Amrish Kumar, director of the Ritu Kumar fashion firm, has translated his passion for music into a record label called Mummy Daddy Records. The Ritu Kumar label has over time been considered to be the elder statesman of the Indian fashion world. The label, and Ritu Kumar the designer, were both ahead of the fashion curve and started the company when few in this country understood that fashion meant much more than going to a ladies' tailor and getting designs copied from foreign catalogues.
Ritu, having been a pioneer of sorts, has in the last few years handed the baton to her son Amrish Kumar, 30, who is now the director of the company.
But the younger Kumar hasn't just earned his spurs in the fashion world by taking the label from its close and abiding association with wedding and Indianwear to starting their pret line, called Label "" he is now trying to give non-Bollywood music a voice. That's why he has started a record company named (with tongue firmly in cheek) Mummy Daddy Records.
Says Kumar, "I have always been very passionate about music. When I came back to India after studying abroad, I realised that there weren't very many avenues for different kinds of music in India. I wanted to get that music out there. So I decided to put a structure together."
That structure, in the form of Mummy Daddy Records, isn't necessarily a financially lucrative one and Kumar, although keenly aware of that, isn't even looking at it in those terms. He says, "At the moment there are no great returns. I have taken it on as a personal expense."
This lack of revenue and a fair amount of monetary investment have not deterred this music lover. Though Kumar is unable to put a finger on the moment in time when his interest in music developed, one significant period was when he moved to Bristol in the UK to study.
Bristol in the 1990s was home to many bands and sounds and hence earned itself two names into the bargain: Bristol's "underground" scene being the first, encompassing triphop music, drums, bass and graffiti art. The second name, the "Bristol sound" was the name given to bands from that region in the 1990s.
Kumar himself sings, and the first album, a compilation that Mummy Daddy Records has brought out, has him on a couple of the tracks. He says of his choice to do compilations, "The bricks and mortar sales of music is very poor. And then there is the amortised cost of each act that is quite substantial. I then decided to do compilation model. And if you brand that it becomes easier."
Mummy Daddy Records, however, won't be doing just any old music act or track that comes their way. Says Kumar of his vision, "I wanted to highlight that there is cultural richness here. This first compilation has tracks that all have a sense of musical aesthetics that can only come from India. The people I have put on the album have been influenced by Indian music." But he also adds ruefully, of a mindset that was as true 30 years ago as it is now, "Many of our acts first get recognition abroad rather than here."
Kumar, who spent two years working on this album says, "Most of the tracks on this album are original. Its not an award-winning album but it's a start." Kumar, who has never been trained in Indian classical music but did learn the guitar in LA after an epiphany, says of his own tracks on the album, "I have always felt that Indian classical and blues go very well together."
This interest in Indian classical does have its roots in his upbringing, though. He says, "My mother used to play a lot of classical stuff, but at that time it used to bore me as a kid."
Do fashion, his day job, and music, his after-work interest, meld well together? Says Kumar, "The two things I am pursuing are a mirror to a cultural aesthetic and I am blessed to be part of both." Will it be possible to keep Mummy Daddy Records going if it never makes money? Kumar answers somewhat tangentially and says, "There is such an absence of philanthropy in the creative sphere."
The absence of free thinking (as opposed to ideas and thoughts that are passed on institutionally) says Kumar stops people from giving money for creative growth. But Kumar is fearless on that count, especially since he says, "That's how our fashion business grew, after all."
