‘Accepting humiliation is not humility’

For a musician who performs live the audiencersquos response is everything Composer and percussive fingerstyle guitarist Samar Mehdi who has been doing live gigs for the last four years would know betterBut an incident last week involving a jeering crowd left him rattled forcing him to take cudgels for his community of musicians which has been at the receiving end for far too longSarthak Kulshrestha a promoter and one of the founders of Bohemian Live a touring booking and promoting agency says heckling has become commonplace in nonmusic venuesMehdi was performing at the Imperfecto Ruin Pub in Delhi when he was harassed and heckled by a group of drunk men in the audience who extensively cussed and disrespected him ldquoThe show went on and so did the hostility I felt like the more the audience was cheering me on the more the problem group felt motivated to put me down and vice versa I couldnrsquot understand their issue but I chose not to engage because I was focussing on delivering the performancerdquo a distraught Mehdi later shared on Instagram He learnt that the venue managers did not act against the hecklers because they had paid more money for the table they had booked Mehdi felt it was necessary to speak about the issue on social media because ldquoignoring the deeper social problem would make these kind of situations normal for a lot of peoplerdquo ldquoSaying no demanding better treatment as a human being and a professional or standing up to someone is not arrogance especially when someone treats you poorly or beneath themselves Accepting humiliation is not humilityrdquo he says now in an email interview with middaySarthak Kulshrestha a promoter and one of the founders of Bohemian Live a touring booking and promoting agency says such incidents have become commonplace ldquoThey keep happening all across India but it is mostly happening in nonmusic venuesrdquo he saysAkshay Kapoor founder and editor of online portal The Indian Music Diaries feels that the Indian audience is still not sophisticated enough to understand music and musiciansIndian venues are predominantly FampB nonmusic venues where the main focus is not the music but FampB While the music venues are strictly for listeners nonmusic venues tend to approach musicians as a means to fill a spot every night rarely bothering to learn of what music they perform or inform the crowd about their work The audience more often than not comprises guests who are there to eat drink have a good time and listen to Bollywood music say music industry expertsA performer like Mehdi who is known for his original indie tracks doesnrsquot fit their idea of ldquofunrdquo and this often leads to heckling the artiste ldquoI know making money is important for venues but they venue managers also have to understand that just because someone is paying a lot at the table doesnrsquot mean they can disrespect anyonemdashwhether it is the artiste the venue staff or even the venue guard This social class hierarchy needs to stoprdquo says Ritnika Nayan owner of Music Gets Me High a music consultancy firm in IndiaAmit Gurbaxani music journalistAkshay Kapoor founder and editor of The Indian Music Diaries an online portal for Indian independent music feels that the Indian audience is still not sophisticated enough to understand music and musiciansMost Indian audience members he feels are still under the impression that the only kind of music that exists is Bollywood cover music or tracks played by a DJ ldquoIn fact many are of the belief that English songs are synonymous with Hollywood music and thus an indie artist performing their originals seems unfathomablerdquo says KulshresthaRitnika NayanBut Amit Gurbaxani a music journalist feels that ldquoit is not only disrespectful but also stupid to request a Bollywood cover from an indie artiste who is there to present his originals ldquoIf the music doesnrsquot suit your taste go somewhere else Donrsquot ruin it for everybody elserdquoMehdi says the heckling is one reason why live musicians prefer doing curated intimate shows ldquoTherersquos a significantly smaller audience but one thatrsquos purely there for the music This helps artistes avoid such situationsrdquoHowever avoiding such gigs can come at the cost of the artistesrsquo career ldquoIt might seem easy for us nonperformers to say artistes should boycott or blacklist venues that donrsquot take action against misbehaving customers but any real and significant change requires some amount of sacrificerdquo feels GurbaxaniAccording to Kulshrestha artistes should draw a contract and have an artiste manager state all the terms right from FampB security the kind of music played etc with the venue Nayan who has dealt with such situations as a manager in the past feels that itrsquos very important for artistes to have a support team at the venue which can immediately take care of these issues if they come upAnother solution Gurbaxani says is that whenever an artiste is playing at a new venue ldquothey or their management could speak to those who have performed there previously about the hospitality FampB arrangements and the kind of audience thererdquoHowever since music continues to be viewed as a hobby Kapoor and Kulshrestha feel that it will take some systematic unlearning to accept artistes and what they do ldquoNow music is a viable career and people are taking it more seriously so it should be treated like any other artrdquo Nayan arguesMeanwhile Mehdi is urging more musicians and artistes to ldquocome forward and share their own experiencesrdquo ldquoIt doesnrsquot have to be on social media if theyrsquore not comfortable with it it can just be with people they trust in their own circles The only way this can change is if we first make people aware of the problem and then they acknowledge it The conversation depends on us coming together and collectively going forwardrdquo