MUMBAI: The renowned Berklee College of Music, which has more than 40 Indian students and 30 of Indian origin, is looking forward to collaborating with many Indian music school and artistes in order to increase participation between students. For the same, the college recently introduced a scholarship program in the name of Grammy Award winner- AR Rahman. The scholarship will be given to a music student, enabling him or her to study at Berklee College of Music from 2016 onwards.

“We have around 46 Indian students studying in our college and the one peculiar thing you observe about them is that many of them have studied engineering, and are also trained in classical music. In spite of being engineers, they have followed their hearts to become artistes. These students wish to learn metal, jazz and all the forms of music, which in itself is very interesting,” said Berklee College of Music, president Roger H Brown to Radioandmusic.com’s Dhairya Ingle.

When asked if the college intends to start music schools in India or would like to collaborate with any artistes, he replied, “We probably will not open schools in India, but we would love to collaborate with them. We will announce our partnerships as and when we zero down on the names; and same is with the artistes. We would love for Indian artistes to come to our studio and record with our students. Now that AR Rahman’s US tour will start soon, we will see if we can do something when he is here.”

According to Brown, students wanting to secure admissions at Berklee need to possess traits of hard work, perseverance and the desire to learn something new. “If you are gifted naturally and do not work hard enough to hone those skills, then it is pointless,” he explained.

When asked to comment on the music scene in India, he said, “Bollywood has immense scope for everyone. It has space for all kinds of music, but somewhere in the middle of all this independent music is getting killed although artistes keep releasing their singles. This in a way is promoting independent music.”

The Berklee College of Music, along with AR Rahman and Clinton Cerejo, had recently established the ‘Berklee India Exchange’ with an aim to creating a platform for cultural conversation about Indian music through artist residencies, musical collaborations, and performances.