Meet The Women Spearheading 'India Music Summit'

Mala Sekhri, a media professional, grew up listening to all forms of music from Ravi Shankar to Sinatra from a very young age. For Aparna Joshi, music is an ocean and one has to only but deep dive. “So here I am at the deep end. For me, it's beyond a career, it’s a mission — that of taking our musical heritage and legacy and bring it to centre-stage for whom I fear would be a lost generation of sorts,” she believes. And Ambika Srivastava feels that the story of our music is so inspiring, the idea of building audiences for our compelling music tradition was impossible to resist. “It took me no time to decide that this is what I wanted to do,” she asserts about co-founding Musiconcept that pioneers one of India's biggest musical events — “India Music Summit.”

The three women united to bring our country's diverse musicians and music lovers at one place for one of the most exquisite musical experiences. The latest edition concluded at the start of October in Jaipur.

Ambika Srivatava-Aparna Joshi-Mala Sekhri (Pic by Musiconcept)

Talking about what brought the three of them together, Mala says, “All teams need complementary skill-sets in order to grow anything. Ambika has been at the helm of the advertising industry for a long time and Aparna has been in the strategy and marketing field for some time. Given that I came from media, it made for a nice mix and what holds us together with a commonality of purpose i.e. to create a space for our rich music and give musicians and music lovers a lot to look forward to musically.”

The three women united to bring our country's diverse musicians and music lovers at one place for one of the most exquisite musical experiences. The latest edition concluded at the start of October in Jaipur.

Ambika elaborates on what makes the event unique and says, “We believe our musical legacy is a national asset, it needs to be preserved and promoted, and it needs to claim the high ground. This is why we felt we should create a platform that is not a festival but a Summit where musicians from all genres come together, where music lovers can discover, immerse and celebrate, classical and folk music.”

The three media professionals are driven by the desire to present a “unique and inimitable style” of event. It has held three editions of the ambitious summit which dissolves the distance between the stage and the audience, “allowing the energy of the music, musicians and music lovers to become one.”

The trio of Ambika, Mala and Aparna set up Musiconcept in 2016 and in 2017 they held their first summit ever. Since then their only mission is to create listeners of excellence. “As our mentor puts it very beautifully “Hamaare pass Tansen to hain, hamaari yeh koshish hai ki lakhon Tansen baney” only then will our Music tradition thrive,” says Ambika.

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This isn't the first time that Mala has conceptualized a musical event from scratch as she has done it before. “I initiated a musical festival for the India Today Group Called Swarutsav which was held at India Gate. After that, I took over the reins of Music Today, the music label of the India Today group which did a pioneering job of recording all the classical, folk, semi-classical, Sufi Maestros and brought quality music to music lovers all over the world,” Mala tells SheThePeople.TV.

However, putting together a line-up of established stars like Asha Bhonsle, the Little Maestro -the World's Fastest Piano Player-Lydian Nadhaswaram etc. is no trivial task. However, despite the general hassles that start-ups face like limited funds, small team etc., the constant worry of the trio is “keeping the purity of intent, the soul, the saccha sur intact. This is the real challenge and I will say that am more than confident that we will succeed here,” says Aparna.

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The constant worry of the trio is “keeping the purity of intent, the soul, the saccha sur intact. This is the real challenge and I will say that am more than confident that we will succeed here,”

With the summit being a success year after year, it’s not wrong to ask, what next? Aparna responds by saying, “We want to provide many platforms to existing and emerging artists and try and make classical and folk music a living breathing thriving part of the popular consciousness. There is so much to be done. Ours will be a shifting goal post, we seek to do whatever it takes to create a movement in our society.”

Picture credit: Musiconcept