes and music lovers to Storm is its camp-out concept. However, ironically for Vachan, it is hardly a big deal. “The first two years I loved Storm because it was in Coorg. Now I love it because it is like a reunion for all artistes. We meet so many people and jam. As far as camping is concerned, I think I’m past that stage. The concept is great and a lot of young artistes and crowd love it, but personally I don’t like camping,” he shared.
Through his journey as a deejay, Vachan has experimented with a lot of styles within the EDM genre and met a lot of international artistes. Thus, with his experience he feels that India is currently at the best stage when it comes to EDM music in the world. He explained, “This is where the money is. Most artistes don’t get paid as much as they do in India and we also have a fresh audience. Stuff like DnB is very new here and people are enthusiastic about it. A lot of international artistes like to come here.” As far as Delhi is concerned, “there is a niche audience who likes this kind of music and they are well exposed to it.”