About the word "collaborate"

[Mahesh]

How much do you?

 

The reason I ask is that I've been contemplating about it for a while. Honestly "collaboration" is seen as a dirty word down here in India by a good number of people. That along with the word "music scene". That's because of no common consensus on what those words mean at such an early stage of the Indian independent music industry (and I use that word very carefully).

 

Personally for me though, every single thing that I've done in the past couple of years has been due to my wonderful friends helping me in many ways due to my limited resources.

 

2 of my friends and I worked on the idea, concept and process for doing a music video for the first time, that became my first single & music video titled "Come Find Me": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OHodBIyncE

 

For the second music video, the same team and 3 more of our friends did a road trip down south along with me for a gig I arranged with some super passionate long time fans. And out came Your Mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDpikeU7pAI

 

To be honest, even the EP itself would have not been possible without my fellow musician friends choosing to help me, record with me, mentor me and letting me go out there and do my thing. Another incredible friend of mine has set up a crowdfunding campaign for his birthday. He wants his gift to be a South East Asia tour with my band and another!

 

We generally don't look at all of these as collaborating but it essentially is.

 

So how do you choose to look at the word "collaborate" and how do you choose to pursue it? Is it just with musicians every now and then, or do you have a group of friends like mine that constantly work with you or is it something completely different? I'd love to know.

 

 

P.S This topic interests me because I also collaborated with Sofar Sounds last year and toured the country while shooting a documentary about just these things that I'm talking about. Helps me gather food for thought! Anyways thank you for your time fellas.