Hosted by the hilarious Cyrus Sahukar and directed by Roshan Abbas, nominations for Radio City Freedom Awards 2014 attracted some of the biggest names from the Indie music circuit. Brodha V, Bombay Bassment, Laxmi Bomb, Swarathma, Junkyard Groove and The F16’s were some of the big names to feature in the nominations across different genres. The entries across all the categories were judged by an esteemed jury consisting of Atul Churamani, Yotam Agam, Nandini Srikar, Luke Kenny, Subir Malik and Suneeta Rao.
‘Faridkot’ mesmerized everyone with their Sufi tracks to kickstart the musical maneuver. Excitement built up further as 2013’s ‘Best Hip Hop Artist’ Brodha V took over the proceedings. He got everyone's foot tapping to his award winning song ‘Indian Flava’ and left the audience craving for more. Gaurav Raina aka GRAIN, one-half of Midival Punditz took the level of music to a new level with his electronic renditions. The evening reached its crescendo as compose, singer and songwriter Raghu Dixit took the audience by storm and drew curtains on a fantastic evening.
The large crowd which had assembled to celebrate the amazing talent cheered the nominees and winners alike as the Jury award & the People’s choice awards were being given away. ‘Coshish’ won in the Rock category (Jury Choice), while ‘Symphony Novel’ left behind all others in the Metal category (Popular Choice). Electronica and Hip-Hop brought in some new names. The talented artist ‘Natania Lalwani’ won the 'Best Young Indie Artist' while ‘Ram Sampath featuring Bhanvari Devi & Hard Kaur’ walked away with the 'Best Indie Collaboration of the year'. The awards not just celebrated talent but also brought together the best in the business in the indie music space under one roof.
The team at Encompass executed the show with content created for the multiple LED’s at the Kingdom of Dreams. From the nomination AV’s to every other audio visual that played on the LED’s at the venue looked majestic. Along with the team at KOD, Encompass also created customized graphics for each song of each performance. The customization was not limited to the graphics. It stretched to the collaterals as well. A ‘music’ themed bar with a life size guitar was quite the highlight.
Commenting on the show, Roshan Abbas, Managing Director, Encompass Events Pvt Ltd said " The Indie community is not afraid to experiment and neither were we. We bought in edgy humor and design to the show so it’s content was a sharable property for today’s generation. The tweets, the FB updates and now the on air component makes it a complete award."
Speaking on the award night, Apurva Purohit, CEO, Radio City 91.1 FM, says, “Radio City Freedom Awards (RCFA) is more than just an award function. It fulfils the need for recognition in the independent music space which is the space where true innovation is really happening. This year we have made a conscious effort to reach out to as many artists as possible, in order to make sure that everyone gets a platform to showcase their creativity. We are glad that our efforts have paid off, and we hope that through Radio City Freedom Awards, indie music artists get to reach out to a wide audience and make further inroads in the music industry!”