Central Jail in Bengaluru opens its gates to Bengaluru folk rocker Raghu Dixit on November 11
Central Jail in Bengaluru opens its gates to Bengaluru folk rocker Raghu Dixit on November 11On Wednesday, about 5,000 inmates of the Central Jail in Bengaluru will witness their first rock concert inside the Parappana Agrahara on Hosa Road. The event is also a first for Indian rock. Raghu Dixit, 35-year-old folk rock singer and composer, who will perform at the jail along with his band, shrugs away the historic importance:
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"I've never been an activist. I've never done protest songs. I sing happy songs. I just want to try and make them (inmates) forget where they are."
Prakruthi, a Bengaluru-based NGO working towards promoting music, literature and the arts amongst the youth, approached Dixit to do the concert for a cause. "I've known Raghu for about one and half years now, and we've been wanting to do a show with him for a while," says M S Prasad, who founded Prakruthi in 2004.
Prakruthi co-founder and film composer Praveen D Rao hinted at the idea of performing inside the jail.
Dixit says, "We discussed a couple of causes but this one appealed to me the most. November 11 also happens to be my birthday and I felt that I couldn't get a better birthday gift."
The Raghu Dixit Project, as Dixit's band of musicians is known, will spend out of its own pocket on sound and light to set up stage inside the Parappana Agrahara. "The band is extremely excited. It won't be one or two songs and a 'Happy Birthday' song to me," jokes Dixit. It will be a full-fledged concert that will run into at least one-and-a-half hours.
Dixit, who sings in Hindi, Kannada and English, released his debut album last year, and plans on opening the show with Hey bhagwan, a Hindi number which celebrates life. "I don't want to be preachy or philosophical. I want to maybe earn some fans, who will come back to my concert after they leave the jail because they'll remember this show."
Johnny Cash, the American country music icon went on to perform two concerts at the Folsom State Prison in California in 1968. He released a live album called Folsom Prison Blues later in the same year. Till date this has been one of the most famous concerts in music history of ones held in a prison
