Cheer for Chennai’s musicians: How Tamil independent music is on the right track

Tamil independent music takes centre stage this year, as a bright young crop of musicians create and perform their own work, encouraged by growing audiences

The performance space at DakshinaChitra, located in Chennai’s ECR, is lit up. As the sea breeze amps up the nip in the air, MS Krsna begins to strum his guitar.

The performance is as engaging as it is unique. He chats about the number of dosas that he thinks his grandmother would have made in her lifetime, before musically segueing to ‘Paati Un Vazhayile’, a quirky Tamil song. Moments later, he is urging the crowd to croon ‘Odathey Oliyathey’, a peppy independent track of his that premiered in the metaverse earlier this year. Later, popular singer Pradeep Kumar and city-based band Oxygen take the stage, much to the delight of a clearly rapt audience.

The entire evening packed a musical punch — without featuring even a single film track. Moving away from chartbusting numbers that have film stars shaking a leg, Chennai’s audiences are increasingly giving a big thumbs up to Tamil independent musicians and their original tracks.

“2022 has been the year that really reaped the benefits of the seeds sown in the last 10 years for independent music. People understand when you say you are an independent musician and the five-minute explainer we have has come down,” laughs singer-songwriter MS Krsna, who also got a big break this year in Tamil film music with a song in the Pa Ranjith-directed Natchathiram Nagargiradhu.

He has his work in the independent music scene to thank for that opportunity. “It is also a reference point to understand all the skill sets you have to offer; for instance, composer Tenma asked me to ‘mouth trumpet’ in my film song, based on what I did it in my independent track, ‘Maranthathey’.”

Realising that audiences for indie Tamil music are growing, organisers are encouraging this trend. The Madras Commune is one among them. Their recent Follow the Sound concert, despite being held more than an hour’s drive from Chennai at ECR, saw about 250 Chennaiites in attendance. “That so many people dig independent music is a sign of the times — and a healthy one at that,” says Kashyap, who founded The Madras Commune along with his singer-wife, Maalavika Sundar. Maalavika, an established Carnatic and film singer, is also putting a lot of effort into this space: her gig next weekend at Phoenix MarketCity will feature a number of her independent songs, including ‘Vaa Sakhi’ and ‘Nee Ennai Vittu Poga’.

The period during the lockdown saw many movie releases being stalled, and that, in turn, gave a fillip to independent music. A trend that kickstarted with 2021’s superhit ‘Enjoy Enjaami’ spilt over to this year too; many music artistes had their independent tracks out, most notably AR Rahman’s ‘Moopilla Thamizhe Thaaye’. “Mainstream artists are also making independent music, which is a good sign for artists and audiences alike,” states Padmanabhan NS, head of Artist and Label Partnerships, Spotify India. “As a genre, hip-hop is faring well in Malayalam and Kannada, while folk is popular among Tamil music listeners.”