MUMBAI: With December around the corner and a lot of festivals smothering it, an addition of a new festival could either confuse the festival goers or give them an overdose of variety. Either way, competition does not seem to dampen spirits of festival organisers. Speaking to the organiser of Magnetic Fields festival, Munbir Chawla, which will take place at Alsisar Mahal, in Rajasthan, Radioandmusic.com’s Disha Deshpande learns about the whole funda behind the festival and a lot more.
How did you zero down on the venue?
It was just one of those things that fell in our laps. Our team has been talking about doing a festival for over a year. We had been to a couple of venues and had originally planned to do it in Delhi. We ended up meeting Abhimanyu, the owner of the property. We told him about the festival and he invited us to have a look. The time was right, I guess. The venue and the team had a calling (laughs).
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What is your ticketing strategy? Have you made any tie-up with platforms yet?
Currently we are in talks with a few of them and the tickets will go on sale in a couple of weeks. We will be coming up with various announcements including the artistes, installations.
Who is doing your music consulting for you?
Wild City is doing our music consulting for us. It is an online magazine which I run.
How will the pricing of the tickets being, seeing that you have a limited capacity of 500 people.
We have different tiers of accommodation. People can stay in the palace itself or the luxury village which we will be setting up with Rajasthani tents. The price will vary on how many people you will be sharing the rooms and tents with. So, we are basically providing packages of tickets and accommodation. We have an approximate figure for the pricing. The prices will be very similar to those of, say, an Nh7, but we will also be providing accommodation. Considering the region we are having the festival in, the only option the people will have to take up the accommodation we provide, since there are no hotels nearby. The entire package will end up costing you more but it will cost you the same if you went to Nh7 and stayed in a hotel.
What is the strength of your artist line-up?
At the moment we have announced 12 artistes. We will announce 12 more next week and the final 12 the week after that, around the same time the tickets go on sale.
Do you have any sponsors on board yet?
We are pushing ourselves at the moment, sponsor-free. We are not looking for a title sponsor. We are on the hunt for sponsors who would be interested in doing something significant and interactive as a festival. We are not looking for sponsors that will just gives us a cheque and have some branding. Wild City is part owner of the festival. We do a lot of work with Nh7 but they are not going to be our promotion partners and there will be no official collaboration with them.
How are you going to differentiate your promotion strategy from the other festivals?
I think we are going to be using all platforms that are available, not just social media. We will be having more teasers and maybe a contest. To be honest, since we haven’t gone full out yet, I probably won’t be able to answer that question properly. Our partners- We The People, Wild City and 11.11 are involved. Promotions aside, the festival is going to sell itself. Obviously there are a lot of festivals in India which will keep increasing year by year. The thing that sets us apart is that we are a tiny festival. If you look at festivals across the world like Coachella, Glastonbury, they all started as a few hundred person festivals which grew and grew and became what they are today. And we want to be organic. We don’t want to be this huge festival to enter the market with massive names and huge sponsors. It is about the experience, coming and losing yourself for three days. Music is the backbone. It is about everything else with it.
What else can people look forward to, besides music?
We are partnering with a fashion and production label called 11.11 who will be doing the aesthetics of the festival alongside We The People who will also be working on aesthetics and production. We have food designers who will be contemporising local Rajasthani recipes and cuisines. We’ll also be incorporating vigna into the aesthetics.
I am curious. Why contemporise a tradional Rajasthani experience?
It is the experience. Let me give you an example of the promo video. The music that plays in the video is that of our headliner, Robert Koch, who is someone who has never been to India. The person dancing in the video is the guard of the palace who has been working there almost his entire life. And that is exactly what we are trying to do. It is a fusion of old and new. If you look at our logo as well, you will see that the logo is actually a copy of the fountain on the home page. It is about contemporising and fusing them, for lack of better word.
The festival is exactly two months away. Do you think you will be able to get people to come for the festival?
It is not a huge mass and We the People and Wild City have been doing this kind of thing for a number of years. We know their work and we know our crowds and we are only asking for 500 people. So I am very confident. And, you know, it is not only the number. I run Wild City and I interact with the readers on a daily basis. I know what they like and I know their taste. We are taking into account what we hope people know and will love, and even if they don’t, it is more about the trust of the people that are involved.
What are you plans with security?
The safety of the people is our primary concern and we will ensure they are safe and able to party in whichever way they want. I am not sure how many levels of security we would need. But there will be a no drugs policy, if that is what you are asking.
