‘I love playing in a mehfil setting’ Singer, composer and song-writer Ankur Tewari talks about his first stint on TV

‘I love playing in a mehfil setting’

Singer, composer and song-writer Ankur Tewari talks about his first stint on TV

It was while playing in hostel rooms and friendly get-togethers in Delhi that Ankur Tewari cultivated a passion for music and decided to pursue and nurture it further. The musician, who has already made a name in the music circuit for his raw, unique style, has had his first stint on television in the form of the show titled The Great Gig in the Sky. The show has an unusually fresh concept where indie-rock artistes or bands jam in the wild. So how appealing was the idea, and how wild was the experience? “It was quite strange, and interesting too,” says Ankur, lead vocalist of the band Ankur & the Ghalat Family. “I was approached with the idea of doing an open gig — and I like performing in the open and to a small bunch of people. Honestly, I somehow miss playing for a smaller audience… I love the whole mehfil kind of setting where you can chat up and play music at the same time… it brings to me the nostalgia of the good old college days where I started playing — in the hostel rooms or at some friend’s celebration in Delhi,” he adds. Hailing from Roorkee, Uttarakhand, Ankur admits that he enjoyed performing in the hills up north, during his gigs in the recent past. Absorbed and wrapped in music most of the times, Ankur is not fond of television too much. “I do not have cable at home. I hate TVs,” he says, adding, “It consumes too much of my energy. You could utilise that time in so many better ways instead.” In fact he calls that the TV show happened by chance. “It was not the original idea to make a TV show out of it. I wouldn’t have even agreed to do it if they had asked me for a TV show in the first place. It was decided later to make a TV series out of it,” explains the musician. Featured on BIG CBS Spark every Friday night, the show also features other musicians like Sidd Cutto, Nikhil D’ Souza and Swanand Kirkire.