What’s with the rising popularity of electronic music in India?

From sand dunes to grand palaces as the venues for electronic music festivals, we find out why new-age India has made electronic music its anthem

It’s a known fact that we are shaped, to an extent, by the music we listen to.  For instance, the Jazz Age of the 1920s and ’30s was all brass bands, swing, ragtime and a collective sound for freedom from those threatening human expression. In the 1960s and ’70s, when the global climate was smeared by wars in the East and West, it was the music of The Beatles and Janis Joplin that rose from the ashes. Meanwhile, the capitalist era of the 1980s and ’90s popularised heavy metal music and mosh pits that became safe places to exorcise the helplessness and angst felt among the people. Given the rise of electronic music in the country, it might paint a picture of the generation that defines new-age India. 

A Judgement-Free Zone

Simply put, electronic music is a broad genre pillared on electronic, digital and circulatory music instruments and technology. Going by this definition, Bollywood and pop Indian music began trickling the subconscious of the Indian youth in the ’90s–digital sounds juxtaposing the Indian music made for groovy blockbusters. However, the real admission of this counter-culture genre was when the likes of MIDIval Punditz, Nikhil Chinapa and Nucleya began leading the underground music scene. All of a sudden, a small yet  passionate community of changemakers began to practise their art in small public spaces.

“I started organising electronic dance music parties more than a decade ago, when I stopped enjoying the ones I was attending as part of the underground scene here,” says Prateek Pandey, founder of sLick and DGTL India. “I travelled across  Europe to experience such music before returning to build these experiences in India. I had no idea at the time that it would blow up in this manner. There was a lot of resistance early on;  it wasn’t always sustainable. But constant innovation and the belief that audiences in India will eventually respond kept me going.”

Mayank Bhatt, CEO Impressario Hospitality (the parent company for antiSOCIAL), offers a perspective on how the genre rose with time. “It was somewhere between 2008 and  2011 when venues like Blue Frog began institutionalising underground parties. From there, it reached several other nightclubs, you saw EDM transcending into techno and now it’s all around us.”

The beginnings of electronic music is not any different from most  other genres which, at the start, had its  roots among those that “haven’t been represented, like in Detroit and early Germany where the warehouse culture took off as a safe space for many to let loose and express themselves,” says DJ and producer Kohra. 

Talking about what makes electronic music so appealing to young India, Pandey says, “Electronic dance music is a choice for those who wish to feel free on a dance floor, for those who wish to be free of judgment.” Look at any image of electronic music rooted in pop culture, and Pandey’s words resonate deeply as you scroll through visuals of free-spirited youth of the country dancing away.

Bhatt says electronic music gives individuals the opportunity “to be themselves on the dance floor, to assert their gender, their dreams.” It’s the generation that gave us ‘YOLO’ (a cultural acronym for ‘You Only Live Once’) and it’s these very patrons that “refuse to be judged,  dress the way they wish to, and want to live their lives on their own terms,” an observation Bhatt has made over the last decade. 

Founder of Qilla Records, Madhav Shorey, better known on the circuit as Kohra, has an interesting insight into the mindset of the country’s youth. “The young population forms a significant part of the demographic. They are a large, well-travelled audience that enjoys spending on experiences that bring them instant gratification, like a festival with great music versus investing in traditional assets.” He adds, “This is a new young India: They are wiser, more aware and conscious of how they are spending; they wish to spend on experiences rather than material goods.” 

Digital Gaga

What makes an anthem an anthem? The answer lies in numbers. The obvious algorithm tells us that the more people sing a song often enough, the louder it sounds across time, in turn, making it an anthem. As all we hear today at nightclubs and house parties are the now-so familiar digital sounds sans words, the algorithm leads one to assert that electronic music is a top contender for the music that will be known as the one to define the generation that also survived the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pandey, who has interacted with thousands of Indian youth that attend his festivals and gigs, mentions, “The pandemic has a significant role to play here,” while talking about one of the recent reasons for the boom in patrons. It is obvious that a generation that battled long-term isolation would value being part of culture where electronic music festivals with magnificent productions bring together thousands of people from across the world, be it in a desert (Burning Man), at a cliffside of a beach (Sunburn) or a palace (Magnetic Fields).

A culture is also defined by linguistics, and the popularity of the word ‘gig’ that fits perfectly well in the lexicon of the youth is yet another observation of how the digital generation has embraced digital electronic music. 

Another key factor to be considered while studying the rise of electronic music in India is to simply look at how information is being transmitted today. Pandey rightfully points out, “Music in today’s age is consumed over the Internet. A lot of electronic dance music comes with high production value of festivals, making the shareability quotient high, which, in turn, gives it a cool quotient. Currently all the festivals have large stages for electronic music performances.” Affirming this, Bhatt says,, “Some of the biggest stages at music festivals across India are techno stages, including the most recent one at Supersonic (music festival).”

Electronic music is also evolving quickly, which appeases to the nature of today’s fast-moving, constantly evolving generation. Pandey says, “The constantly evolving nature of the genre and its sub-genres makes it exciting for people. If a sub-genre gets dated, it simply becomes redundant, like in the case of progressive house music, which was something I personally loved listening to a decade ago. But now it is irrelevant as electronic music artists evolved quickly to create newer sub-genres that keep people hooked to the space.” Appealing to this very nature of the generation, Bhatt shares, “The genre has evolved from psytrance (a genre of electronic music believed to have emerged in Goa) to electronic dance music to organic house to many more,” further reiterating that our generation respects quick evolution. 

New-age India Is Experiential & Non-Conformist

While Electronic music as a genre might be considered the choice of the privileged Indian youth, it is slowly traversing the huge gaps in class. “Look at Berlin as inspiration,” says Shorey. “There is no class divide in warehouses; look at the Love Parade where you had thousands celebrating life, irrespective of class, gender or language.”  

Expounding on the future of the genre, Pandey says, “While social media gives us the impression that electronic music has arrived, it is still not deeply entrenched into our culture, like the way it is in Europe. In India, we are still battling regulations on laws and social taboos like consuming alcohol, but I can see the shift happen with the younger  generation (25 years and below, to be specific) who earn to enjoy themselves at festivals and club shows.” They are driven by immediate gratification and carry a sense of peril when looking at the future, and consumer research across industries confirms this. “It’s a generation that takes on a job to spend the money they have earned immediately rather than look at long-term security,” says  Pandey, who interacts with hundreds from this generation on an almost daily basis.

While the generation gets labelled as one of non-conformists, Kohra believes that the tag extends to electronic music. “Partly rooted in heavy metal, electronic music is music without words and is hence non-conformist from that standpoint. It brings together people having individual experiences. It is not bound by structure;  you can have a day-time experience at a sound bath led by electronic music. It respects individualism and fluidity, allowing people to be as they please. That is true freedom.” 

For the Love of Sensory Novelty

“There is going to be yet another shift in this space. I see a lot of small boutique festivals mushrooming across the country, and not just in Goa and Pune but cities like Kolkata too. I see many more sub-genres and artists taking to the stage in tier-2 and tier-3 cities where there is a huge demand for such music,” says Pandey. 

Kohra, whose Qilla Records has now spent a decade representing a diverse set of electronic music artists, adds a fresh perspective when comparing the music climate in India and Europe. “I love Berlin and have a lot of friends there who tell me that they believe that the genre now lacks novelty considering that the city has been the world’s frontrunner in electronic music for many decades now. But it is still new in India, and that’s what makes it exciting. And as someone who is excited to drive this culture, I am also immersing myself in a lot of community-driven programmes to find local artists who need a platform to share their art in this space.” 

Interact, Unite and Connect

Seeking unity and connection is an ironic feature of a rather individualistic generation, which is seen to be recording higher levels of loneliness than any other generation. ‘Anxiety’ and ‘isolation’ are words that often crop up when speaking of our times, and music festivals are an antidote to this. “I can’t tell you how many people have written to me over the past few years sharing stories of new connections formed, including meeting their life partners at gigs and festivals,” says Pandey. 

There’s much beauty in seeing millions of young Indians huddled together, allowing music to alter their minds, and it seems it is only going to get bigger. According to Bhatt, “Our most recent music festival at antiSocial–Far Out Left–had three stages of music that explored various new-age sub-genres of electronic music, and the response was overwhelming. It showed me the beauty of how quickly people are responding to this style of music.” Being one of the leading venue partners for electronic music records and artists to experiment, antiSocial plans on pushing the envelope further with newer artists and experienced promoters in the coming years.

Bhatt also throws light on the revolutionary nature of the genre, sharing, “While the beginning of the genre in India was restricted to nightclubs as opposed to other parts of the world where warehouses and underground venues were starting points, it is slowly shedding the elite status it once held.” He believes the future of electronic music is promising in India. “Once we have regulations in place with the support of lawmakers, we will see more homegrown talent choosing to stay back in India instead of moving countries to where they will be respected.”

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