Blogswara

Blogswara is an internet music community created by and for amateur musicians. This community acts as a common platform for these amateur musicians to showcase their talent before the world by producing music and share it over the internet. They also have a website with the name BlogSwara (http://www.blogswara.in/). It is also a free-music movement where visitors/listeners can download the mp3 files of the fresh and original songs. There are 63 people involved with BlogSwara to the date and the community is still growing.

The beginning

Audio-blogging (or Music-blogging) in India has led to several innovative ways of producing music for people. One such endeavor is BlogSwara, a website for free downloadable original music, founded by Joseph Thomas, a blogger from Thrissur, Kerala, India. When he started audio-blogging in July 2005, he had no idea that he would initiate a project like BlogSwara. At first, he started recording regular songs without background music and placed them online. Then came Karaoke tracks which allowed people to record their voice over the Karaoke track.

Narayan Venkitu, a Chennaite in the US, wrote and composed a song called Vaazhvu Chezhikka and sent it to Joseph, who sang the song and sent it to an IIT Chennai student, Ajit Gopalakrishnan, for orchestration.

That was their first venture. Thanks to the wonderful blogging grapevine, other musicians heard about them. Soon, Senthil, a blogger from Chennai, suggested Joseph to do something with bringing the music bloggers together. Thus began the concept of BlogSwara, a collaborative internet music album. The name BlogSwara was suggested by another music blogger, Ganesh.

The music on BlogSwara is currently restricted to three languages — Malayalam, Tamil and Hindi. The bloggers manage everything — lyrics, music, orchestration, vocals, recording and mixing. This community even has a couple of celebrity musicians including Pradip Somasundaran, a playback singer from Kerala.

The Process

Amateur musicians team up with other musicians, lyricists, and composers to create a song or someone is chosen from the existing talent pool of BlogSwara. When everything is finalized (lyrics, music composition, orchestration and mixing), the song is submitted to a selection panel. The panel will review the submissions and pick the songs based on freshness, vocals, recording quality, lyrics, variety and so on and announce them to the submitters with feedback/suggestions for tweaking. The tweaked songs are included in the final release.

Albums

*BlogSwara Version 1 was released in May 2006 and it has 10 songs.

*BlogSwara Version 2 was released in November 2006 and has 7 songs.

*BlogSwara Version 3 was released in March 2007 and it has 9 songs.

*BlogSwara Version 4 was released in December 2007 and it has 7 songs.

External links

*BlogSwara - [http://www.blogswara.in/ Official website]
*The Hindu - [http://www.hindu.com/2006/11/03/stories/2006110307640400.htm MUSIC TO EARS: Blogswara Version 2]
*The Indian Express: [http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IE920060516025208&Topic=0&Title=Chennai&Page=9 Netting a Tune]
* [http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2006/05/26/stories/2006052601182400.htm The Hindu Business Line]