Music Goes Green at Mumbai Festival

Written by Caroline / 27 January 2009 / Read Caroline's latest blog entries.

We had a beautiful concert while in Mumbai at the Bandra Fort, overlooking the ocean at sunset on our last day in Mumbai. It was an incredible night of music, dance, and celebration as the Climate Solutions Road Tour celebrated 2000 kilometers of driving (halfway through our tour). The Climate Solutions Concert took place in partnership with the Mumbai Festival to celebrate local, national and international musicians who were in support of the climate cause.

The event itself was designed to be as low-impact as possible. One of the biggest impacts of this was that the backdrop was made of canvas rather than the typical energy-intensive vinyl. We then carried the backdrop with us to use at future events. It as painted the day before the event by local artists who depicted our messages incredibly -- small solar cars are riding the road to 350 by Alan's back in this photo, and we have wind and solar and plant life and the central earth. The lights were all compact fluorescent lamps inside handmade paper cases. We used no plastic cups or bottles were used for anyone. Alumninum cans of energy drinks were distributed to musicians, which were all recycled.

Other bands that played that night included Noosh like Sploosh, Yanger, the Black Lips, and Swarathma. While it was exciting to meet some American nomads in the incredibly talented New York based Black Lips, the Swarathma performance was the most energizing and inspiring. They had incredible music, despite the crowd's lack of willingness to dance, and were hopping and dancing around stage in incredible costumes. They had travelled from Bangalore by train specifically in support of our initiative and to reduce their carbon impact while still adding their charismatic presence to their show.

We talked about eco-recording and publishing and the future collaboration to release the next Swarathma cd on recycled paper and cardboard.

The media loved the event, and we were covered in a hilarious piece in the Youngistaan report below (see minutes 2:40 - 4:40, if you're up for it) and on NDTV. We were invited back to perform at about a dozen other Mumbai Festival events, but we were able to spread out Solar Punch to reach even more people across the city.