Social Occasion: All the same, the "unleashing" of Osibisa was more a social occasion than musical. Last year, persistent efforts by an Indian hotel chain to bring in the famed 'Abba' group foundered on the rock of this fiat. By a sudden and stern fiat in 1962, the Reserve Bank of India had banned "commercial performance" by all foreign artistes and musicians. However, last fortnight, the Osibisa's eight-performance Indian tour marked the country's entry into the international rock music circuit. But, for the pop-music-starved Indian audience, it was the best buy across the bargain counter. But, after being unleashed in the capital, the London-based Afro-rock band seemed to have lost most of its fizz.įloundering at the bottom of the charts for five years since their salad days in the mid-'70s, and not heard of in the recent issues of the standard journals of the pop-music industry such as Rolling Stone, the group was hardly ever likely to set the Yamuna on fire. The Rs 30-lakh media blitz, massaged in by the makers of Campa-Cola, culminated in the biggest musical razzle-dazzle that Delhi had ever witnessed. "Osibisa Unleashed": Read the advertisement in newspapers, cinema slides, television spots and hoardings, for three weeks at a stretch.