“We’ll still be here in 20 years.”

HYDERABAD: The Agnee band, which has made a name for itself in the indie music scene over the last 20 years, was co-founded by Mohan Kannan and Koco. Koco is the producer, while Mohan writes the music for Agnee.

Selections from CE’s conversation with Koco:

Regarding your performance in Hyderabad, how do you feel?

My maternal grandpa was a collector in Hyderabad, so I have been going there since I was a little kid. In Nallakunta, we have an ancestral home. Hyderabad was where I used to spend a lot of my childhood summer and winter vacations. In my ancestral house, there used to be a well where we would go swimming. I adore the cuisine and the way the city has grown over time.

What are your thoughts on the forthcoming X-Festival?

Coming to play in a city that has a legitimate music festival including several bands and artists is always a pleasure. With Rahul Ram and Amit Kalam from the Indian Ocean, we have a really close friendship. It’s amazing because we will both be performing on stage on the same day.

What have been the high points and low points of your band’s career over the last 20 years?

There hasn’t really been a “struggle” in our case. Items just appeared in our path. We were undoubtedly fortunate to have been given the opportunity, which we seized. Whether it was the release of our first album with Sony BMG at the time, we were in the right place at the right moment. We signed a deal that covered two albums and two years. The first one had four or five videos when it was launched. They provided excellent marketing and assistance. We wanted to reach as many people as possible, so instead of releasing the second album with them as planned, we returned the advance and made our music available for free online. We began posting singles for free online. Sony eventually got back to us.

What distinguishes cinematic music from live performances, in your opinion?

We have never really gone down to edit our songs as a band and said, “Let’s make an item song.” It varies from a cinematic production in that regard. I worked on a Kannada film called Samara in 1995, and Dr Rajkumar performed for me. You would probably not believe that Agnee’s guitar player wrote the songs if you heard the soundtrack to the movie. Cinema is primarily a visual medium. You compose the music for a certain image. Conversely, the song—rather than the image—is king in independent music. The audio component is the most crucial element.

Chirayu
What, in your opinion, is the secret to independent artists’ success?

Success does not follow a formula. The finest thing an artist can do is approach their work with a certain level of honesty. I’ve advised many up-and-coming artists to focus on honing their craft before attempting to reach the stars. The audience is never uneducated. They know the difference between an authentic artist and a fake one. We haven’t been the kind of folks to take advantage of the system. We’ve merely followed our passion with all of our honesty and have always approached it with a certain humility. You are made by the music, not the other way around.

Which independent musicians or bands are your faves?

I’ve heard a lot of talk about Anuv Jain among the more recent ones. Among those from our era are Parikrama, Euphoria, and Indian Ocean, naturally. I consider it a huge win for the business when I hear about indie artists playing sold-out gigs. We’ve made room for them. The dirt road we began on has grown into a six-lane superhighway.

Hrishikesh Datt Any new endeavors planned?

Every year, we want to release four to six singles. We just collaborated with Merchant Records on a song named “Mallah.” We will also be making a lot of our back catalog publicly accessible, which we had previously made available for free on SoundCloud. For instance, neither Apple Music nor Spotify have the song “Aahatein” accessible. Over the next several months, we are now working on releasing our whole back catalog. We are now working on another song, the lyrics of which will be written by Amitabh Bhattacharya. We have been here for the previous 18 years, and we most likely will be here for the next 20, which is why I keep stating that we are the lambi race ke ghode (horses for longer races).