Cuppas, located opposite Century Commercial Bank, has been organizing the open mic for almost a year now. Yuki Poudyal, who started Cuppas in 2011, shares, “There’s no electricity most of the time, so we decided to create an ambience with candlelight along with music-making.” [break]
In the course of around a dozen deeyo nights, Cuppas, which began as a coffee hub, turned into a community-oriented place. Poudyal herself was initially reluctant about performing but has played basic guitar and sung Alanis Morissette, Green Day and Eric Clapton during the sessions.
On the 15th of every month, customers gather around the right corner of the Cuppas vicinity to listen to amateurs who haven’t had the chance to perform outside their college crowd or friends’ circle. This is a place where music doesn’t have to be professional; and off-keys and goof-ups aren’t a big deal. Everybody sings along, claps and the environment is anything but intimidating.
Pratick Paudel, 20, an aspiring musician who also happens to be a local of Putali Sadak, has been a regular performer at Cuppas since the last five months. He plays his originals ‘Trishna,’ ‘Gori’ and covers Ray LaMontagne, Damien Rice, John Mayer and Mumford & Sons frequently.
His brother Sanket has been accompanying his older brother for around four months and is the youngest singer at Cuppas. “I sing soundtracks of the latest Bollywood movies out of which I like ‘Kyon’ from ‘Barfi’ the most. I also sing my brother’s original compositions,” says this 12-year-old.
The encouraging environment lets an audience be a performer without expecting them to be topnotch.
Shashank Paudel, 20, who is studying Arts at Ratna Rajya Laxmi Campus, is known as ‘Sauce’ among the regulars at Cuppas. He has also performed standup comedy which is a recent addition to deeyo nights.
“Cuppas is like family, it’s not very difficult to perform in front of people there, the owners themselves participate and encourage you,” says Sauce who last performed his original standup comedy on how people work and “a little bit about the country.”
Abhisekh Maskey, 23, says, “I’m not much of a singer but at Cuppas, I end up singing my heart out.” Since 2011, Maskey has been covering Albatross, John Mayer, The Calling and Bon Jovi for the audience there.
For the comedy night which started in October but hasn’t been taking place regularly, Maskey performed stand-up on the usage of broken English. Performers are audience-sensitive and comedy often includes current contexts.
“Some of these guys will tell you a joke you already know but they will spice it up with their own details and perform in an interesting way so that it doesn’t become redundant at all,” says Yuki Poudyal.
Alok Bastakoti, 19, was nervous at first; he didn’t know a lot of people at the cafe. “With encouragement, I began covering Pearl Jam and Nepathya,” he added.
Anyone and everyone can take over the dais at Cuppas and sing and crack jokes.
They are soon coming up with ‘Coffee with Conversation’ which will be a youth-oriented community platform where people can talk about things they think are important and discuss and bring different perspectives to an idea.
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