Vineeth Vincent and band with the French couple / DNA
We kicked off with a performance at St John’s Medical College Bangalore, to help spread awareness about breast cancer and cancelled all our gigs for the week. And then it was time to hit the road — with Audi Photography for documentation, Glen Ivan Suchitha, the tour manager, Bhairav Kuttaiah our on road entertainment, Go Untucked,our T-shirt partner and yours truly. Our mission was to find a balance between social responsibility and sustainability as artists.

The NICE road on a cold foggy morning saw us off, whizzing to Mysore, stopping for breakfast at Maddur. We ran into a French couple a little before lunch time and bonded over momos. The sound system was brought out and we had a jam session with the Buddhist Golden Temple in the background. The guy played the flute while I beatboxed. We dropped them off at Coorg afterwards, and as Glen put it, we haven’t heard from them since.

At Coorg, that night, we were at a residential school, performing under the stars, the only light coming from our SUV. The boys had arranged the benches in front of the car and we taught them how to beatbox and got them to sing along with us. The morning brought in beautiful views of Coorg and over cups of teas and the best idlis ever, we discussed our route and set off towards Mangalore. We were there by lunch time and met volunteers from the NGO, Make a Difference (MAD), who took us to one of their centres for children with HIV.

This was a moving experience — to hear of dreams from children who would not live them, not only because of their medical condition, but also because of the socio-economic factors. As musicians, it was a privilege to see the joy they got from our performance. The next day was spent at another MAD centre, an orphanage. It was an eye-opener to see so many children in need of homes. The crowning moment was when they sang, word-perfect, along to Rise Up, wreathed in big smiles.

By sunset, we were on the road to Manipal. Audi Photography added to the thrills by risking life and limb trying to get night shots. Our plan was to head to Goa after a fuel stop, but by then, I had started throwing up due to sleep deprivation from the constant driving. We went to Gokarna instead, where I took a much-needed rest and the rest went off on a trek.

Our next destination was Hubli. Luxury was ours for taking at the fancy resort we were put up in, 13kms from the venue. A few hours of shut-eye and scrumptious vadas for breakfast later, we were all raring to go. Well, almost all. It was Bhairav’s turn to fall sick and stay parked in the loo, as we bid him farewell. Google Maps came to our assistance that day in a big way and we finally reached the venue, only to ge out and stare open-jawed at what could be one of the most gorgeous cafés in the world. This was Seven Beans.
Late as usual, the musicians trickled in one by one and we jammed and made a set-list for the night. The night started with about a hundred people waiting for the performance to start, and we were escorted with a lot of swagger to a rockstar’s entrance (face covered and a lot of security). We were supposed to jam with 10 very talented local musicians. By the time we got to the stage, the crowd had multiplied. With a bit of gentle leg-pulling and a lesson on impromptu beatboxing, I was back off-stage and went back again to jam with each musician. What a crowd and what a night! There was nothing better than being with musicians, music lovers and of course, the people at Seven Beans. When we finally got back to our rooms, it was only to tank up on coffee and start on a very, very long drive to Bangalore for four more shows.

Eight hours of driving later, we finally reached home at nine in the morning. It seemed like my head had barely hit the pillow when the alarm went off and we were on our way to Whitefield to jam with Live Banned. Two of their members joined me on stage dressed in khaki like the auto-drivers and with colourful wigs, to beatbox. The day was over before we knew, and the next day we were performing with my beatboxing partner in crime Vineeth Beep Kumar. We left the laughing, screaming crowd with much reluctance to head for Woodstok, to finish our over-180km-and-more-than-10-shows tour with three hours of beatboxing, Coldplay and Christmas carols!

— Vineeth Vincent is a record-breaking beat boxer

source: http://www.Dnaindia.com / Home> Lifestyle> Report / by Vineeth Vincent / Place: Bangalore / Agency: DNA / Thursday, March 01st, 2012