AAA (Art and Artistes) founder and director Durga Jasraj

Year 2013 for Art and Artistes

2013 was pretty interesting for Art and Artistes. We had variation in the activities we carried out through the year. Art and Artistes had unveiled ‘Divya Jyoti’- a bhajan karaoke. It was launched during Ganesh Chaturthi, in select markets of Mumbai and Pune. This is the first ever karaoke concept that had been incorporated in a bhajan album for bhajans, mantras and shlokas. The Divya Jyoti Bhajan Karaoke Competition continued during Durga Puja and Navratri. The six city hunt took to streets of Kolkata and Ahmedabad during the festive season and still has phenomenal number of participants. This was in collaboration with the Aditya Birla Group. Three winners of the Divya Jyoti Bhajan Karoke final competition took home a total cash prize of Rs 51,000. A set of four DVDs titled ‘Divya Jyoti’, comprising 50 tracks was released through Saregama, in October last year. Usually people do not take such an approach but with our project the overall market got an idea of the advantage of such projects. Then, we did IMA the first Marathi music awards with Star Pravah. On 24 October, we organised ‘Golden Voice Golden Years’ for Maharashtra Government. My father- Pandit Jasraj’s musical journey was narrated and he was felicitated with the Pandit Bhimsen Joshi Award from the Government of Maharashtra.

On 24 November, we started with our eight annual Idea Jalsa tour in Amritsar with a plan to touch 14 cities. We did a special event for the Border Security Force. In the 14 city tour, we covered eight cities by end of December. The number of people attending the concert has been rising constantly. It is interesting that it is getting bigger and bigger. We started our own Youtube Channel in the month of July in partnership with Youtube. We also had Panchtatva in Pune.

Revenue for AAA

In 2012-13, Art and Artistes generated revenue of nearly Rs 14 crore in which more than 75 per cent came from ‘Idea Jalsa’ and rest came from other music shows on television. This year was much better than 2012 as the previous year was very difficult for the industry in India. 2013 had opened up lot of avenues. There were more than the usual number of activities and events we organised in 2012. But the most interesting part was the variation in the activity as it catered to various genres. We did projects that touched the lives of youth and veteran music legends.

Learning in 2013

Idea Jalsa is the best project, and the intention behind it was so honest. There was a lot of clarity in the way we functioned, which helped us to make it that large. So we decided to have Idea Jalsa for the Border Security Force. There are not many who conduct activities for the BSF and we wanted to fill that gap through our activity. The way they responded and supported us was remarkable and that was an achievement. One of the most amazing moments was that the Golden Temple was opened up for us. Every experience is fabulous, be it in Amritsar or Ahmedabad. 8500 people sat through six hours of non-stop classical music and we ended around 12. When people say Classical music is a dying art, I would like to say that it is not dying, but people love it only if you know to present it. It is important to know what people like and enjoy. If you put up a good line-up of artistes then people will flock in. Great names do not always make a great combination.

Digital plans

Every week we are adding content on our Youtube Channel. We are actively planning towards putting a team behind the whole digital space. There are already eight people and we are looking forward to add few more to the number. That is a very serious division for us. It is a way to reach audiences throughout the world. When the live Webcast for Ahmedabad show took place we had reached three and half lakh people. The interesting part of this was we had not advertised the webcast at all. We only planned to have a live webcast, if and when connectivity permitted us to carry on with it. Luckily for us, it was successful. Within the interiors of India, we are taking one thing at a time so we are not focusing much on live webcast. People anyway know that we will make the show available on our Youtube channel.

2014 plans

We will continue with our existing properties. And we will announce our plans as and when the time comes.