Coimbatore’s Aditya Veera on interviewing Grammy winning musicians

The name of Aditya Veera’s band, Thayirsadam Blues, somewhat belies his taste in music. There is nothing Thayirsadam (curd rice) about it. He grew up listening to Harry Belafonte with his grandfather, who had worked at Harvard and MIT. His father, he says, was into jazz, blues, funk, and rock. When he was doing his pre-university course in Bengaluru, he was into heavy metal. 

Why Thayirsdam then?

“We were three individual musicians who were participating in an open mic for fun. The emcee there put us on the spot. He asked us for a band name,” Adiya recalls this memory from his college years, “So, we got into a huddle and tried to figure out what’s common for us. And, we realised we were all Tamilians who loved curd rice. But one of us was a sax player who was into blues music.”

Hence, Thayirsadam Blues.

The band, born in Pune, did over 200 shows, was featured in radio shows among other platforms. It moved to Bengaluru when Aditya moved there after college in 2018. Apart from his band, he also started managing other independent musicians. All this alongside his day job as a software architect.

When the pandemic hit, he returned to his hometown, Coimbatore. He did a few online shows with his band and a COVID fundraiser featuring some popular musicians like Usha Uthup and Lydian Nadhaswaram. Then, sometime towards the end of 2020, he came up with a new idea for a talk show. “I wanted to connect with music industry professionals from different parts of the world to get their ideas that would benefit Indian independent artists.” 

And, the people he had in mind were not just any music professionals. They were award-winning artists and producers, who have worked with the legends of western music. The list included Grammy-winning musicians like Erick Walls and Lee Ritenour; American guitarist Robben Ford, who has worked with KISS, Miles Davis, Chick Corea among others; Sheryl Bailey, who is the assistant chair of the guitar department at the Berklee College of Music.

The interviews are published on Aditya’s instagram page, which has just over 1,800 followers. How did these big names agree to talk to him?

“They are all super grounded,” replies Aditya, “It’s so easy to communicate with them. They carry no airs of winning Grammy Awards or whatever recognition they have. So when I asked some of them questions like, ‘What do you want to be remembered as?’ They tell me ‘I want to be known as a good person.’”

However, Aditya had no means of contacting them directly. So, he had to reach them via their record studios or agents. He explains the process, “I just Google to check who manages this person. Say, it’s Universal Records. Then, I check who is the best person to talk to in Universal Records. Then, I shoot out a mail with my portfolio to them. If they’re interested, they’ll get back. They’d have a couple of interviews to make sure that this is legitimate. And then, we take it forward.”

“You need a lot of patience. Some of them might take weeks to respond. But once they respond, it is a smooth and simple process,” he adds.

Aditya’s Instagram interviews are now being broadcasted via Big FM Aizawl. A podcast is in the pipeline too. In his own way, he is doing to aspiring Indian musicians what his grandfather did to him as a kid: bringing world music home.