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Musicians of one swara

Photo: Thulasi Kakkat

United in music Joseph Thomas took his love for music one step further to cyberspace.

BlogSwara, a website for free downloadable music, was created by Joseph Thomas, a web designer, in 2006. YouTube, by the way, had just come into existence the year before. He says he was just experimenting with blogging, which was in its nascence.

Blogging led Joseph (Jo to friends) to audio blogging and other audio bloggers which in turn led him to (music-wise) music blogging – karaoke, cover versions of songs (sans background scores) – and thus was born a community of amateur musicians and an online platform. These amateur musicians span the globe, from the U.S. to Ireland to various parts of India. Therein lies the beauty of the Internet, “an exciting medium”, as Joseph puts it. This was the platform where closet musicians came out and got together - sharing favourite songs, uploading their own songs, listening to each other, comparing notes and providing constructive criticism and becoming a ‘band' of pals.

Musicians, on different continents, came together for a common cause and there lay the genesis of an original music album brought out by the community. The site's name was suggested by a Chennai-based fellow blogger, Ganesh. The explanation is simple, a blog about music – BlogSwara (www.blogswara.in) it had to be.

Not willing to stop there, the BlogSwara community decided to go a step further from just uploading and listening to themselves singing. They decided to bring out an album. Thus in May 2006 came out the first album with 10 songs, BlogSwara Version 1; the second came in quick succession in November 2006 with seven songs. Version 3 and 4 came out March and November 2007 respectively with seven and 14 songs. Version 5, with 14 songs, came out in December 2008 and Version 6, with 14 songs, came out in March 2010. Joseph says he has the satisfaction of BlogSwara having brought out 61 original songs.

Learning experience

As all things related to the Net (increasingly) tend to be, BlogSwara has been a unifier. “The people involved in the making of a song would be in different places…the person who wrote the lyrics, the person who composed it and the person who eventually sung the song would be far away from each other. There are some who spend money on their songs but most of the others record at home,” says Joseph. And that has been a learning experience. He has learnt a lot about recording and mixing, “practise”.

Its USP is its uniqueness and the amateur musicians working on the albums creating original music. Joseph calls it ‘independent music'. Don't be misled into believing that the selection process, of the songs for the album, is arbitrary since amateurs are involved. There is a panel of judges (an eclectic mix of ‘genres') that selects the songs for the album. The criteria for a song to qualify are freshness, orchestration, mixing and the rendering (vocalist).

The songs are not limited to just Malayalam. There are songs in other languages such as Tamil, Hindi, Kannada and in the latest edition Telugu. BlogSwara, according to Joseph, has introduced several new artistes. The artistes are not limited to Indians, there are some ‘non Indians' as well – “an American who is so into Indian music that he sent a recording of him on a sitar, ‘this is how Santana would be on the sitar' he said,” shares Joseph. On a lighter note, Joseph reveals that he has learnt a thing or two about getting conned or rather how not to get conned on the Net. Joseph sent the master copy of a song by him to a supposedly hotshot Mexican DJ…he is yet to hear from her. “I was all excited and got down to doing everything promptly and then no news. Probably my song must be being played in some club somewhere,” he says.

Joseph, however, has new plans for BlogSwara. “Probably we will miss a year and not bring out any album. We will instead concentrate on the site and revamping it.” Let the music play on!

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