The Delhi Frog

Located in Mehrauli in South Delhi, housed inside The Kila and set against the backdrop of the Qutub Minar is the shiny new Blue Frog. And so, our first question to Mahesh Mathai, one of the partners and co-founders of Blue Frog, was about the location of the venue in New Delhi. He was quick to respond with “in Delhi, it’s not like that. People don’t mind traveling so it’s not really out of the way. It’s different from Bombay.” One of Mumbai’s best live music venues (also a nominee for our Indie Of The Year ’10), Blue Frog has now opened its doors in the capital (some preview photos here), a city which is already bustling with many live music spaces.

Having been around in Mumbai for four years, the Blue Frog management have taken everything a step further with the New Delhi venue. Arguably, these are first impressions and one can’t help but notice how they’re looking to make it one of the regular fixtures on the city’s music map. Putting together live, independent music on six nights a week is not an easy task, but Mathai’s concerns for the capital’s Frog are slightly different. He tells us, “Food has always been a part of our (Blue Frog’s) agenda. The profile of Blue Frog has been consumed by music. If someone says Blue Frog no one thinks food, but music instead. But, that’s not because we’re not interested in food, we love our food. So here, we decided to separate the two with the courtyard and the upcoming restaurant.”

The programming for the remainder of this month, and most of the next features predominantly New Delhi acts and performers. Mathai feels they need to familiarize themselves and the musicians within the city and its music-scape and “international acts will start coming in as well,” eventually. When asked about who he’d like to bring in to the new venue and its terrace setting, Mathai takes a moment to narrow it down. Having dropped names such as John McLaughlin and Karsh Kale, the Blue Frog owner’s ideal opening would be, “Zakir (Hussain) and somebody, once the terrace area is ready.”

Talking about acts in the capital, Mathai spoke very highly of The Ska Vengers, and he believes there have always been good bands in the city, but no one was listening to them. “We (Blue Frog) like to think of ourselves as a part of that change; more like a catalyst; as a change in the sense, being a platform,” says Mathai when talking of how the scene has developed over the last half a decade or so in Mumbai, and hopes to bring a similar experience to New Delhi. He is convinced the venue can provide a musician a good platform to perform, backed by a good sound system (which he believes most other venues lack) and a better overall experience, having done it in Mumbai for the last four years.

Initially as a brand, Blue Frog dipped their fingers in several pies, which included recording, a music label, artist management and more, “but the one that really took off was the venue, because it was the most needed. Thereafter we started pulling back on some of the other things because everybody was doing it.” It was then that they realized there was no need for them to be “everything,” but be out there and partner with people in the business; promoters, booking agents, musicians.

What will be interesting to note will be how the programming of the venue is over the next couple of months, after the phase of familiarizing with the city has been taken care of. It will also be interesting to see how the club will deal with adjusting the outdoor eatery during the summer months, and how the city-dwellers will take to the club, which in our opinion does fall a little out of the way for those dependent on public transport. The public consensus seems to be that Delhi-ites forget new venues way too soon; which makes it fairly easy to assume that Blue Frog’s task is only going to be an uphill one, but one, from the looks of it and having attended the launch party, we’re fairly certain it’s well prepared to do.