Amit ‘The Groovebox’ Gurbaxani has some valuable advice for young music journalists in India. This is part I of The Cure. Check out part II here.
So, once again a journalist got called out for bad reportage at a gig. During Pentagram’s set in Bangalore, Vishal Dadlani “dedicated” the song ‘Mental Zero’ to the journalist who erroneously stated the Invasion Festival was happening this week instead of last.
I wondered, was Dadlani being too harsh? Yes, the journalist made the worst kind of careless mistake, but I sincerely doubt that it was deliberate. He or she must have spent time and effort to interview people, and write the article, and then did the one thing that rendered the entire piece useless – got the dates wrong. After all, the whole point of writing about a festival is that you want to encourage people to attend it. And I would like to presume that whoever wrote that piece did it out of interest in the music, and not just to fill column space.
It’s a delicate relationship that musicians and music journalists share. (To remember just how delicate this relationship is, just watch Almost Famous again – repeat viewings of that film are always a good thing.) Some musicians take offence at the very idea that someone would have the temerity to try and condense their blood, sweat and tears into mere words. Yet they recognise that they need the publicity to get those words out there about their music.
Music journalists on the other hand have the daunting task of having to describe, and at times, critique someone’s art, a task that many musicians believe they don’t take seriously enough at all. I cringe every time I read a badly written piece (see Press Charges for examples) but most of the time, it’s not the bad grammar that’s depressing, it’s the blatant disregard for fact checking. Whether it’s the number of albums a band has released, or the subgenre they play, or even something as basic as the line-up (mentioning only first names doesn’t count in my book), most of the errors are the kind a simple phone call would have prevented. The reporters it would seem were just too lazy to be bothered.
How then can we improve the quality of Indian music journalism? I think both journalists and bands need to get themselves a checklist.
Writers – and yes, even the musicians – need to stop being lazy. Journalists need to stop expecting to be spoon fed by PR people, and need to do research that goes beyond browsing the press release (and if there’s one, the Wiki page.) Most Indian indie acts don’t have Wikipedia entries but they have might have (a usually outdated) biography on their MySpace/Facebook. As a starting point, Google and read everything you can about the artist as possible, but more importantly, in case you’ve never heard them before, listen to the music – on MySpace, ReverbNation, YouTube or wherever else you can find them. If you can’t, or say the interview is about an as-yet unreleased album, ask for the music. Too often, journalists go into interviews blind, or more appropriately, deaf. If an act is ready to do interviews for an album, they’re ready with the album or at least some of it. It’s the publicist’s duty to provide you with some of the music, on which to base your questions.
Which brings me to the second most common feature of bad music writing – a lack of context. It’s one thing if you’re writing about a new band; but if you’re writing about an existing act, you can’t not listen to their earlier material and expect to write a quality piece. I know many enthusiastic music writers who do all the right things – attend gigs, ask pertinent questions – who fall short on one front: they fail to say where a band fits in terms of Indian rock history. With a genre so young, you’d imagine that shouldn’t be so difficult to do.
As for getting your facts right, use a tape recorder, and transcribe your interview. Take notes as well, just in case technology betrays you (and it will). As far as possible, try and quote your interviewee verbatim. But no matter what they say, don’t ever send them the article before publication. There are other aspects of Indian music journalism I won’t get into, but those have much to do with the overall attitude towards writing about culture among our country’s editors. These are the things that at the most basic level, a writer can do. Individual styles might differ but it’s important to remember to write passionately. The idea is to excite readers, to make them want to hear your subject, to finish your story, and immediately log on to the internet to listen to the act’s music because they’re so intrigued by what you wrote.
Next week, I’ll write about what musicians can do to improve the way they get written about. Too often, they’re as lazy as the journos and are at least partly to blame for being continually misrepresented.
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