Music

On Track

Aneesh Gera talks about the challenges of being an artiste today, along with how the pandemic has affected the electronic music industry

By Saachi Pai Kane

Born and raised in Goa, the dance music artiste Aneesh Gera has achieved the dreams of every musician – release 200 records, get your music played by Ryan Seacrest, to be present in the top 10 worldwide hits, become the highest streamed artiste for underground music in India, to hitting almost 5 million streams on Spotify – Aneesh has done it all.

Aneesh started DJing professionally at the age of 17. It was a time when DJing was looked down upon, it was considered to be a job someone chose after they failed or didn’t have an option, but his mother supported him throughout. “There was no limelight or glamour, the nice part was, people who were into it were into it for the music, nothing else”, says Aneesh. When asked about why he chose DJing, he talks about his first time at a club, “I went to my first nightclub when I was really young, my mum took me to this club in Dona Paula called Lidos. It was a surreal experience. Everyone inside was having a great time and there was this one guy in the corner playing music from CDs. And this one guy is collectively giving everyone this experience. And I thought it was very empowering.” Aneesh was in awe

“There was no limelight or glamour, the nice part was, people who were into it were into it for the music, nothing else”

of how a DJ could control people’s emotions and their whole experience. People can go back feeling nostalgic, energetic and euphoric and it’s one man who made 50-60 people feel that way, it was very empowering, he says. As consumers of music, we see

DJ Aneesh making the crowd groove

what the media shows us. We look at the music industry as this glamorous life, full of happiness, constant partying, traveling, beautiful clothes and all things shiny. What we refuse to see is the part that’s not all sunshine and rainbows. The amount of work that artistes put into just one song, the mental stress, anxiety and depression behind the constant rejection and downfalls that they go through is left unseen. “The industry has taught me how to take constructive feedback and how to deal with constant rejection, it is one of the most cut-throat and fickle industries,” says Aneesh. “People think it’s success after success, not realising the amount of rejection and failure is incredible.” With people consuming content at such a fast pace, artistes and creators find it absurd to catch up to these standards.

We as consumers generate so much stress, “People will just assume that because you’re so successful you’ll always hit the same level of success,” not realising how disheartening it is. “I spend anything from 6 weeks to 6 months writing one piece of music, writing one record, because it’s not easy to write music. There’s a certain standard I like to work to. I am my own biggest critic. And you put your heart and soul into something, you’ve pushed yourself and gone all out. And you finally release it, and people go ‘Okay, nice’ and then the next day they go ‘Hey, when’s your next song coming out?”, Aneesh talks about how this can wreck one’s mental state, and the rejection is constant in the music industry, but no one talks about it.

An audio engineer by profession, Aneesh Gera is a man of many talents. He built himself up over the past 20 years to professionally take on 9 distinct roles in the music industry, which were quite affected by the pandemic. “Everything has come to a halt with almost no plan of resuming. And no one’s talking about our industry, about how we’re going to put food on the table”, he says. For someone who flew on almost 70 flights touring in 2018, he hasn’t stepped on a plane in the past 15 months. “Lockdown affected me, it brought 20 years of growth to a grinding halt, with a very vague path moving forward.” He is the highest streamed artiste for underground music in India with just under five million streams. “Before the pandemic hit, I had an average of 200,000 streams a month on Spotify, which is down to 30,000.” Most of his fans are from the western world, mainly the US, Germany, Netherlands and the UK.

Most people listened to music while commuting, as lockdowns were instated, streams dropped and post the reopening of cities, algorithms and things changed, affecting his results. Inspite of these challenges Aneesh was quite happy during the lockdown, “I was very fortunate, I adopted a new puppy, Rossi. I was initially very happy, I was at home and not constantly on planes. The first two months were great, I was in a very good space, a happy bubble, and I was able to write. And then I spoke to other artistes who felt just the opposite.” So many artistes were left in bad spaces due to the pandemic. Writing, producing and their mode of income were affected deeply, but because these didn’t seem sparkly and shiny, not a lot of media attention was given to these issues.

When asked about his favourite track from all the music that he has created, Aneesh talks about his track ‘Cocoon’ by Aneesh Gera and Valerie D’Silva feat. Naique. This project was special to Aneesh because the whole project was in Goa, with people from Goa. He co-wrote the piece during the lockdown with Naique, an artiste from Margao. Raj Naique was battling cancer for the second time, he was in the hospital. Aneesh kept writing and sending him things to help lift his spirits. “We lost him in December. I’m proud that we wrote something for him, to honour him. We wrote it together. Valerie is also a good friend of his. And it got signed to one of the biggest trance music labels in the world, The Future Sound of Egypt by Aly and Fila, based in London.” Claiming that this was the best record that he wrote and produced, it ended up at No. 59 in the World Top 100. “The track is quite deep, it’s about mental health and has a lot of depth to it. I want to do that with my music. Not just write about something cheap and easy for a pop chart. I want something that has soul to it,” he says.

When asked about what the future holds for him, “I never talk about things that are coming up. There are 500 things I’m dying to announce but I can’t with the NDAs I don’t even know where to begin. But the cocoon story is not over”