Indie Sound Trail and Art Kanara Trust Bring Tulunadu Music and Coastal Stories Aboard a Boat
Mangaluru’s Gurupura River sets the stage for ‘Chorus of the Coast’
Mangaluru: Chorus of the Coast — The Homecoming Show offered a unique cultural experience aboard the Abbakka Queen cruise boat on the Gurupura River near Mangaluru on Sunday, October 11. Organised by Indie Sound Trail (IST) in association with Art Kanara Trust, the programme brought together contemporary music, innovative cuisine, and an exhibition of photographs and archival material documenting the region’s people, places and memories. More than 150 enthusiastic participants took part in the cruise.
Rivers have long shaped the movement, livelihoods and connections of communities across Tulunadu. The event drew on this setting to explore how music can engage with the region’s broader cultural life.
Carol Pinto of Indie Sound Trail said the initiative aimed to build a cultural ecosystem that provides artists with platforms to showcase their work and audiences with opportunities to discover new creative expressions.
“We believe cultural ecosystems grow when artists are given both a platform and an audience that is willing to discover,” she said.
Contemporary Music as a Living Language
Led by Tulunadu-born musician Praveen Alva, Alva Kuuto joined ToddyKats, Echoes in the Dusk and Joel Austin in presenting contemporary music shaped by diverse influences and perspectives.
“Tulu is not just something we inherit from the past — it is a language we can use to talk about who we are today,” Alva said.
One of the songs took the form of a prayer seeking divine intervention to protect the environment, bringing ecological concerns into the musical programme.
Art Kanara Trust Presents the Region’s Memories
Art Kanara Trust presented The Floating Archive, an exhibition of photographs and archival material housed in the boat’s conference hall. The display complemented the contemporary musical performances by offering glimpses into the region’s past.
“An archive is not only about preserving the past. It is also about understanding what is happening around us today,” said Nemiraj Shetty of Art Kanara Trust.
He noted that Tulunadu had been shaped by movement and exchange, describing the collaboration as an opportunity to bring archival memories into conversation with contemporary music and audiences.
The programme also incorporated Tulu script into its visual presentation, following World Tulu Script Day on October 10. Indie Sound Trail collaborated with its official lettering partner, Solmelu Studios, whose hand-drawn Tulu-script artwork, “Kaḍala Karæta Pāḍdana” (Songs of the Coast), featured as part of the stage design.
The initiative sought to bring Tulu script into a contemporary cultural setting and make it more accessible to new audiences.
