Amid lockdown, Ehsaan Noorani is discovering artistes on Instagram

Dimapur: While most of us have been sticking with Netflix and other movie streaming platforms to kill time during the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown, award-winning Indian composer and guitarist Eshaan Noorani is trying to discover future rockstars of the country through his live streams on Instagram.

Noorani is part of the Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy trio which consist of Shankar Mahadevan, Loy Mendonsa and himself. The trio have composed music for over 50 soundtracks across languages. They have won numerous awards, including National Film Award, Filmfare Awards, IIFA Awards. They are often referred to as the ‘Amar Akbar Anthony’ of the Hindi film music industry.

Being tagged as one of the most humble artistes of the country by his followers on the photo and video-sharing social networking platform, Noorani has been giving opportunity to a lot of musicians from across the country and beyond, thus exposing them to a larger audience in the virtual world.

“It was literally one evening of fooling around. I hit the live button and next thing I know, I got all these guys wanting to come live. I was wary at first, but then I saw that many of them were artistes who wanted to perform,” said the musical genius in an exclusive interview with EastMojo.

On asking about the experience of live stream, the guitar virtuoso said: “It has been enlightening. At best, there is so much talent all over the country and now I got people from the USA and Europe joining the stream. It’s fun and especially at this dark time, it is a relief and a slice of sunshine.”

A judge of popular TV show The Stage, Noorani said that Kevin Fernando from Chennai, Vaani Bhasin from Delhi, Abdon Mech from Dimapur, Shrey Gupta from Delhi and Anas Ali from Lahore were some of the best artistes that he came across on his live stream so far.

“I am definitely impressed with the songwriters and singers and feel that they have a good future as musicians. I think most of the songwriters would like to see a future with what they do best and the Hindi singers would like to definitely see a future in Bollywood,” he added.

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When asked about the music scene in Northeast India, Noorani exclaimed: “Oh, I am so blown away by the talent in Northeast, be it musicians or singers. A chance viewing of North East Beats on the NE Live channel exposed me to some talent from the NE and that kind of fuelled my interest.”

“Firstly I was super impressed with Virie and Zaza when I heard their Down That Road song. And then, Virie’s solo stuff, Polar Lights are a great band. Trance Effect, Abdon Mech. Mami Varte from Mizoram, Bluesman K Hminga from Mizoram… PU Hmingpuia from Mizoram is an awesome guitarist and, not to forget, my buddies Soulmate from Shillong. There’s even more I know,” he said.

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While talking about virtual gigs becoming the future for artistes, Noorani hoped that it didn’t happen. “There is nothing like the experience of a live gig with the audience and the noise. Right now, I guess virtual gigs are all one can manage but then bandwidth, etc, are issues,” he added.

The axeman signed off with an inspirational message for the budding artistes of the country: “Well, it’s a tough and long road and success takes a long time to come. It requires patience and perseverance and, above all, faith in one’s own talent . Dealing with rejection is tough and needs strength to deal with.”

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