Mood Indigo

The tradition & historical record

Mood Indigo, otherwise known as MoodI or MI, is the cultural and signature festival of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. Mood Indigo was held in over 4,000+ colleges and universities before ending in IIT Bombay. ¹

A group of the first Mood Indigo organizers gave the festival its name from Duke Ellington's jazz piece "Mood Indigo". Mood Indigo had a legacy of organizers that included Nandan Nilekani and Sivakumaran among others. Mood Indigo started in 1971 with a budget of ₹5,000, which was partly contributed by the IIT Bombay Gymkhana and advertisements. The 1981 edition of MI had the duo Asha Bhosle and R D Burman perform at the Indian Music Night. ¹

From a sponsorship of around 5 lakhs in 1993, Mood Indigo had grown to have a budget of around ₹2.4 million in 1997. In 2008, the first night in the form of an Ensiferum concert was held. In 2009, the band Porcupine Tree came to India for the first time to perform at MI. It also had performances by Parikrama, Alms for Shanti and concerts by the trio of Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy and Manna Dey. This edition also showcased Victor Rubilar, the French band Moriarty and Swedish performer Meja. In 2010, MI held its first Sumo Wrestling match between three-time world sumo champion Byambajav Ulambayar and former world champion Naranbat Gankhuyag. The Swedish metal band Katatonia had its first Asian performance in MI. Apart from them, MI 2010 also witnessed performances by Asha Bhosle, Indus Creed and Amit Trivedi as well as interactive sessions with Ramchandra Guha and a Harley Davidson Bike exhibition. The International Music Festival had the Indo-German rock band Fire On Dawson, French percussionist Minino Garay, Glass harp musicians Glass Duo and the fusion band KarmetiK. ¹

Karnivool, the Australian progressive rock band, performed in India for the first time at Mood Indigo 2011. MI made it into the Limca Book of Records for the most number of international artists at a college festival. ¹

Concerts or "Pronites" feature national and international artists. Mood Indigo Pronites have staged international bands like Epica, the Neal Morse band featuring Mike Portnoy in 2013, Simple Plan in 2012, Karnivool in 2011, Katatonia in 2010, Porcupine Tree in 2009 and Ensiferumin in 2008. Mood Indigo also played host to its first EDM concert with DJ Lange performing in 2013. This was followed by a concert featuring Sander van Doorn in 2014 and Borgeous in Mood Indigo 2015. Ummet Ozcan (DJ MAG 23) performed in the EDM Nite on the first day of Mood Indigo 2018. ¹

Pronites has also hosted Asha Bhosle (once with music director R D Burman in 1981 and again in 2010), Jagjit Singh, Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy, Sonu Nigam, Shaan, Amit Trivedi, Kailash Kher, Salim–Sulaiman, Mohit Chauhan, Vishal–Shekhar, Pritam, Adnan Sami, Raghu Dixit, KK, Lucky Ali, Amit Kumar, Kavita Seth, Pankaj Udhas, Raghav Sachar, Agnee the band and Javed Ali. Classical artists like Hari Prasad Chaurasia, Zakir Hussain, Bhimsen Joshi, Jasraj, Shiv Kumar Sharma, Vikku Vinayakram, Rajan and Sajan Mishra, sitar maestro Ustad Amjad Ali Khan and his sons Ayaan and Amaan Ali Bangash, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Manna Dey, and Taufiq Qureshi have performed here as well. Fusion artists including Louis Banks, Niladri Kumar, Sivamani, and Alms for Shanti have performed in the past at Mood Indigo. Pronites also organizes Livewire, a rock band competition, and bands Parikrama, Zero and Vayu. Events in the past have included Motherjane, Indus Creed, and Sceptre. ¹

Competitions at Mood Indigo cover arts, lifestyle, film and media, music, dance, and journalism. The finalists of the dance competition 'Dancing with the Stars' performed for an audience of 3,500 and were judged by Shahid Kapoor and Rajiv Surty. The finalists of the music event 'Singing with the Stars' were judged by singers Kavita Seth, Meiyang Chang, and Shibani Kashyap. Aagaaz the street play competition, in its third edition, in Mood Indigo 2012, gave the winners a chance to perform at the National Center for Performing Arts. The performing arts competition (One Act) called 'Third Bell' has had judges including Anupam Kher, Himani Shivpuri, Shobha Khote, Amit Behl, Piyush Mishra and Lalit Parimoo. The winners of this competition are also given a chance to perform at the National Center of Performing Arts. Its stage has played host to Amjad Khan and Mani Ratnam. In 2012, the filmmaking event 'Director's cut' gave the director of the top two entries a chance to produce a short film with Bejoy Nambiar. In 2013, the winners of the SGTL event received a direct entry into the Femina Miss India eliminations and won a photo shoot with Dabboo Ratnani. In 2010, a book cover design competition was organized in association with author Anita Nair. In 2015, the Hindi Poetry event was judged by Swanand Kirkire and MI Idol, and the singing competition was judged by Papon. ¹

Horizons debuted in 1989 as a set of workshops and lectures on the arts as an experiment. In 2012, Mood Indigo hosted more than 150 foreign artists internationally. It includes Canadian comedian Michel Lauzière, Irish sword swallower Murray Molloy, American fire artist Jason Divad, Monsieur Gusto, The Chancy Brothers, Wacky Chad and others. ¹

The International Music Festival started in 2009 and has brought to MI performers like the French group Moriarty, Fire On Dawson from Germany, Norwegian band Indian Core, Tarq Bowen from the UK, Swedish performer Meja and the Glass Duo from Poland. Mood Indigo 2011 saw bands like Akasha from Malaysia and Caladh Nua from Ireland perform while the other shows included a performance by the Gamblerz crew from South Korea and Jean Francois from Las Vegas. In 2010, a sumo wrestling at Mood Indigo. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Mood Indigo (festival)”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

Mood Indigo is annual cultural festival of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 1 external register, which can be verified through the citation. ²