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Uday Benegal
Uday Benegal is one of India’s most influential independent musicians. Best known as the lead singer and founder of India’s leading rock band, Indus Creed, Uday began his journey in the mid-’80s with one of India’s earliest groups, Rock Machine. With those two pioneering bands, he blazed trails across India and abroad through the ’90s. Along with touring the (then) USSR in 1988, he won an Asia-wide MTV Video Music Award for the Indus Creed song “Pretty Child,” performed live with Guns ‘N Roses guitarist Slash, shared the stage with Bon Jovi, and played at Peter Gabriel’s prestigious WOMAD festival in the UK.
In 1999, Uday moved to New York with his new Indo-rock band Alms for Shanti, with whom he performed across New York City’s clubs and at festivals in the US, Canada and India. In 2008, Uday moved back to India and re-entered the country’s newly exploding music scene, regrouping with his old band Indus Creed. In 2012 they released their album, “Evolve” (Uday wrote and composed all the songs, including the hit track “Fireflies”), which was mixed by the Grammy-nominated mixing engineer Tim Palmer, renowned for his work with Pearl Jam, U2, Ozzy Osbourne, Mark Knopfler and Tears for Fears. In 2013, Indus Creed were awarded Best Band at the Jack Daniel’s Rock Awards and a year later were bestowed with Vh1’s first ever Hall of Fame award.
Uday has sung and composed numerous ad jingles and sang “Life Is Crazy” for the Bollywood movie Wake Up Sid. In addition to his wide-ranging music career, he is also a prolific writer and has written for a number of publications in the US and India, including The Village Voice, Time Out New York, GQ India, Forbes India, Rolling Stone India, Midday, Tehelka and Man’s World.
Uday Benegal is one of India’s most influential independent musicians. Best known as the lead singer and founder of India’s leading rock band, Indus Creed, Uday began his journey in the mid-’80s with one of India’s earliest groups, Rock Machine. With those two pioneering bands, he blazed trails across India and abroad through the ’90s. Along with touring the (then) USSR in 1988, he won an Asia-wide MTV Video Music Award for the Indus Creed song “Pretty Child,” performed live with Guns ‘N Roses guitarist Slash, shared the stage with Bon Jovi, and played at Peter Gabriel’s prestigious WOMAD festival in the UK.
In 1999, Uday moved to New York with his new Indo-rock band Alms for Shanti, with whom he performed across New York City’s clubs and at festivals in the US, Canada and India. In 2008, Uday moved back to India and re-entered the country’s newly exploding music scene, regrouping with his old band Indus Creed. In 2012 they released their album, “Evolve” (Uday wrote and composed all the songs, including the hit track “Fireflies”), which was mixed by the Grammy-nominated mixing engineer Tim Palmer, renowned for his work with Pearl Jam, U2, Ozzy Osbourne, Mark Knopfler and Tears for Fears. In 2013, Indus Creed were awarded Best Band at the Jack Daniel’s Rock Awards and a year later were bestowed with Vh1’s first ever Hall of Fame award.
Uday has sung and composed numerous ad jingles and sang “Life Is Crazy” for the Bollywood movie Wake Up Sid. In addition to his wide-ranging music career, he is also a prolific writer and has written for a number of publications in the US and India, including The Village Voice, Time Out New York, GQ India, Forbes India, Rolling Stone India, Midday, Tehelka and Man’s World.