Moment:
Wednesday, October 30th at 8:17 PM IST
Me: ”Tej Anna, your hair and white shirt make you look like a Carnatic singer” Tej: *sings a high note like a Carnatic singer*
Chris (walking in): “Who is shouting?”
Many of you have probably seen my daily posts on Facebook or Instagram talking about the band “Upside Down,” (and if you haven’t, follow us!) so I thought that, in the spirit of Christmas, I’d explain a little about how I met them and how we came together to record a song, “Emmanuel.” It releases in two days, so be sure to keep it on your radar :)
You’ve heard of Christmas in July, now get ready for Christmas-in-November-because-everyone-will-be-gone-during-Christmas! We had our campus Christmas Program on November 2nd (53 days before Christmas) and it was a festive event involving songs, skits, dances, and raffles. I was especially excited because I would be able to celebrate Christmas in India, as I was pretty disappointed that I would have to return home early and miss out on spending the holiday season with my family and new friends in India. Christmas is by far my favorite holiday of the year, because it is the celebration of the birth of Christ and it just evokes such warm fuzzy feelings of joy.
So when my friend Kripalini said that the band, Upside Down, was going to be playing at the EU Christmas program and they wanted the two of us to sing with them, I was ecstatic. We started rehearsals in September, which was perfect for me because I’m in the Christmas spirit year-round, and we met twice or even thrice a week to get a set together for the program. Because we all had extremely high standards for what we were going to sound like, our practice would go on for hours on end, and we’d all go out to dinner after, usually to get biryani. When in Hyderabad, right?
We were so hyped and ready to go, but to our dismay, the day of the actual performance definitely got off to a rocky start. We got to the venue two hours early to do sound check, but wound up only being able to do one song to make sure that mics and instruments were up and running. Our set didn’t really begin to come together until about halfway through, when the screeching and/or random silences stopped, but you wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at us (or so we were told) because we honestly just had so much fun, regardless of if anyone could really hear us.
We did a cool rendition of “Little Drummer Boy”, whipped out an EDM version of “This is Our Time” by the Planetshakers, and sang a medley of ”Hark the Herald Angels Sing” in Telugu, Tamil, and English. We got the audience to dance, jump, and shout with us in a song called “Dance” by Tim Hughes, then slowed it down and let Tej Anna’s violin skills shine in “There is Someone.” We later got called up on stage to do our set again, and this time, the hundreds of people in the audience could actually hear us! We were able to sing, dance, and even take a selfie with them, and it was truly a magical night full of Christmas and college spirit alike. It was that night that we talked about recording a song together, and the rest, as they say, is history.
We‘re still writing that history though, because our song is coming out on Saturday, so be on the lookout for Upside Down’s first single: “Emmanuel”!
