LIVING THE i LIFE : ‘Virtual interaction helping me through these difficult times'

I have been a DJ for more than 14 years. I have enough savings to last me for a year, even without a job. But for those who were working month-to-month, this would be a really tough time. There’s nothing anyone can to do. A few days ago, I performed for a party of 14 people. They were all in different houses and I performed a 90-minute set on Zoom. They muted their audio and I played my set through my computer. It was great because I got to perform in my sweatpants. I didn’t ask for any payment. During these times, the only thing I can do is try and make my presence felt on social media. I’m going live on Insta and Facebook with different 90-minute sets. People won’t be tuned in for the whole set, maybe only for five minutes. But they’ll remember me once all of this stuff is done, and hire me for their gigs. It’s a long-term plan, and it’s pretty much all I can do. The virtual interaction is what is helping me through these difficult times. If not for social media and WhatsApp, I think we’d all be having a really tough time. I have been putting up sets on my social media pages. I recently did a set on 90s music in Hindi, English and Tamil. It went viral. I usually won’t get to play these sets in the club’s I regularly perform, so this is a great time for me to experiment. And it’s not just me, DJs across the city are working on music. It’s not like Chennai’s music scene is better or worse than any other city, but one silver lining from all this is that once we get out of the shutdown, there’s going to be some incredible music in Chennai.