Musician Ratish Tagde has been actively promoting Indian Classical Music at various platforms and in several capacities. A violinist at heart and Company Secretary by profession, Ratish ensure that he brings a perfect balance by being successful in Corporate field and equally popular in the classical music world.
Ratish has been actively pursuing his passion for classical music as a musician and an entrepreneur. He has to his credit the only television channel on Indian Classical Music, Insync.
As a violinist, he had performed at several festivals, India and abroad. He says, his style has been inspired by several Violin maestros.
The audiences feel the aalapi sounds rendered by me seem to be inspired by Dr N Rajam; while, Gamak Taan by legendary M S Gopalakrishnan, Cut bow taan and Zala by Pt V G Jog, he says.
Ratish has equally mastered the art of playing semi-classical compositions.
As Ratish looks back, he recalls those days when the need for a channel on Indian Classical Music was felt strongly by the vocalists, musicians and music lovers alike, he gathers memories of how the scene was tough and despite help from several quarters things weren’t moving in the right direction.
“That one question which we classical musicians were regularly confronted with following are performances in India or abroad was, why has there been no dedicated TV channel for Indian Classical Music, while it deserved it? Followers of Indian Classical music were right in raising the question, as one would find several channels airing numerous programmes on wildlife and travel”, said Ratish.
He further pointed out how music lovers spread across the globe had been discussing it and pointed out that why premiere institutions of the country including NCPA, Prasar Bharati and Ministry of Culture are not working towards launching a channel on Indian Classical Music.
Pt. Arvind Parekh, the veteran Sitarist formed a high-power All Indian Music Group (AMG). When this group approached the then Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh in a bid to launch a TV channel for Classical Music, he promised to look into their request and sanctioned a huge fund for this purpose. Delighted with joy after receiving a positive reply from the Prime Minister, AMG went ahead with the announcement of a new channel at a press conference. However, in spite of these coordinated efforts by the group the channel was not launched.
As several artists were figuring out how to get classical music on television, Ratish Tagde had been working quietly towards setting up a Classical Music Channel. It came as a surprise to many when out of the blue, he made an announcement that ‘Insync’ has been launched for music lovers of Indian Classical Music across the globe. Insync is a rather non-film music channel which caters to a wide range of genre of music.
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Ratish’s brainchild, Insync channel has been a game changer in the field of Indian Classical Music. With his channel, Ratish bought classy glamour to the heritage music by producing world-class content with a variety of musicians and working on several genres.
Insync has been offering access to the best of classical music to viewers worldwide. Insync commitment to classical music has helped them gather a community of music lovers from the US, Europe and the Middle East.
Innovative violinist Deepak Pandit said, “People have only been talking about setting up a channel but Ratishji had actually gone ahead and launched it. Today we can proudly say that our Indian Classical Music has a channel of its own.”
After Insync’s initial success, Ratish deliberated on providing rich and diverse content to the viewers and to facilitate the process he thought of forming an Advisory Board. Ratish then deliberated on the idea of forming an Advisory Board for overseeing the content, look and presentation of the channel.
It was at this crucial hour noted Tabla exponent Pt Vijay Ghate extended his wholehearted support to the channel, and Ratish dream project, by getting associated with it. The duo together meticulously work on details, the outline of the programmes, including presentation of a Raga, selection of artist, colour scheme.
Pt Ghate would voluntarily come forward to air a message on an important topic and even seek public support for the channel from India and abroad making people understand about the venture.
“At Insync, I had created a momentum across non-film music genres be it Ghazal, Sufi, Fusion, broadcasting of concerts, interviews, seminars etc. Every program that we conceptualized was unique. We created content which would attract young classical music lovers and will also attract senior citizens. We celebrate and pay tributes on artists birthdays,” said Ratish.
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Ratish has taken classical music to another level through Insync, which is a boom for a musician.
“Each and every moment spent at Insync was sutured together in unison by my team and me. I must appreciate that Insync had a very good team in place that dedicatedly worked towards creating a wonderful product,” said Ratish.
While sharing examples of teamwork, he said, “we had 50 types of Insync logo evolutions, like it’s being animated out of Violin, Sarod, Tabla, Ghungroo, Piano and many more. A lot of thought process went into creating short AVs based on Gharana, what is a raga, a flute, a Guitar, Ghatam,” added Ratish.
Musicians look up to Insync as their destination for promotion. Musicians would never imagine that there would a TV channel for Indian Classical Music.
Detailing the nuances involved in playing the Violin, Ratish portrays a clear picture. It is known as a blind instrument because the Swar Sthans are not fixed on the Finger Board. While you play Sitar or Harmonium or Guitar, there are fixed places where if you press, the sound of that particular note will be produced.
Violin is a very sensitive instrument and considered nearest to the human voice. A Violinists need to practice a lot to play a note at a particular place, even a micro millimetre difference could evoke wrong results and go off key. Developing command over this instrument requires a lot of dedication and rigorous patience. Even a little bit of unwanted extra pressure by a finger on the Finger Board while playing a particular note, would change the raga itself.
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Ratish is currently busy with a vibrant project which aims at providing the latest technological avenues to various genres of Indian heritage music. This will help reach out to music lovers across the world and is aimed towards adequately remunerating musicians. Thus ensuring the availability of quality music content to the like-minded music audiences.
