A stage, set under a banyan tree in an open air amphitheatre, adjacent to a lake and away from the city chaos - yes, this Fireflies Music Festival for every music lover! This is one place, one concert which promises to deliver excellent music of various genres. The organizers even call it an event to celebrate the relationship of oneness between man and earth!
A few of us without much convincing, decided to be at the venue on 19th February, 2011. We had witnessed this event for few years & did not want to miss this one-of-a-kind annual event! We initially had problems picking up the tickets & by the time we tried, the tickets at all the outlets were sold-out! Oops! We then contacted the organizer (Akshath Jitendranath) & he simply concluded that we MAY be able to get the tickets at the venue. After a few back & forth discussions among ourselves, we decided to take the risk of trying tickets directly at the venue. This completely worked out & indeed they were selling tickets for long, as far as I know at the venue!
The music line-up is THE winner of the festival! A few moments after 19:00 IST, the festival kicked off with Ghazals, followed by a good number of excellent new bands & repeaters. Some of them totally stole the show. The winner of the festival in my opinion was "Spinifex with Dr Mysore Manjunath". Wow, what an excellent performance! I almost lost my voice bowing to their great music! Then there were few more marvelous shows put up by "Thermal and a Quarter", "Swarathma", "Something Relevant" & "Yodhakaa". These were truly a delight to ears with excellent mix of genres! Couple of bands did not appeal to me like the "The Bicycle Days". Prakash Sontakke's troupe "MoonArra" somehow did not recreate the magic he had created in previous performances. On the whole, it was unbeatably a music festival with a difference; an excellent MUSIC event!
On the other hand, the festival also kicked off with excellent turnout, right from the start! And the incoming crowd never stopped arriving & the venue started to swell, leading the organizers to an endless trouble in controlling them. Thankfully we were early to the venue & had very decent seats. This probably is one of the improvements that the organizers can look into for the next year's event. They can surely limit the number of tickets depending on the venue's capacity & will truly be a good effort to enhance the experience.
One pathetic condition at the festival were the numerous people smoking everything possible & getting stoned! We leave behind the city pollution hoping to be welcomed by a clean environment to enjoy the excellent music. But the environment was totally unacceptable! Smoke & what not in the air! It was even a very sorry state to see the organizer smoking cigarettes endlessly on the STAGE, which deserves a lot more respect than he speaks of! I even know a few friends who stopped coming to the festival due to the growing smoke chaos at the venue. This needs to stop or the festival will only be a place for smokers to get stoned!
My hats off to the efforts of the organizers to get an excellent music line-up! I will surely continue to patronage the festival for the music it has for to offer! I also kindly request the organizers to seriously look into the growing uncomfortable situations at the venue with priority. Thanks!
Santosh Mitra's Facebook Album: Fireflies 5.0 - A Celebration of Indian Music !
