Pravega 2014: Melodious evening with Rhythm Divine event

Divine Raaga is a fusion rock band of Bangalore Their performative style blends the rich Indian music genres with rock. The songs presented the essence of the various artistic styles Baul, Sufi and contemporary Indian in the western flavour. The perma, who made a brisk start, but ran into technical formances of Ek, Banjara, Brothers, Teen Bandar, Maula and Barish were presented before us and are sure to reverberate in our minds for many days to come.

Another unique feature of the band is its "Pay for the Arts" feature. It is unreal to hear in this consumerist world of performers not charging money from the organisers for performing. Instead, they rely on the audience to donate whatever they wish to after listening to them. It took several affirmations from the students to believe that indeed no money has been paid. Boxes were sent out amidst the audience and they put in what ever they had to offer.

UG students for once, brought out the teenager in them when they swayed their mobiles' lights to the rhythm of Barish and clapped to the beats of Banjara. They of course are IISc UG students, so by default they sang Teen Bandar with laboratory precision! Surely Divine Raaga evoked the headbangers and rockstars in them, some of whom until then were limping, sore-throated and whacked after the entire day's events.

IISc Bangalore was witness to a remarkable exposition of contemporary music in the form of the event Battle of Bands. On the hot afternoon in the midst of the barren expanse that is the IISc cricket ground, 11 bands arrived to fight it out amongst themselves and enthral the audience with their music. And boy, did they manage to get the audience's attention. The event kicked off, after a lot of technical tinkering onstage, at 2 p.m., with Angstrum, to a slightly lethargic and hesitant, and limited audience. They played two songs and their bass and rhythm guitar work was commendable. The vocals, though were average. They made some noise, but drew only a little excitement from the crowd.

Among the ones that stood out positively were Ominous, who packed in decent stuff on the back of remarkably good drumming, and the Trash Talkers, who though they dressed their part, were neat on the guitars, and made some innovative music. The Bunnychans were acclaimed as well with an exceptional bass performance. As the awards were being declared, some of the IISc UG students put in a performance, a cover of Guns n' Roses' Sweet Child Of Mine. Finally, the results arrived, and as expected, the Fundametals won the first prize. Among stiff competition, Bunnychan bagged second, and Ominous grabbed third place. Among other prizes, Ominous won the one for Best Drumming, Spaghettify won Best Vocals, and Fundametals grabbed another with the award for Best Guitarist. All in all, it was a wonderful evening for rock lovers and performers alike and added another dimension of enjoyment into Pravega.