Bollywood Music Project Kickstarts Festival Season in India

by  EVENTFAQS Bureau Entertainment | October 6, 2016 | News

Bollywood Music Project Jio Garden Event Capital TM Talent Management

The festival season of 2016 is here, and with it have arrived the largest, most looked-foward-to festivals of the year. We have the eclectic Bacardi NH7 Weekender, to take place later this month across 3 cities, with Express editions taking place in 5 more cities. In a couple of days, Sunburn Arena will host DJs Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike in Hyderabad and Mumbai. The main festival will follow at the end of the year. Then, there's the 4th edition of Enchanted Valley Carnival, the lineup of which has just been announced, set to take place in December. The splendid Alsisar Mahal in Rajasthan will host The Magnetic Fields, also in December. The fourth edition of Vh1 Supersonic will take place in Pune in February next year and will feature experiential activities beyond the mammoth artist line-up including numerous hangout zones, fun and adventurous activities, art installations, flea markets and a lot more!

And how better to begin the season, than with a completely new offering in the IP space - Bollywood Music Project!

Live event IP company Event Capital, in alliance with talent management company TM Talent Management, gifted Mumbai its first music festival – Radius Developers presents Hungama Bollywood Music Project (BMP). On September 30 and October 1, Bollywood music lovers experienced an inimitable and unparalleled musical extravaganza that placed Bollywood music as a standalone genre in the music festival space. The first edition of BMP ended with the near perfect setup of Arijit Singh singing Kabira to thousands of gathered fans, who refused to budge in spite of the rain. The two-day festival held at Jio Garden BKC saw 20,000 Bollywood music lovers attend over a span of two days, and thus lived up to its expectation of being Asia’s largest Bollywood music festival

The festival comprised the whole package: adventure, shopping, gourmet, live jamming stations and ofcourse, music, in its many different, adrenaline-pumping avatars. Audiences were spoiled for choice between 2 stages, 8 unique experience zones and 13 diverse food stalls. Music aficionados enjoyed a magical festival feel in the heart of Mumbai, and experienced a one-of-a-kind line-up, comprising of 30+ acts, 65+ artistes and 200+ musicians. Never-heard-before sets by the who’s who of Bollywood music, including Arijit Singh, Rekha Bharadwaj, Vishal-Shekhar, Sajid Wajid, Hariharan featuring his son, Akshay and Sachin-Jigar, among many others remained the highlight of the show.

Day 1:

During the day, the stage had been set to perfection by ethereal acts such as Raghav Sachar, Mahalakshmi Iyer, Navraj Hans, Harish Moyal, Gurnazar, Divine, Deepak Rathore Project,  Elektro Sufi, Darshan Doshi Collective, Arkane, Shahid Mallya, Parthiv Gohil, Navraj Hans, and Hans Raj Hans, who with their  powerful renditions kept audiences entertained.

Celebrating the feminine spirit, Sonu Kakkar, Hard Kaur, Shibani Kashyap and Vaishali Samant played a pure high-octane energy set. Coming together for the first time BMP Digital Superstars - Arjun Kanungo, Darshan Raval, Raaga Trippin', Siddharth Slathia set the pace for BMP Young Stars with Gen X acts like Aakanksha Sharma, Ami Mishra, Amit Mishra, Asees Kaur, Bhoomi Trivedi, Brijesh Shandilya, Prakriti Kakar, Shashwat Singh, Sukriti Kakar, Yasser Desai and Yashita Sharma with their interactive set. 

Day 2:

The day blasted off with indie-meets-unplugged sets by Azizon Ki Toli, Goldie Sohel, Gaurav Dutta, Aditi Sharma, Arjun Kanungo, Divine, Divya Kumar, Mohammed Irfan, Sunny M.R., Shalmali Kholgade, Nakash Aziz which served as the perfect teaser; while they left the audience mesmerized, more was to follow. Transcending into most balanced melodic sets - Hariharan ft Akshay Hariharan, Zubeen Garg ft Zublee Baruah, Shefali Alvares ft Joe Alvares ushered in the sunset with a monster set swallowed whole by an eager crowd. Bollywood fanatics couldn't have asked for more. And yes, people were jamming in live stations and shopping their hearts out in true BMP holistic style.

The BMP SD Burman Tribute saw the eclectic fusion of reality television singers give a live tribute to the legend of the Bollywood music industry, SD Burman on his birthday. Arranged by music composer Shashi Suman, the set featured Amitabh Narayan, Bhaven Dhanak, Charu Semwal, Jimmy Felix, Meenal Jain, Pawni Pandey, Ravindera Upadhyay, Shivangi Bhayana and Yasser Desai.

Sachin Jigar, Badshah and Sajid Wajid dished out heavy-hitting sets and it was a party no one will be forgetting anytime soon. They primed the audience for the ever popular Arijit Singh and his soulful anthems.

Search for New Talent:

The BMP voice-hunt, a feature unique to the festival, gave two promising singers the greatest gratification any aspiring singer can get. The BMP Voice Hunt was a platform for aspiring singers to showcase their talent to the best in the industry, and get recognized at a national level. The hunt for the opening voices of the BMP headliners, which began in the first week of August, received over 400 nationwide entries. On-ground auditions were held in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkota, where BMP artistes refined and shortlisted 20 voices. Of these, the esteemed BMP advisory panel, comprising of Rekha Bharadwaj, Sajid Wajid, Hariharan and Sunny M.R., selected two extraordinary voices. Lakshya Bhatnagar from Pune opened the act for Rekha Bharadwaj on Day 1, while Pragya Patra from Mumbai opened the act for Arijit Singh on Day 2.

14-year-old child prodigy, Aditya Bhagavatula from New Delhi, the winner of the StrayDog Drummer contest also got an opportunity to showcase his talent on stage to the thousands of fans that attended the festival.

All in all, BMP 2016, as the organisers had promised, turned out to be an absolute treat to all Bollywood music lovers. Mumbai finally has its own music festival and it only promises to get bigger and better with every edition!

On the response to the debut edition of BMP, Deepak Chaudhary, Founder and Director, Event Capital remarked, “Over the two days, more than 65 artists enthralled around 20,000 die-hard music fans at the inaugural edition of Bollywood Music Project in Mumbai. We are extremely overwhelmed by what our four months of hard work turned out to be. This was made possible because of our promoter, Alok Jalan's vision, our partner, Tarsame Mittal's magical curation, our CEO, Swaroop Banerjee's perseverance and Scoop, for pulling off such an incredible production. I can't thank Radius Developers, Hungama and all our sponsors and partners enough for believing in us in our very first year. It was magnificent. It was melodious. It was music at its best. Together, we created history and we promise to make this bigger and better in the years to come.”

Tarsame Mittal, Founder, TM Talent Management added, “Thank you Bollywood and Mumbai... for creating your own music festival!”