Bhavishyavani Future Soundz
As electronic dance music and rave culture washed over America and England in the ’90s, India still moved to a more traditional nightlife beat that included Goa trance and chart-approved hits. Indian nightlife began to change at the turn of the century when small groups of artists and creatives across the country found ways to showcase the music and aesthetics they’d witnessed abroad. In Mumbai, it was the Bhavishyavani Future Soundz collective who helped kickstart the evolution of the city’s club culture. A multimedia collective composed of amateur DJs, film and design professionals, Bhavishyavani Future Soundz threw their first party on May 13, 1999. Over the years visual themes like traditional Indian weddings or politics would mix with sets of jungle, dub techno and live performances by then-upcoming Indian electronic acts such as MIDIval Punditz. By combining a love of their hometown and culture with graphic design, music and live performance, this disparate group of idealists showed how a strong visual identity could define a scene and injected a sense of fun and possibility into Mumbai nightlife that is still felt to this day.
In this public conversation held at Mumbai’s Famous Studios, three of the Bhavishyavani Future Soundz founders – Ashim Ahluwalia, Mukul Deora and Tejas Mangeshkar – shared stories of how they mixed foreign and local inspirations together, and the uphill battles of trying to establish a new culture of nightlife in a country undergoing its own cultural and demographic explosion.
Hosted by Kenneth Lobo Good evening everyone and welcome to Famous Studios in Mumbai. Bhavishyavani Future Soundz is one of India’s legendary electronic music and mixed media art collectives. From 1999 they’ve hosted several of Mumbai’s most memorable party nights. Each party has also featured artwork and production that has a uniquely Bhavishyavani take on it. They pioneered flyer culture, immersive club experiences, guest bookings and collaborations much before they became commonplace in India. There’s the iconic Bha logo, the Bhavishyavani robots, the Bhavishyavani bookings, but above all else, it’s always been about the Bhavishyavani party. Please welcome Ashim Ahluwalia, Mukul Deora, Tejas Mangeshkar from the Bhavishyavani Crew. Give it up. [applause] Tejas Mangeshkar Hi! Kenneth Lobo So the ’90s in India, to jog the memory a little bit, maybe for those who weren’t around. The economy had liberalized. We’d moved towards a more service oriented market, taking baby steps toward private and foreign investment. It was the start of the growth of the Indian middle class in the ’90s. In cricket, Mohammed Azharuddin was leading the cricket team. Sachin Tendulkar played his famous desert storm innings against the Australians in Sharjah. In Bollywood, the studios which used to record all of these amazing soundtracks with 30-piece orchestras, in studios like this one that we’re sitting in, shut down. They were replaced by synthesizers and drum machines. It was possibly the worst period of music in the Hindi film industry, with AR Rahman being the exception to the rule, as always. I want to ask each of you, can you give me a memory of Bombay from the ’90s? Ashim Ahluwalia Yeah. It was kind of a cultural wasteland to be really honest. It was like nothing going on. It was pretty much “Summer of ’69” playing in every bar and every night club. You know, you had greatest hits, top 40 kind of stuff or Bollywood songs. There was no scene. There was no club culture. There was nothing really. The only sort of alternative electronic music was trance, Goa trance. There really wasn’t many options for us. I think that’s how we probably got together. Mukul Deora Yeah. You were saying you went to a night club and heard “Summer of ’69,” ’90s stuff and you’re getting high as the night is going on and feeling a little good about your life and then “Summer of ’69” comes on again. Three times in a row, and we hated that song actually. Or you had dance bars that would play Bollywood music which was not our thing. You can’t really get deep into that space. For us, we wanted a change. We wanted to see what we had experienced when we were abroad basically. Kenneth Lobo Tejas? Tejas Mangeshkar Yeah. In the ’90s I remember more like going to rock shows called Independence Rock, where we used to go behind the venue in the shady bars and have some rum and coke. Then jump the wall and get in. And some of us that used to jump the wall then became Pentagram [the Indian indie-electronic band] again later and stuff like that. I remember that rock was quite big at that point. Kenneth Lobo What was Independence Rock? Tejas Mangeshkar Independence Rock was this, Farhad Wadia, this guy who used to create once a year big concert for two days or something, with all the Metallica, all these guys. But played by the locals. Mukul Deora At Rang Bhavan [open air venue that hosted most of the rock gigs], no? Tejas Mangeshkar At Rang Bhavan yes. Rang Bhavan days, correct. But all the albums played by locals, you know bands like Agnee and Pin Drop Violence, or… Ashim Ahluwalia Actually the heavy metal scene was the indie scene. It was the alternative scene. Mukul Deora That’s true, it was. Kenneth Lobo Mukul, you had just come back from London. What was your experience there like? Mukul Deora I was in London from ’93 to ’96. I consider myself very lucky during that period because you had the explosion of indie rock which was Radiohead, Oasis, Blur, you had the whole Bristol sound which was, Massive Attack, Portishead, Tricky, Roni Size. You had for me the whole electronic music explosion Underworld, Orbital, drum & bass, Goldie, all these things happened in that period when I was in university. I just used to go to clubs, and they would just blow my mind, the music, the flyers, I used to collect hundreds of flyers. They just give them out to you when you come out of a club. The way they did up the clubs as well, it was an immersive experience. It was sound, visuals, light, a community of people not so different. People from everywhere coming and losing themselves to dance which is, I think, what we wanted to do. Which we missed a lot when we came back, and we wanted to replicate that kind of thing and introduce new sounds to everyone in India. Kenneth Lobo Is there a particular sort of experience that you remember, that stayed with you? Mukul Deora Out there. I mean, yeah, there were many experiences. I used to go to Brixton Academy a lot which is this amazing music venue in Brixton [South London]. It’s not a club. It’s a music venue. I saw Orbital, Underworld, the Aphex Twin, all these guys playing out there. Just amazing. Just the music, the conversations with people. There was actually a place called Megatripolis which was a nightclub, an underground nightclub under the arches in this area near the river. It was a gay nightclub during the week called Heaven, and on Thursday nights it was called Megatripolis and it used to be taken over by techno. In those days, it was just electronic art techno. There was no trance and drum & bass. It was just analog instruments making techno music, and you had this area with all these guys selling things and different rooms with different guys playing things. That kind of stuff. Trippy visuals, I’d never seen trippy visuals before. Yeah, that kind of stuff. Kenneth Lobo Ashim you had just returned from New York. What was your experience in New York like because that was also a particular moment in time, ’90s when New York was also transforming. Ashim Ahluwalia Actually, the funny thing is that when I went to film school, art school in New York between ’91 and ’95, and I stayed on until almost the end of ’96, those years, actually, in the US the electronic music scene was very depressing. Actually, there was no scene as such, it was pretty much, everyone listening to Nirvana. It was a kind of grunge moment. My introduction actually, I have a single image. I don’t know if we can... Maybe you can edit it out. First memories I had was actually going to visit a friend of mine in Holland in ’92 which was when that rave moment was really happening. Actually, what Mukul’s saying is it wasn’t even called techno, it was just called rave. There was no word for this sound, right? There was no word. There was no star DJs. I remember dropping some Es actually, and going to this thing with a flyer. I had no idea what it was. I never heard this sound, so you can imagine, my only exposure had been analog, acoustic, electric instruments, band stuff. We wandered in. We walked through a forest, and we got our… This was pre, we’re talking, pre-internet, pre-mobile phone, map and flyer. Then you’re in the forest, and you’re tripping your head off. At some point, we saw a tent lit up. We went into this tent, and it was about maybe 200, 300 people inside the tent bouncing on this bouncy floor. Everyone was tripping, and there was this amazing music which I’d never heard in my life. That was my first introduction to sort of a rave. Those days, a rave was taken very seriously. It was people who came with glow sticks and they dressed up. It was actually a very... There was a whole culture around raving. Before you had breakbeat, before you had techno, before you had everything, you just had rave music. That was kind of my initial openings to this thing. Of course, vinyl. Seeing people play records again. I hadn’t seen that since I was a kid, so this idea that you had white label vinyl, you didn’t know who the artist was. These were 12”, they were cut only for that night. That kind of blew my mind, I think. Kenneth Lobo Tejas, you were here. What was going on in Bombay? Tejas Mangeshkar After the rock days, we were kind of... In Bombay actually what was going on was kind of interesting. There was no such kind of traffic [as there is today], OK? What we used to do in Shivaji Park, we used to hitchhike rides from random guys, and reach say town to J.J. School of Arts or... This was kind of the easy life in Bombay. My partner at that time, Kurnal who is here, so we thought of having the first... Doing a party called Hitchhike the Ride. We had this party organized in Juhu at a place called Ruia House. I remember Kurnal doing the flyer which was called Hitchhike the Ride. The idea was don’t come by taxi or train or anything, but you have to hitchhike to come to the ride by any random person, and you can invite that person also to the party. That is the first party actually that we have done in the J.J. days. Kenneth Lobo People would actually stop for you while you hitchhiked? Tejas Mangeshkar Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Regularly. Maybe three times a day also. What say, Kurnal? Kenneth Lobo There was this... You were organizing this party? Tejas Mangeshkar Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kenneth Lobo What was happening with the clubs? Tejas Mangeshkar What was happening with the clubs is there was this friend of ours Sachin Jamney who actually did the Gandhi flyer. The Gandhi with the headphones. Sachin Jamney told us once, “Let’s go to Aarey Mik Colony there’s a dance bar which has opened, so we have to check it out.” We thought, “Let’s go and find what’s happening there.” We go to Aarey Mik Colony and between all the lush meadows and all that there’s one dance bar, standalone. We go there, and me and Kurnal specially I remember, we just start looking at the DJ console, and there’s this guy, a big bouncer with long hair, mixing on cassette deck… Tapes. He was playing a track, a Bollywood jhankaar beat with the coins rumbling in the speaker, he used to play that and exactly at the time of the mix, he used to put the other cassette on. Just kind of fascinated at that time. What is this DJ mix kind of on cassettes? We thought that there is already a chance to do some club kind of party before we ever meet these guys [points to the other two on the couch]. These are our initial ideas of throwing parties by getting these tapes from some friends, and doing it at these J.J. School of Arts, for that crowd from J.J. School of Arts parties in Ruia House, which is in Juhu. Kenneth Lobo For the audience that doesn’t know, can one of you describe what a dance bar is, please? Mukul Deora It’s legal now. I think it was illegal for 10 years, and now it’s legal. A dance bar is a very interesting thing which I think comes from the repressive society that is India in some parts. It’s a... I’m thinking somehow of a wide tile place with a fake Taj Mahal interior, and you have these women wearing sarees, young girls not women, girls 18 to 25, dancing to Bollywood songs on a dance floor and around the... It’d be a wide marble dance floor. Usually around the dance floor will be men, middle-aged men. 99 percent of them will have mustaches, I think. Sitting around eating chicken tikka and having beer or whiskey, and watching these girls dance. Every once in a while a guy will just jump up with a wad of money, and [makes sound] chuck the money like a shower of notes on one lucky or unlucky girl’s head. And then maybe he can talk to her and… Garlands of money. Tejas Mangeshkar Garlands of hundred Rupee notes. Mukul Deora Then they talk maybe afterwards depending on the managers, the deal that happens, and that’s what it is basically. Kenneth Lobo There were dance bars… Mukul Deora It’s a very important part of Indian culture for... I mean, in that, for men to go out at night. It’s like a strip bar in America, I guess. It’s that kind of thing. Ashim Ahluwalia It’s also really important, I think, also to Bhavishyavani in a weird way because I think it was sort of... In a way, the only reference we had of a sort of pseudo-illegal place where fun stuff happens. Mukul Deora Right. Ashim Ahluwalia Kind of because everything else was very formal. You had to wear black shoes and a black belt to enter a nightclub, you know what I mean? It was very British. Almost like going to a proper dinner or something. The nightclub was a very formal event, whereas a dance bar you have guys with open shirts, gold, more our scene if you know what I mean. Mukul Deora Yeah. Kenneth Lobo What about this kind of music appealed to you all? Ashim Ahluwalia Firstly, I think the discovery of jungle and drum & bass. I mean, it wasn’t even called drum & bass, it was really jungle at that moment, and it sounds so slow now when we hear it. It’s amazing. Mukul Deora It sounds really slow. Ashim Ahluwalia It sounds like hip-hop now. It’s really funny because it sounded so fast when we heard it the first time and very futuristic. I still think it has a very futuristic sound and that’s ’96. That’s what, almost 20 something, more than 20 years old. I think what we really loved, what I loved and I can kind of speak for the others, is that there was something very Indian, very Desi about the grooves. It’s a lot of low end, and it’s a very dhol type sound. It has a very loose structure. It’s not very Germanic. It’s not very European in terms of its 4/4. It comes from, obviously, Jamaican dub culture, so it’s got a dub, like broken kind of looser vibe. That’s kind of, I think, where we connected because also Tejas used to play tabla, we had a very synergistic idea of dhol. We used to play a lot of dhol alongside and lock them to these grooves during our sets. There was a lot of this kind of Indian aesthetic that we really wanted to bring into it, and jungle just fit that I think. Mukul Deora I think jazz also because jungle is a lot of jazz, funk samples. It was inner city stuff, that urban, very open, very inner city which was what we associated with as well coming from Mumbai, the most open place ever. I think that was important for us. Even today, when you hear drum & bass and you’re driving in a car, and those days we used to go for long drives, it just, the scenery of the city just fits with the music. It’s a perfect soundtrack, even now. I think that was very important for us also. I think that’s why we like visuals as well, and we’re one of the first people to do that. To try and get projectors or some kind of visual element because it’s nice to see something while you’re dancing and while you’re hearing this music. It’s like a soundtrack basically. Tejas Mangeshkar We kind of connected on the music they were playing. I think it was... As a kid I used to dance in the processions of the Ganapati festival. Used to go down my building and there would have been live drummers and all that bling. We had these kinds of moves, me and my friends as kids, and when these guys are playing this kind of drum & bass, kind of fast stuff, it was kind of the same moves being applied to this dancefloor. It was kind of... Kenneth Lobo To come back to what you all said earlier, Mukul and Ashim about coming back to this wasteland, how did the idea for Bhavishyavani Future Soundz come about? Mukul Deora I mean, one thing I think for us, I mean for me when I came back, I landed in… Wasteland is such a big word but I felt so isolated out here because, “How do I meet someone interesting?” I mean, for me music was such an important part of my identity, so when I did meet new people I would ask them, “Do you like this or do you like that? Or do you like Massive Attack?” for example. Everybody said no. I was just, like, “What can I talk to someone about? I can’t talk to them about anything really.” That was a problem. How do you meet people like yourself? How do you live? What do you do? I think, for me that was a very important thing. Ashim Ahluwalia I actually chose to move back from New York because I grew up in Bombay. I chose to move back. It was kind of funny because I wanted to actually reconnect with this city, but nobody else seemed to be that interested in the city itself. I love the city. I love everything about it. It’s only when we started meeting, I think, we all started realizing we had a common love for this city. We really liked things that many people just take for granted. We can talk about a Ganapati procession, but that’s one of the most amazing soundsystem parties, if you think about it. It’s incredible. It’s like being in Kingston in 1950. You’ve got massive bass bins, and you’ve got people playing dhol live on top of that and a DJ. I mean, it doesn’t get better than that. There was already so many things in the city that was so incredible, but somehow everybody that I met, other than Mukul maybe or very few people, who had returned from abroad had this thing of like, “Oh you know Bombay’s not happening. I’d rather be in London. I’d rather be in New York. I’d rather be…” I found that really annoying. I was like, “This is just ridiculous.” You have so much here, but there’s just no way for people who didn’t want to tap that. I think, what happened is it just was very organic the way we just met. They had already started doing parties in some shape or form. They were networked, Grandmother, that’s Tejas and Kurnal. Mukul had a whole bunch of records. My cousin Justy [Jatin Vidyarthi] who’s from Chennai, but he had studied in Australia came back with a bunch of jungle records. It was just the right moment. It was never planned. Kenneth Lobo Tejas, can you tell us about the Bhavishyavani moment? Tejas Mangeshkar Yes, so I think it was, as Ashim says, we all kind of met with the common friends around us who were either in film making or design or this kind of thing. Somehow we used to meet in Mahim at this place where we used to eat surmai fry, so if you see one of the flyers, you’ll see a surmai on it. This is how we kind of connected over local food and music. These were the two, I think, things which made Bhavishyavani happen. The sound and the food. Mukul Deora Industrial Bombay. I mean, when Ashim said this it made me remember like the robots, why did we get the robots? Because we live in South Bombay, so I saw them at our chowpatty beach, but they saw them at their chowpatty beach. So these quintessentially Bombay slash Indian innovations, almost in a way, which is part of our fabric. But you know you have to get into it in some way, otherwise it’s like, “It’s all sh-t, this is all sh-t.” How do you get into it, how do you get into the sounds, the culture, the local culture? But use that, and connect to it in a way, otherwise what does a local culture mean? Someone thinks it’s Bollywood music, for example. For us it’s not that. That is another mediated form of local culture being put to us, which we don’t accept. This was another way for us to connect again. I mean, a lot of the gigs, we love doing gigs, and these dance bar-esque places, because we would get locals from anywhere coming there and doing anything, you know. Just blowing their mind with this dhol kind of music, not even knowing what it is, but it makes them move, basically. Tejas Mangeshkar Like some parties, the locals were more than our crowd. Mukul Deora Oh much more. Kenneth Lobo Tejas, can you recount the moment of Bhavishyavani at Juhu chowpatty? Tejas Mangeshkar I remember, me and Kurnal, we were walking and we used to have this guy called Sagar, and this Sagar guy, we used to call him Sagar hain kya Sagar, and we had to find him because he had the connections with this doctor called Hoffman. So, me and Kurnal used to go and find this guy, and you know, tried to find this, and at one such point we went and met Sagar, and we were on sagar kinare [sagar means sea and the dealer’s name was also Sagar. In this case sagar kinare means by the sea], with the robots, so we said, “Let’s go and check it out.” So that guy said, “Give me ten Rupees.” So me and Kurnal said, “OK, let’s give.” So he gave us… There are two headphones on each robot, so he gives us the thing. The robot to me said, “You will have a boy.” And to Kurnal said something else. So then both of us we were just like looking at each other, we come back to our thing. And no, we ask him, “Boss, what is this thing called?” We call everyone boss like the rickshaw driver, the grocery store guy, the ice cream vendor, and he said, “Bhavishyavani.” So we come back to the office and Kurnal’s tripping on the dreams of Hoffman, uncle Hoffman and all that. And next morning we wake up and he says, “Tee [Tejas], what about Bhavishyavani?” So I said, “What do you mean?” So he said, “No, Bhavishyavani Future Sound.” So I’m like, “It sounds good, for what?” So he’s like, “For the company name.” So I’m like, “OK. Sounds good. And what about the logo?” He said, “The VIP suitcase and the robot on top.” So then we were like excited, next evening, straight to Ashim’s office, Film Republic, idea sealed, everyone excited. Now we have had the name, now where do we do the party? Then it was like the next, that was the, the beginning… Kenneth Lobo You also had some amazing tag lines, “We don’t build spaceships, we are spaceships,” and, “Fast dancing for a new India.” Who came up with those? Tejas Mangeshkar Fast dancing for a new India was Ashim, because what happened at that point is we were kind of doing these sessions in our office in Mahim, and some of the tracks, we were wondering how the guys might dance, like how do we make them fast dance to the music? Because before that it was like jive or swive or, whatever it’s called. So then, then Ashim was like, “Man it should be like fast dancing for a new India.” So that was the initial one, in the beginning only it had come, but then as we are a crew, and we got more and more people, we got this amazing film maker also, like a junior from his college in the US called Kulkarni Vishwas @ hotmail.com. So he came up with the thing and he said, “You guys don’t build spaceships, you are spaceships.” So we were like, OK so then we… Mukul Deora And he wrote it down for some article. There was some article he wrote. Tejas Mangeshkar I think for the first website. Mukul Deora Yeah, yeah. For the first website. He was a copy guy. Kenneth Lobo Tell us about the first Bhavishyavani Future Soundz party. Can we have the image up from the first, the flyer from the first party please? Tejas Mangeshkar So to continue from the logo design, which Kurnal made, the Bha, and if you see, that time the Bha was not the logo, which nowadays people call the monogram or something. Our logo was a robot with the VIP suitcase and the two headphones. So that was actually the logo. So the logo there and then your information. And here what happened was, we got supported by Sony Music, support in the sense that we straight told them that we need 50,000 Rupees to do the décor. And we need the robots and so they kind of helped us. And there’s United Printers and Processors who… Some of the guys are coming this evening for the party as well. So it was at Razz, and it was 13th May, which is two days from now, in ’99. And so it was quite amazing the first party, because we didn’t expect this kind of crowd to show up, actually show up. Because what we did is we had printed about 500 of these, and we had these brown envelopes, which you get at the Kirana shop [grocery store], they put that... So we made all these brown envelopes and put all these flyers in and we just sent it to, say like a Channel V office [one of India’s first youth culture & music channels along with MTV] or an MTV office, or Elle Magazine, some friends were there, or these ad agencies like Lowe Lintas and all that. Whoever our friends used to work for or were interning or something like that, so we just send 50 flyers, and for that party, I remember, it was like a packed crowd of all colorful kind of looking people. Kenneth Lobo Can you describe the club? Tejas Mangeshkar So the club format was basically, this was the stage, and both sides on the right and the left were like these kind of balconies I think, for the VIP guys to stand. And the center was the dancefloor. So there was Razz Rhino in ’99. Kenneth Lobo Razzberry Rhinoceros? Tejas Mangeshkar Yes that’s right. And there was a very special act that day, apart from the DJs of course, this was the first INSAT, that time it was INSAT 2A and 2B, Masta Justy was not named. So we just put the, you know the satellite which, the first Indian satellite which went up? In south India or something, they fired it up. And so it’s called INSAT, and in half an hour it came down again and crashed, poor thing. And then they put the INSAT 2B and same thing happened, so we thought that they are like this low-tech, low-orbit kind of DJs, no? So we had put them. And then the third guy was this film maker, who we all were, I mean we were in love with this film called Om Dar Ba Dar [India’s first avant-garde film, released in 1988]. And his name is Kamal Swaroop, he’s going to join us tonight at the party also. And he was basically MCing, kind of MCing during our party, but he was like the Krishna bhagwan, lying down like that with the thing. And he was MCing like mad stuff all from his scripts or some stuff while rhyming. And one example was, what he said was, “Busy, busy, busy, I’m a business man.” And… Kenneth Lobo And he was MCing to drum & bass and jungle and… Ashim Ahluwalia Yeah, yeah. Yeah which he had heard for the first time that night. So it was that kind of vibe if you know what I mean. It was very strange, because I think a lot of people didn’t know what that sound was, but there was a kind of openness and obviously there were a lot of substances, so that also helped. But the fact that people hadn’t heard this sound, but they just did their own thing with it, I think that was pretty incredible. So that definitely, for us it was an experiment, and it was like, “OK, we need to do this like regularly now.” Tejas Mangeshkar It was like a kind of a hit, because then there was a, we had a register book outside. So suddenly we had everyone’s numbers and hotmail addresses and all, which was quite good. It helped us for the other parties to keep that logbook. Kenneth Lobo And Ashim you stitched together some visuals for this gig? Ashim Ahluwalia Yeah I had a VHS tape of like films division, like some news reels that had just type, actually a lot like the text that we ended up using a lot, because Kurnal was really into type, he loved type, because he’s a type designer, and I think we also learned the love of type from him. Especially kind of this Bombay type, which we forget about. Like every taxi has a hand cut type face, every shop has a hand cut type face and Bhavishyavani’s a lot about the type. You see every flyer has different type faces. So I just had a video like which was running old 16mm films of like types, type faces. It was quite a beautiful party I have to say, it was something quite special. Kenneth Lobo Since we’re at Kurnal, maybe you can tell us just a little bit about Grandmother? Tejas Mangeshkar Yeah so Kurnal and me basically we were doing parties before we met them. Together we were doing some freelance graphic design work, some 3D animation stuff for clients, through J.J. and all that. And at that time we were sweetly offered by my grand mom, her balcony space in Shivaji Park to start our office. The first client was Sony Music, that’s why they’re also in the first poster. So Sony Music was our first client and that’s how we started, and Kurnal, and we had one more partner at that time called Vinod Nair, who was a photographer. And he was basically covering all our, he also did some flyer designs and also we three started Grandmother, and we were doing all this kind of design for the youth you can say. At that time they used to call us, “Call Grandmother, they’ll do youth design.” And then we had a client even Mukul knows, Mukul was a copywriter at that time, and we got a client called Youth Planet. So they wanted us to do the whole design of Youth Planet. Kenneth Lobo Speaking of Shivaji Park, you’ve spoken in the past about you all having this sort of Shivaji Park crew at the time. Tejas Mangeshkar So earlier it was the rock crew, which was all the rock bands of Bombay at that time, they all used to hang in Shivaji Park. There was a khatta [a country bar]. And there was also a guy called Kiran Toraskar, who was like the master recorder of CDs onto cassettes. So he was basically, we all used to meet there and then come and sit in Shivaji Park, and then later on, I don’t know how all of these guys also started in Shivaji Park, also we had an office, before Grandmother, we had an office next to Lilavati Hospital in Bandra it was called Alvares House. And there one other friend Andy, who helped us get these automats was staying. And Vishal Rawley who was working with Ashim at that time was staying with him. So this is kind of how we all met, and then we started hanging in Shivaji Park because all the best food was there. All these local things, our ideas were there. And it was an escape from like 1900s, [a bar at the Taj Mahal hotel which featured a Richard Long soundsystem] all this kind of stuff. This was like, kind of the cool area to hangout, it was like the Bandra [current hipster area in Mumbai] of that time. Kenneth Lobo So right from the get go, you all were a mixed media arts collective. Can we maybe run through three of the parties that you all organized. If we can have the flyer, actually the photograph that we have from the wedding theme party, maybe Ashim you can talk us through this one and tell us what’s going on here. Ashim Ahluwalia That’s actually quite a rare photograph, because funnily enough, even though we were doing all of this stuff, we were very bad at documentation. So there is almost no photographs, very little stuff, actually. So this is quite a rare photograph of one of the parties. These guys were always upping the stakes. And it was good, because we would have a conversation, and then Kurnal or Tejas would say, “How about we get a Shaadi [wedding] decorator to do it?” All right, “Ah, OK? So then we gonna play these tunes.” So it would just become, it would just be sort of a joke, it would start as a joke and then it would actually become a real thing, kind of like Bhavishyavani, like it was sort of like, “Are we doing this seriously or not?” And then 20 years later here we are and we’re like sitting in a panel discussion. It was never meant to be this way, right? But yeah that was the vibe of the party, a lot of jungle. We had a tabla there on the floor, I don’t know who that was, I don’t even remember much of this party. There’s also Guido there. So very earlier on, we already had a lot of different genres going on at the party, he used to play a lot of Basic Channel type stuff. So whether it was techno, jungle, whatever, we would play really leftfield stuff. I mean probably more so than we can play today, because now there’s a sort of club culture. So people are kind of expecting a certain sound. I think there, because we had no expectation, I mean if Mukul wanted to play an Autechre track, or I wanted to play like a strange kind of left wing, Rephlex records, something really weird, people would just be open to it, and there’d be a tabla guy playing on top of it, and you just switch to a Basic Channel set, and suddenly he’s playing like a Berlin set. What was kind of common at these parties was the emphasis on bass, on the low end. So whether it was techno, whether it was jungle, or whatever it was, it was always very low end, and very heavy. So that’s what I remember. Mukul Deora I mean on the bass, when the music system used to work, I remember very often the speaker just would stop working, the mixer was always a problem, the Gemini mixers. Ashim Ahluwalia Things would stop, but what was nice is that the party wouldn’t stop kind of. It would be like 20 minutes and someone’s trying to figure out what’s blown. And everyone’s still there, no one’s leaving, it’s just more people coming in, it was one of those. Mukul Deora There was no mobile phones, there was nowhere for anyone to go. Kenneth Lobo What was the wedding theme? Mukul Deora It was Tejas getting married. As you can see. Tejas Mangeshkar To the decks. Yeah, so Shaadi was basically, we used to go for long drives during that time at night after meeting Sagar and all that. And we also used to come back to Mahim, from town usually near the docks. And we used to pass these flower markets, Dadar [neighbourhood in Mumbai] flower markets. And we were always fascinated in the morning to see all these colors outside, and so we said, “Why don’t we ask one of these flower decorators to come and do the design for the thing?” So Shaadi was one, but more interesting for me is the next one after this, we don’t have the picture, it was called the Neta [or politician] party. So the flyer was Gandhi and Shilpa… Little Shilpa [India’s most famous milliner and Tejas’s wife] had made these blue kurtas with pockets on the outside with the Bha logo. So they were from actually Matunga market, they were lungis but with the wide thread. So everyone had a different kurta because the white, the white line was coming in different sizes, just by the cutting. And there the décor was basically, we had put up frames of Bhagat Singh [an Indian freedom fighter] around and all with the thing around. All the prints were there nicely. And then when the audience enters, Shilpa also found this guy called Karim on Mahim, and he used to make these cycles out of wires. So everyone got a free Gandhi spec, like a thing which you wear and then you come inside the party. Otherwise, if you’re not wearing it, sorry… Kind of like hitchhike the ride, if you don’t hitchhike, don’t come. Kenneth Lobo Nice. Mukul can you tell us about the… Mukul Deora It was that same party at hotel airport, the second party? Tejas Mangeshkar That’s Scream, which was the automats. Mukul Deora But that was the second one? Wasn’t that the second one? Tejas Mangeshkar That was the second one but this one was third as well. Mukul Deora The third one right, right, right. It’s so confusing… Tejas Mangeshkar But I want you to tell about the Scream, Scream party, which is basically when one guy came and put the CD and we had to stop it, the whole crowd had stopped. Mukul Deora I mean, yeah the second party was one we had at this hotel airport. It was… Tejas Mangeshkar Yeah they made an illustration of that. Mukul Deora Yeah the one they made a comic of. There was a small hotel behind the domestic airport, Tejas and me used to mostly drive around all the time and… Tejas Mangeshkar Just looking at, meeting people. Mukul Deora Yeah and just find a nightclub, we’d just be driving on the road in Bandra or Khar and there would be some sign that there’s a nightclub like, what is the name of the nightclub? Scream and we would go inside and meet the manager, some guy with a suit and just say that we are these guys that want to make music. Mostly they would tell us to f-ck off or whatever, but… Tejas Mangeshkar No they should go with the letter also, you know like… Like a presentation… Mukul Deora Yeah, yeah like a proposal, basically. Tejas Mangeshkar Proposal, always a proposal. Mukul Deora You earn a lot of money, we’ll get a good cream crowd for you. That kind of stuff. Kenneth Lobo Can you take us through what a typical conversation with a club owner would be like? Mukul Deora Well the legendary one is that one, a gangster basically, a South Indian gangster we met, he had a small nightclub next to a restaurant in Bandra. We met him and he said… Tejas Mangeshkar Western Café. Mukul Deora Yeah I didn’t want to say the name but X, Y, Z. And he said, “I want only cream crowd.” And we didn’t understand what he meant in the beginning. At least one of us didn’t understand, but then we understood. And we said, “No, no don’t worry, it’s only cream crowd. Very good people.” And we showed him newspaper cuttings or something like that, and he was like, “No stags on the dance floor. No chappals [open footwear].” And there was a few more things like that. And this is a very good example of what Ashim was saying before what it was in Bombay before. If you’re a single guy, or you’re two guys actually, because you couldn’t get into a night club in these typical old school nightclubs that were there. Because it was about a girl and a guy going on a date and dancing to commercial music. So you couldn’t get into a nightclub, you had dress code, you couldn’t wear chappals, for example, no stags on the dance floor. It’s insane I mean. And we’re used to like, you’re dancing by yourself most of the time, you’re not dancing with a partner to electronic music. I mean if you think about it, it’s so crazy, no? Ashim Ahluwalia That could be the future, though. Mukul Deora It could be the future, yeah. Actually it sounds so crazy the whole thing, but so we used to always tell them that for us it was very important that the door, and taking over the whole place. It was our thing then it was very important for us that the guy had to understand, this is our gig. You have the place but chill out. The cost of it for us, it was very important that we charge as little as possible so no one, we didn’t want anyone to come and say, “We couldn’t get in,” or, “We couldn’t afford a beer.” It was very important for us to have all these things clear. Guys can’t be turned down, chappals, no discrimination in anyway. If you come to hear music, you can come and hear your music. Which wasn’t easy, because those guys they don’t understand what you’re saying half the time, and they would say yes in the beginning. And then change it. And in those days you used to also have the house DJ, I think that’s what Tejas wanted to talk about. So in all these nightclubs you’d have the house DJ who hated us, for some reason, because we were playing and people were loving our music, and those poor guys had to play “Summer of ’69” again, they had to play requests. Forget all these things, but it was request culture in those days. The poor guy was, they had him on a salary playing whatever, “Mereko yeh khelney ka hain,” [Bombay slang for I want this to be played] or whatever and they would have to play that. Tejas Mangeshkar And poor guy never used to get a crowd, and when he used to see our parties, he was like, “Boss I want to play.” Between our sets. Mukul Deora Exactly, so for the second gig, suddenly in the middle, I think Justy was playing then, I played and then suddenly we heard “Happy Birthday” or what was it? Tejas Mangeshkar No, it was a trance track some guy came. Mukul Deora No, that was someone else, but no... [laughs] But the DJ also played “Happy Birthday.” He played “Happy Birthday” because it was his girlfriend’s birthday. Kenneth Lobo Sorry, he played “Happy Birthday” in the middle of? Ashim Ahluwalia Yes, you’d cut a set, you’d cut a heavy jungle track and suddenly there would be “Happy Birthday” playing. Mukul Deora And it’s my girlfriend’s birthday. Ashim Ahluwalia And there would be a request or it would be... “Can someone move their car?” So it was a strange thing where we had an underground party and then parallel to it there’s a resident DJ doing the resident DJ number, you know? Mukul Deora And we had to fight all the time. Kenneth Lobo What was your relationship with the police like then? Mukul Deora We didn’t have much of a relationship but… Tejas Mangeshkar It was always very good. They wouldn’t give us a problem. Ashim Ahluwalia Except when I got taken to the police station. Tejas Mangeshkar That was a wrong tip off. There was one incident in Madness where they thought it was a dance bar because there were too many girls entering or something in the party and I think they were supposed to raid a dance bar in Khar, east but the police van came to Madness because they saw girls so they must have thought it was a dance bar. So they came inside. Mukul Deora I was DJing at the time. I was standing in the booth and I remember clearly I turned to my right and there was a hawaldar [a beat cop] with a thing saying something, shouting something and I was telling him that for me my CDs were my life. They were everything because you’ve travelled all over the world and found each CD. So I just picked up my CDs and I ran and I’m fast, I think I ran out in two minutes and some of my friends followed me. And it was raining at that time. And some people fell over the wall, Panthaki and all fell over the wall, and so half of us got out, in this rain, you’re running with the CDs and it’s wet and mucky and everything and half of us didn’t get out. They got, not arrested but detained and taken into the station. Tejas Mangeshkar Yeah, they’re just next to it, like two blocks away… Mukul Deora It’s all very chilled, that’s the funny part… Tejas Mangeshkar They were super chill. Mukul Deora We were in high spirits, we were relaxed, we’re talking on the phone I remember I was talking to Ashim we were in my car outside the station, talking to them on the phone and… Tejas Mangeshkar They were like a raid... The main cop said, “Who did you get?” Basically the cops were meant to raid a dance bar but they raided the wrong party. Mukul Deora They were inside for about two hours and one of them was telling me that it’s really dark because they’re asking your religion. You have to sign something. I remember clearly someone was, “Why are they asking us our religion?” All that stuff, but they’re just hanging and then the main cop… Tejas Mangeshkar But there was a nice thing which happened during the thing when he got his CDs. Guido didn’t have enough time to pick up his vinyl cases. So he had two flight cases, this thin guy used to pick them up like it’s an A4 sheet or something and bring it to the party. So the cops came and the only thing they saw is these records. So the neighborhood cop, uncle came and he’s like, calls one more guy and says, “Let’s go.” So that guy comes and they started lifting. First one hand, two hands, then both the guys trying to lift. Then they said, “Forget it, we don’t need this.” So they kept it. Kenneth Lobo You’ve now got all of these parties that you’re throwing, how were you guys getting the word out about these parties, in an era where the internet came to India in ’95? Tejas Mangeshkar It was the flyers. Basically we used to print… Mukul Deora It came but it wasn’t really there, you had the dial-up modem you know the fax machine sound. Tejas Mangeshkar Yeah, but actually what we used to do, we used to get our crews, these new... We had these new found crews which was almost, which used to come to parties, but they all became our crew and everyone we used to give a bundle of 250 flyers. All these things which you see the sponsors are for the printing and the décor. So United Printers used to give us 5,000 flyers. Some... One crew used to go outside J.J. School of Arts, Mondegar was one of the thing. DJ Reji who does Den nights [currently India’s longest running weekly club night] told me last month when I met him, he found a flyer and he had come to Bhavishyavani party that time, I said, “Where?” and he said, “At Leopold.” So basically this was how it was directly... We were there and you take it, that’s why some people who have just visited, were visiting Colaba, have also come to our parties, some guys from Pune in an old Fiat have come. There was this kind of mixed crowd but with flyers. It was the same. The guys who wanted to come somehow knew it. It’s like the internet now... Mukul Deora Because very few people actually... We had a journal like you said and we used to have, not fights but arguments because we used to tell someone, “You’re responsible for going around during the party and getting all the emails.” But that would never... If you remember me and Ashim used to get really pissed because he used to delegate it to someone and it never happened. We used to get one email at the end of the day. And nobody checked your email anyway in those days, it was only by this method, analog basically, it was all analog. Kenneth Lobo Where were you flyering, what parts of the city or… Tejas Mangeshkar Actually a lot of Colaba, South Bombay, Bandra, which was kind of this... Bandra had these places called Rock around the Clock, Go Bananas, Rock... These kind of names… Mukul Deora Colleges also. Tejas Mangeshkar Colleges also we used to send... And I think it, the most, the main guest list was not the random flyers but it was also the, the packets we made and sent to the creative agencies and the fine artists and this, all this kind of... Because we already had this core 50 people, regular visitors who used to get their 20 or something… Mukul Deora Did we SMS also? I vaguely remember… Tejas Mangeshkar Yeah, we used to SMS and just before that, some people had the pagers so we used to call and send on the pagers. Kenneth Lobo So, one of the things you all did to get the word out is also record mixes on cassette, is that right? We have one of these cassettes, maybe we can pull up the image. This is not the original cassette but… Mukul Deora It’s really quite a highlight in mine, in all our lives that, that we managed, slap dash as we were, to get something like this going. Benson & Hedges paid for it. That’s the & sign. God bless them. It’s genius, Kurnal did this, right? Bha for Bhavishyavani and Bha for Bahadur. Bahadur is... There’s an Indian comic company called Indrajal Comics and Bahadur is one of the first Indian, not super heroes, but kind of like super heroes, he’s like the Indian Batman, he’s a detective fighting for good and it’s Bha for Bahadur, Bha for Bhavishyavani, and Kurnal designed this cover and inside there’s a little comic where it’s Bahadur walking and there’s some guys... I don’t know if they’re fighting or harassing a girl or something and he beats them up and he’s like, “Nothing comes between me and my drum & bass.” Kenneth Lobo Can we have that image up please? Can we move one back? Ashim Ahluwalia Ironically the comic invitation is already predicting what’s going to happen at the nightclub that same night. Mukul Deora Yeah, that’s true, amazing. Kenneth Lobo How you do mean? Ashim Ahluwalia In a sense this is... Is that the one where we got the gun pulled on us? Tejas Mangeshkar This is Scream. Mukul Deora That was the second or third... Much later. Ashim Ahluwalia But the ethos of this comic, right, it’s all about how clubs were not, would not allow you if you were local…If you were just a local dude, right? And this is all about a stag that wants to go and listen to drum & bass, so it’s actually about the politics of club culture also. That we were not into this exclusive thing at all. Kenneth Lobo Since we were at the, the, the fight of this stag to get into a club, can we talk about what the crowd at Bhavishyavani gigs was like? Tejas Mangeshkar Basically we can open that one picture where... From Madness, where there’s a... It was basically a safe space, Bhavishyavani parties were a safe space for anyone to come and dance. You do not need to be scared on whatever… If you see this kind of mix of people, there’s Dodo in the center… Kenneth Lobo Who is Dodo? Tejas Mangeshkar Dodo is this guy in the center who is dancing with the white t-shirt, who had gone to Woodstock and had gone to the last Goa Trance party also. So he’s like a party guy. Ashim Ahluwalia Legend basically. A Bombay legend. Tejas Mangeshkar Legend. So you see behind is Milind Barsey big creative director from Lowe Lintas. These two girls in front are our Italian friends who used to distribute, helped distribute flyers. There’s Guido in the background, who’s German, and these guys I don’t know. Mukul Deora I think when you said about girls also, I think it’s important like you said, it’s safe. The other thing was that you had to go with your girl to a club, or whatever, here you can be a guy or a girl, it’s the same as we saw in club culture anywhere in the world. There’s not going to be guys hitting on girls, you can come, you can be yourself, you can be girls, you can be guys. You’re coming there for music, for some kind of community spirit I would say. Not like a normal night club which is, not so together, there’s no community. Anyone could come there and that was a very important part of the whole thing. Kenneth Lobo So even though you all had these conversations with the club owners about wanting to have your own crowd, it was still a very mixed crowd because the... There were also people from the club who could be… Mukul Deora Yeah, our own crowd just meant that, his whole trip with being on the door was out. Door control wasn’t there, that was the main thing really. Anyone was welcome, everyone was welcome to come but for them it wasn’t about... It was about restrictions. The club scene in India was about who can get in and who can’t get in, not... Who can’t get in rather or whatever. Ashim Ahluwalia You know something that I remember just watching a lot of escorts dancing on the dancefloor in sarees to like Goldie was one of the best images I’ve ever had in my life. Just being in a club and you’re... You got hipsters, you got party people, you got... And then you’ve just got the most random people smashed off their heads and just really into the music. No one’s bothering anyone, and there’s no finger pointing or... And I think that was something that was really special about these parties. Kenneth Lobo Ashim you’ve said in the past that even though Bhavishyavani is an electronic music outfit, your ethos was closer to a dub soundsystem culture, why is that? Ashim Ahluwalia I think because, essentially the soundsystem culture thing was very different, it was not DJ specific, it was not about the hero DJ, it was not about the star. It was about a collective and about everyone doing bits and pieces of everything. Even though everyone DJed, we played, we made music, we’re also part of the design even though there’s a design company, they’re part of the visuals, they’re part of the sound. There was a genuine collaboration and the second thing I think for me, was that there was an extension of this into a community. We’re sitting here the three of us, but there’s so many people I feel that have contributed to the Bhavishyavani sound and to that time. And those were all part of the crew and that crew has come and gone and they’re in different parts of the world now, but that was very important. I think we couldn’t have done this just as three people or four people. It had to be a community, because that’s what made it actually kind of fly. Kenneth Lobo Tejas can you tell us about some of the extended Bhavishyavani family, friends, that you all had? Tejas Mangeshkar Yeah we could say at that time they were the hipsters, you know how we call nowadays the bloggers and all, they were the kind of hipsters we had. We had, the immediate crew was our friend Shai [Heredia], who’s a film maker in Bangalore now. We had another film maker, what’s her name, Kiran Rao. Then we had and another, Shaina Anand who started dating Talvin Singh, so at that time what happened is, we got a lot of these kind of MIDIval Punditz access and DJ Rekha all that, we got the entry into the Asian underground to get their DJs and lots of designers from J.J.’s of course. J.J. School of Arts who helped Kurnal do a lot of designs, apart from his own ones. Who else was there at that time? Kenneth Lobo Shilpa Tejas Mangeshkar Yeah, Shilpa was there, was one of the... One who got the fashion angle into the thing. And recently also. Kenneth Lobo Shilpa is also your... Did you all meet at a Bhavishyavani party or… Tejas Mangeshkar We met at... Yeah we met at a... No we didn’t meet at a Bhavishyavani party, we met and we went to the first party together. Mukul Deora It was your first date. Tejas Mangeshkar And the second was the Shaadi. Ashim Ahluwalia He didn’t come as a stag. He was the only one who wasn’t a stag at the party. Kenneth Lobo So this sense of community also extended to the collaborations that you all had with artists, because I saw on the flyers that pretty early on you had MIDIval Punditz sort of come play at a Bhavishyavani party. Can we have the flyer up from… Tejas Mangeshkar Here it was Emdee, Bhaisaab’s name was Emdee. Mukul Deora This was actually the first Scream party, that was August, this was the first one and I was EmDee exactly. I remember the MIDIval Punditz played as well. Kenneth Lobo How did you even find out that MIDIval Punditz were in Delhi doing their Cyber Mehfil parties? Tejas Mangeshkar As I said, one of our crew member was dating Talvin Singh at that point and Talvin Singh had big interest with these guys and she told me and Ashim, I remember her saying that these two kids are doing parties in Delhi. So we said, “Why don’t we invite them?” So we, through common friends or something, we wrote them an email and they were sweetly came and also at the same time we had a MC, called MC Delhi. Poor guy he can’t come because he broke his legs, so he can’t make it tonight. Remember MC Delhi, Amrish, he was also from Delhi. So these three kids are from Delhi used to come, apart from the Ahmedabad boys who are called Bandish Projekt. Kenneth Lobo You also had this duo called Private Shochalay, who are today both incredible artists in their own right. Udyan Sagar, AKA Nucleya, and Mayur Narvekar, AKA Bandish Projekt, how did you all find out about them? Tejas Mangeshkar Actually Dot Com, Mihir Nath Chopra, who was from… Ahmedabad Kenneth Lobo Why was he called Dot Com? Tejas Mangeshkar Dot Com because he used to connect the dots and also he was kind of... And also was kind of the communications manager so Dot and Com. So Dot Communication Manager. He basically... He’s also the guy who’s responsible to actually print and produce these cassettes in 1,500 numbers. He basically started working with Channel V at that time from Ahmedabad, and he already told us when we met him that he has these two young boys and he started a label with them called Private Shochalay. We’re like, “Who are these guys?” “They want to come and meet you, they want to meet Bhavishyavani.” So one morning I remember, they came to Mahim station, they called us from the PCO and asked our address, it was nearby and they came and they came with this 100 CD ka, empty CDs ka case and whole weekend is spent… And Mukul and Ashim got their case logic there, I remember still Ashim had this, not Ashim sorry, Mukul, had this big bible kind of a thing with all these CDs marked really nicely with the album covers behind each. So they came for two days, actually they stayed with us for... In the office maybe for one week. They were staying and living in the office and next weekend Ashim and Mayur did a long mix which I think we have now. It was like a six-hour mix with tabla and DJ in the office. Before the first party we were doing these kind of office parties also. Kenneth Lobo So, maybe collaboration is a good way to close this conversation. It’s what took Bhavishyavani into the next chapter with the three Frenchmen: Mathieu Josso, Cyril-Vincent Michaud and Char Lee and it’s what will take Bhavishyavani into the next 20 years as well. Thank you very much guys. [applause]