What happens when Red Bull Music Academy makes its first stop in Pakistan?
World-touring music platform Red Bull Music Academy (RBMA) made its first stop in Pakistan on Sunday.
New Zealand DJ/radio host and long-time RBMA collaborator Nick Dwyer held court at the Haveli Barood Khana in Lahore, where he gave 30 promising musicians a primer on the Academy and its upcoming session in Montreal in October this year.
RBMA takes places in a different city every year and brings together young singers and sound artists, DJs and musicians from all over the world to swap ideas, share influences and learn from the very best in the industry.
30 RBMA hopefuls poured in from all the major cities.
Dwyer was joined by RBMA alumni Tollcrane (Talha Asim Wynne, whose beats are heard above) and Noahs Heark (Ziyad Habib, below), who attended the academy in Tokyo (2014) and Paris (2015) respectively.
Among other things, they spoke about the good, the bad and the scary of their RBMA experience, from hanging out with their heroes to being forced into collaborations.
The session, billed as an afternoon of talks and performances, spilt over the rest of the evening with an emphasis on the exchange of personal stories with musical interludes that were unfortunately few and far between.
But the discussions shed light on some cool things, like how the love for the same kind of music bridged gaps as wide as Karachi and Islamabad...
Building community, however small, turned out to be the crux of the info session yesterday - providing a space for the confluence of musical styles from the cities.
Most participants were likely to know what RBMA is all about, but whether they know what else is happening in Pakistan's music scene is another thing.
It turns out music producers have already had some gig experiences outside of their home cities, but there's always room for more collaboration:
Nick Dwyer also gave his take on the beats he heard on this trip to Pakistan.
"The level of music is incredible" is what he said.
For future info sessions, we'd like to see RedBull go deeper into Pakistan in search of its best beat-makers.
The info session was essentially an outreach program, intended to encourage promising artists to up their game with the next RBMA in Montreal.
Redbull may need to head away from the main cities to discover musicians who are in actual need of a 101 on RBMA.**
Like Nick said:
“All eyes are on this region, and Pakistan has a lot of rhythm.”
A big shout-out to the folks at Ebuzz Today for their photo and video support!
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