Unherd's Collin Prabhu JP on building a music community and the upcoming 'Retro to Metro' show in Bengaluru

The show is going to be a Tamil sing-along and jamming session. Like our other shows, we will do somewhere around 100 songs in this show too. This concept will include covers of songs from the 1960s, all the way up to 2025. The lyrics will be on screen and the live band will be performing. People can come to sing, dance, ride along and have fun with their herd.

I came to Bengaluru some three and a half years ago. Hailing from Ooty and then living in Coimbatore, I realised these are very warm and welcoming places. So, when I came to Bengaluru, I was almost 27 and that’s when I understood the city felt like a completely different scene to me. I felt like I couldn’t connect with people. It’s a completely cosmopolitan thing. And to find people to relate to for an ambivert like me, it was very difficult. When you get caught up in such a big city, when you’re from a smaller place, you don’t have a support system. So, this was a trigger point which motivated me to do something. And being a designer professionally, I thought of many things, but nothing worked out. Eventually, five of us came together and formed a band.

Basically, all five of us were from different places and spoke different languages. We began performing in a lot of places in Bengaluru. A lot of people started connecting with us on two things: language and music. They would ask if they could be a part of the band. This was another trigger point. Finally, three problems pushed us to think of starting Unherd — one, when we started this band, we approached different places for performances, but everybody asked for a portfolio. But to begin a portfolio, we needed somewhere to perform. This is like the chicken and egg debate. Secondly, I come from a semi-formally trained and self-taught music background. I was formally trained in piano, but I chose to play guitar. If you’re formally trained, you always get stage space, but until you come out of that and arrive in a place like Bengaluru, it takes extra effort to come on stage. Finally, for you to go on stage and approach somebody is another issue.

For the first day, we planned a small jam in a park in HSR after we put a small message on different musician groups. This was sometime around March 2025. Eventually, 13 people turned up and when we began jamming, we didn’t know what language people spoke. So, we started jamming in multiple languages — Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada and Telugu. It was more like a musical anthakshari. That day, without even inviting audiences, we had somewhere around 100 people there cheering for us. That’s when we understood, “okay, people love this format!”

According to me, any community that you build is a place where you give and you take, be it music or be it any other form of art. In music, this is a place wherein you be yourself. Unherd was built that way and always will be that way. It will never become a band and will always remain a community where you can be yourself and explore your form of art.