ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Joshua Agilan aka ‘Vettai Drummer’ is an established figure in the Singapore drum scene, and has been performing and teaching for more than a decade. Joshua is the drummer for the band ‘Veritas’ which he founded in 2012. He goes by the alias ‘Vettai Drummer’ after he performed and recorded for the Vettai 2.0 theme song, a Tamil Drama Hit Series which has a huge following and garnered the largest viewership to date in Singapore and Malaysia. Besides having recorded numerous sessions for famed Mediacorp artistes, Joshua’s expertise includes performing for TV jingles, soundtracks for drama serials and album recordings. Some of Joshua’s notable works would be ‘Vettai 2.0’, ‘Nila Thoonguthu’ & ‘Raaba Ribba’ from the Vettai 2.0 and Janani d/o Madhavan drama series.
His first musical education began at the age of seventeen, when he had the opportunity to study drumming with the “pioneers of the Singapore drum scene”: Gordon Jansen & James Chan. He started off his career working for Yamaha Music Asia as their Drums Specialist at their main showroom located at Plaza Singapura. During his time at Yamaha Music, he was assigned the role of Drum Tech for various drum artistes such as Tommy Aldridge, Kozo Sugauma and Akira Jimbo, just to name a few.
Joshua Agilan has also been invited to be amongst the panel of judges for Singapore’s biggest band competition “Asian Beat”, Quarter and Semi-finals in 2006, 2008, 2010 as well as the Singapore ‘Drum Off’ competition in 2017.
In 2010 and 2011, Joshua attended master classes with world class drummers such as Thomas Lang, Jojo Mayer, Peter Erskine, Dave Weckl, Tommy Igoe, Dennis Chanmbers, Flo Mounier, Kenwood Dennard, Horacio Hernandez, Karl Perazzo, Paul Rekow, Giovanni Hidalgo and Mike Mangini to further hone his skills.
In recent years, Joshua has been conducting many successful workshops for organisations such as SINDA, Yamaha Music Asia, Focal Pro Audio Solutions, PCF Kindergarden, Hwa Chong Institution, various pre-schools, secondary schools, churches and music schools.
Joshua has garnered Distinctions in all of his internationally recognised examinations and professional certifications, such as, Pop Music Theory, Grade 8 Drum Kit, Associate and Licentiate Diplomas by the London College of Music and Rockschool UK. A firm believer & advocate of Life-long learning, Joshua continues to pursue his Fellowship diploma.
Joshua was also the trainer for the Academy of Rock Singapore, Philippines and Myanmar where he spearheaded the drum department conducting training sessions for the teachers to prepare them for their graded exams and diplomas. Joshua also developed an instructional drum kit syllabus for the school apart from managing Drumstruck Studios, a dedicated drum school he founded in 2006 which evolved into a contemporary music school in September 2012. Besides the syllabuses written for Academy of Rock, Joshua also wrote and produced an educational book titled “Drumming for Children”.
Over the years, Joshua has performed with renowned bands such as, Veritas, The love Experiment and Quantum Spring and has appeared in both local and Malaysian newspapers, such as The Straits Times, The New Paper and New Sunday Times. Having had numerous performances, Joshua’s highlight Gig would be ‘Vasantham Live! TV 50 Special’, held at the National Museum on December 21st 2013 which was telecasted on National TV as well as the ‘Anirudh Live in Singapore’ concert which was held at the Max Pavilion @ Singapore Expo to a crowd of 5000 on 26th July 2014.
Joshua has also had exclusive features on info-ed shows on Mediacorp Channel 5 and Vasantham such as, ‘Not the 5 show’, ’Naam’, ‘Friends’, ’Vizhigal’ and ‘Vaazhkai’ where he performed & spoke in length about his career and drumming. He has also been featured on music videos for ‘Vettai 2.0’, ‘Raaba Ribba’, ‘Ilamai Idho’, ‘NeruppuDa’ and ‘Thendral Vanthu’.
