The hills come alive with Echoes of Earth 2023

“The last time I read about the Western Ghats, I was in class VI,” laughs Roshan Netalkar, the organiser of Echoes of Earth — an annual music festival revolving around sustainability and responsibility. Its sixth edition, titled Ensemble of the Wild, focuses on the biodiversity of the Western Ghats.

Echoes was conceptualised even as Roshan saw his city being ravaged by the trappings of development. “The city seemed to have exploded and with it came the add-ons of infrastructure, pollution and a depleting green cover. The Bangalore I had grown up in had disappeared.”

The man behind the music

Born into a family of artisans who designed jewellery, Roshan says he began looking at events and entertainment as a career option after his graduation. “Design has been an integral part of our family and I wanted to keep that tradition alive. I took that design knowledge and put it in my business and it worked for me. I love creating on a daily basis and that is what happens in event management.”

Roshan also realised that the effort put in to create something spectacular also generated a spectacular amount of trash. Echoes is founded on the principles of reduce, recycle, reuse. “We don’t buy anything new. Everything we use during the festival is dismantled and kept in storage for our next edition. In the last two years we have been able to introduce this principle into every element of the festival. Our giant stages are recreated from the previous year’s material keeping in mind the current theme,” says Roshan, adding how in the initial years, they designed a stage using bits of broken drainpipes they found lying on Mysore Road.

Multiple choice medley

“Bangalore has an evolved audience for music, especially English music. It has always been part of our culture here and with an evolving audience and changing tastes, the need of the hour is to ensure we bring in eclectic and international global sounds,” says Roshan.

He adds that since their agenda is to educate people about new music, Echoes does not opt for a commercial headliner at their events. “We also believe in growing that community of music-lovers in an organic way.”

This year, the festival will showcase a diverse range of genres, including electronica, jazz, indie, Afrobeat, funk, world music, folk, soul and house techno.

Throughout the year, Echoes conducts “minicerts” at various locations to ensure the conversation around conservation and sustainability remains a dialogue. “Sadly, this has never been a “young” conversation; panel discussions with huge NGOs do not attract youth of our country. We wanted to make this an accessible and fun knowledge transfer process for the younger generation — taking it from textbook to experiential learning.”

A little while ago, Roshan and his team were in Kolkata where they spoke about the Sunderbans and wild cats at a music performance. “We encourage local musicians to participate, so we rope in a headliner or a local live band to take a young audience of a sizeable number through an experiential session. The concept of a minicert is to facilitate knowledge transfer and celebrate it with music,” he says.

Recently, the team built and located bird nests in collaboration with World Wide Fund (WWF) at a defence colony in Bengaluru. “Though this was a pilot project, it saw over 60 people, including children, participate. We made these nests, then walked around the colony talking about the biodiversity present there. After that, we placed the nests where it would be most accessible and suitable for the birds. It is only a concept level understanding at this point, but we’re hoping to take this project forward.”

Playing on a loop

With close to 38 bands and artistes performing over two days, gearing up for Echoes is a year-long process. “We have a dedicated team working round the year on R&D; after all, when we talk about sustainability and conservation, especially for a concert, there has never been a handbook. We are perhaps the first to use solar power for our stages, but it took us four years of constant reprogramming to become more efficient with energy consumption.”

He adds, “How to mitigate our carbon footprint further has been one of the biggest key drivers for us going forward. As a festival or event we want to set examples for others to follow. Today, going biodegradable or executing waste management protocols are a necessity. To go beyond that, takes a large team which works throughout the year trying to find people in different parts of the country doing similar things. We engage with them and bring them on board to be part of the larger narrative we want to drive.”

On this year’s theme, Roshan elaborates, “This year, we are celebrating the tribes of the Western Ghats. We believe the tribes are gatekeepers — they keep the boundary between the urban and the jungle. It is always a tribal community which holds the fort.”

Gathering information, fact finding and then building a larger narrative for when 20,000 people turn up at a festival is a Herculean task. “It is a storytelling journey where people arrive and experience the Western Ghats and how important it is to protect. It is an ongoing process that keeps growing and we keep innovating as we go along.”

The festival is designed to welcome everyone with special zones for children and pets. There will also be food stalls, a sustainable flea market and a café at the venue.

Echoes of the Earth will take place at Embassy International Riding School, Bengaluru on December 2 and 3. Tickets are available on paytm and https://echoesofearth.com/2023ticket.php.