Indus Creed: Truth to microphone

Indus Creed have no idea what ‘indie music’ means, and they make no bones about it.

“It’s a question nobody can answer definitively, not anymore,” observes founding member Uday Benegal, as the band settles into their little white tent of a green room set up on the sands of Kovalam. We are sitting there on the sidelines of Covelong Surf.Music.Yoga Festival 2018. Uday, founding members Mahesh Tinaiker and Zubin Balaporia, and their newest member Krishna Jhaveri are just back from their hour-long sound check by the sea.

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“Originally, independent music was music that’s not dependent on a label, but today there’s more to it,” begins Mahesh, before Uday takes over.

“Indie’s more of a particular sound now. If you look up ‘indie rock’ online, you’ll find bands of a particular kind — like Death Cab For Cutie — which came out of that indie scene. But as someone very rightly said, Yo Yo Honey Singh was a true indie artist. No corporate sponsorship, no label, completely self-produced and self-funded… But a journalist writing about the indie scene probably wouldn’t include him. It’s viewed as a more Western, pop-ish rock-ish kind of sound. Nobody knows, not even the musicians.”

Everyone at the table also agrees on one point: it’s much easier to get your music out to the world today, than back when the band started out in 1984. “We didn’t have a music scene,” says Mahesh, “We would just be called for the odd college show: us and maybe two more bands. There was no festival organised like this.” 

“It’s actually easier to create your own music today: to record your song and to distribute it,” says Uday, “The technology has become cheaper, allowing you to do a lot of your production at home. If you’re a rock band, looking at live instrumentation, you can do a lot of pre-production and create demos, and only then go into a studio,” explains Uday. 

He’s just getting warmed up, and barely pauses for breath before launching into his next point, “Once you’ve done that, distributing your album is easier than it ever was before. You don’t need record companies to record your songs anymore. You only need them to market it and bring you above all the clutter.”

This clutter, according to the band, is the biggest challenge for musicians today. “Because of the ease, there are so many people doing it. At the risk of sounding condescending: apart from the good bands that are coming up, there is also a lot of bad stuff. And the audience can’t tell the difference.”

The only way to beat this, they say, is to tell your own truth. “Young bands try to emulate bigger bands. They are told, sometimes, that they don’t sound enough like some other band. But you have to look at your own world, and your own experiences.”