Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Indofunk Satish. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Indofunk thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I grew up in an Indian-American family, which valued higher education and the associated professional degrees (engineering, medicine, law, etc). I drank the Kool Aid and started down a career path as a research scientist, going as far as enrolling in a Ph.D. program in molecular biology. However, I’d been playing music since I was about 10 years old, and had the benefit of being in a public school system that had an excellent music program. I was also fortunate enough to be successful academically as well as musically. I went to undergraduate school in Boston, which is a highly competitive music scene, so I didn’t even bother trying to play music there, and instead focused on my studies. The big change came when I went to graduate school in Madison Wisconsin, where all of a sudden I was one of the better musicians in town, and even in the general region. Word got out, and I started getting a lot of gigs in and around the Midwest. This wasn’t jibing very well with my Ph.D. studies, so it was at this point that I had to make a decision: would I stop playing music and devote my life to research biology, or would I leave biology to try to pursue an artistic career? After a lot of soul searching and sleepless nights, I quit grad school and moved to NYC to pursue my musical career.

Indofunk, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a musician in New York City. I focus on live playing, but I have a full recording studio in my apartment and have recorded and produced music for major studios throughout the world. I am mostly known for the unique trumpet that I play, the Firebird, which is a standard trumpet with the addition of a half-length trombone slide. This instrument allows me a degree of expressiveness that is unachievable on a standard trumpet, and allows me to accurately play the ornaments (gamakas) of Indian classical music, which is a style I have listened to and studied since childhood. Many of the bands I am currently in or have been in, including Indofunk and Quadrature, are jazz/funk bands that are heavily influenced by Indian classical music.

In addition to trumpet, I play trombone, tuba, keyboards, and to varying degrees drums, bass, and guitar.

In recent years I have taken up analog (film) photography, with the bulk of my work focusing on musicians and music/nightlife-related activities.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

There are working models of how a society (government) can support artists. In many parts of Europe, there is government funding for the arts in the form of grants that individual artists can apply for; subsidized housing, guaranteed income, and other life benefits for artists; and government-funded organizations that advise and support artists. The United States can do well to learn from and imitate these systems.

Not being a policy maker, I can’t directly advise on how to implement what would be considered radical policies in the US, but since the current environment does not foster or support the arts, something certainly needs to be done.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

The biggest pivot in my life was transitioning from being a graduate student in the sciences to a professional musician. In retrospect, I think I did this the hard way, making multiple changes at the same time: changing career, moving cities, and trying to pay rent in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I ended up taking temporary office jobs during the day to pay the bills, while pursuing my musical career at night. This might have backfired in a way, as it allowed me to be relatively comfortable and not as desperate/life-or-death about making money in music. It led me to accepting a fulltime office job for a couple of years before realizing that I was back in a vicious cycle of job vs music, and once again I made a smaller pivot in quitting that job to once again pursue music fulltime.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://indofunksatish.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/indofunksatish
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/indofunksatish
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/indofunksatish