Bandari (music project)

Bandari
Origin	Au, Zürich, Switzerland
Genres	New-age music
Years active	1989 1994–present
Labels	AVC
Members	Oliver Schwarz

Bandari is a New-age music project under the Swiss AVC music company. It was founded in 1989 and mainly produces ambient music and meditation music. The project is very well known in China, and their music is widely used in Chinese TV commercials and background music in major public places. Their famous songs include "Annie's Wonderland" and "Moonglow".

History

In 1989, Peter Pozza, who was working in music at the MCS record company, founded the music project Bandari. According to his description, the name Bandari was "casually written down by me". He hired three members: Klaus Löhmer, Michael Rüßmann and Tom Astor to produce and release Bandari's first album "Zwischen Tag & Träum: Musik Zur Entspannung", but in 1991, the company went bankrupt, and Peter Bozza then founded AVC music company to take over the business of the previous company, with the newly formed company focusing on world music and classical compositions. For the first three years, AVC was busy with other projects, and Bandari remained on hold until 1994, when the project was revived and Oliver Schwarz became the project's leader and led the project's creation. In the following years, AVC released many Bandari albums in Switzerland and Germany, such as the album series "Reflections Vol.1-5", "Zeit zum Träumen Vol.1-8" and "Music For Relaxation Vol.1-5", etc.

AVC began to investigate the Chinese music market early. As early as 1996, they released their first record in China through China Record Guangzhou Branch. In 1998, they cooperated with Jingo Records and let Jingo Records distribute a series of records. These records unexpectedly achieved great success in the Chinese market. As of 2013, Bandari's records had sold about 1 million copies in China, and there are also a large number of pirated albums for sale. Bandari has won a large number of Chinese music fans and is regarded by many as one of the representatives of New-age music. Later in 2005, AVC also put many of Bandari's series of music albums on digital music websites such as Apple music and Spotify.

Artistry

According to Peter Pozza's own description, when he founded Bandari, he hoped to play a kind of "quiet, contemplative, and relaxing" popular music. Bandari is famous for its soothing, ethereal music style. They have been described as "the natural sound of the Alps", "like the gentle sea breeze of summer, like the silent spring rain that moistens things, with the almost perfect natural sound of nature". In addition to performing works composed by the project members themselves, they also performed covers of some famous pop songs. Bandari's later albums underwent some "artistic processing", such as adding the sound of running water and wind, which gave listeners a feeling of being in nature, and the style was more inclined to Celtic music.

Controversy

Since Bandari is almost unknown outside China, many Chinese Bandari music fans want to search for Bandari's foreign language information, but find that it is almost impossible to find it. This made "what exactly is Bandari" initially a mystery to many Bandari fans. Some fans believed that Bandari was a lie concocted by Jingo Records and didn't actually exist.

On the other hand, Bandari was also falsely promoted as a band that "hides in the mountains of the Alps", which raised a lot of questions. Peter Pozza himself refuted these rumors, stating that most of Bandari's songs are produced in recording studios in Germany. “Musicians don't necessarily have to hide in the forest to create music.”

External links

• AVC official website

• Bandari discography at Discogs