Dance to the EDM tune

The setting is an upmarket nightspot in Delhi. Bobbing heads and flailing arms fill up a dance floor lit up by pink, blue and green. The sound system is so good that if you stand close enough to the speakers your body can feel the tiny tremors of sonic vibrations. For those expecting Bollywood remixes and hip-hop, this night is a disappointment. There are no familiar words to sing along to or snazzy moves to pull off on the floor.The music is an organised progression of beats and beeps, mindless for the less educated, moving for the cohorts. No requests for Black Eyed Peas or worse, Akon, are being entertained.
Welcome to the world of EDM or electronic dance music, a curious amalgamation of lifestyle and music. This is music that is created electronically on the computer, with synthesizers, for a night clublike setting or for dance-based entertainment. Knobs, controls and software do what a 20-piece orchestra did years ago.
India is no stranger to EDM. It may not have a mass base but it has flourished in small urban pockets and on the beaches of Goa for the last 20 years. People associated this music with drugs and EDM was seen as a bad influence on the youth. Hippy raves have long been associated with peace-and-love idealism and psychedelic consciousness, a much-criticised after-effect of the use of psychedelic drugs. It’s no wonder that the deep, pulsing beats raised eyebrows. But times, as Bob Dylan sang, they are a changing. Today, thanks to the Internet explosion, people in India know that EDM isn’t just about dopey trance parties but that it includes a subset of genres like techno, house, progressive house, drum and bass to name a few.
The constant presence of an international artist — read DJ — in an Indian city every week is a sign that the taste for EDM is growing. In the last six months, India has seen some of the world’s best and most popular DJs arrive here on whistle-stop tours — Infected Mushroom, Sasha, Sultan, Bob Sinclair, Nick Warren, Edward Maya and Paolo Mojo, to name just a few. Equally important is the emergence of EDM-specific record labels and Sunburn, India’s first-ever EDM festival. Apart from introducing Indian ears to new sounds, they have allowed Indian DJs and acts to experiment and chop and change things a bit. Bollywood, too, has finally accepted that electronic music has its uses, hence the remix culture, although whether that’s a good thing or not is still up for discussion.
The group Jalebee Cartel, who often open for international acts in India, know how difficult it is to break free of EDM stereotypes. “Electronic dance music has so much negativity attached to it in India,” says Arjun Vagale, Jalebee’s founding member from Dortmund, a stop in the group’s two-month-long German tour, which saw them perform at the Love Parade festival (see box). “The culture of EDM is a positive one. Its aim is to get people together. It’s slowly but surely picking up in India as people realise that dance music is serious business.”
Jalebee Cartel are India’s biggest EDM success. They are the only Indian act whose tracks have featured on Beatport charts, which is the online store for international EDM music, and whose track Tough Cookie was licensed by Nokia for their Navigator TV advertisement. “When we started playing three or four years ago, we made it clear that if you don’t like what we play, you should go home,” says Vagale. “Thankfully people liked what they heard. There is a whole culture of electronic music that we’re trying to promote and build and surprisingly, the audience has been very receptive.”
More than 10 years ago, another group, MIDIval Punditz, performed at Glastonbury in 1997, and were applauded for their Indian fusion-inspired electronica. But it wasn’t until 2001 when Mira Nair’s award-winning Monsoon Wedding hit theatres that the uninitiated got a taste of the electric melodies that Gaurav Raina and Tapan Raj were creating. Fabric (Aaja Sawariya) was the perfect example of a classical melody shaken and stirred with electronica. But it was the musical success of another Hindi movie, Karthik Calling Karthik, for which the Punditz along with Karsh Kale composed the background score, that made them a more familiar name in India.
“We didn’t even have an album out when Monsoon Wedding released,” says Raj, an engineer. “We were doing Cyber Mehfil and there was a word-of-mouth buzz about what we were trying to do, but Monsoon Wedding was like an explosion. And yes, being welcomed in Bollywood was a great thing for Indian electronica. There’s nothing quite like a hit film to raise your popularity.”
The Punditz are not an EDM act in the strictest sense. “Part of what we do is EDM but we are what you would call an electronica act,” Raj says, distancing himself from the web of disorder that EDM finds itself in in India. “Dance music suffers from image problems, while we have electric ghazals and our music is intended for listening.” The force behind the wellknown and well-attended Cyber Mehfil — a drum-and-bass-inspired evening — the Delhi duo are perhaps the most accomplished Indian electronica act with a wide international audience thanks to their tracks being used in American shows like Prison Break and Six Feet Under. As recently as this summer, Xbox and PlayStation addicts might have heard their song Atomizer on the EA Sports 2010 World Cup South Africa soundtrack.
A regular name in world music festivals around the world, the Punditz’ sound — Indian folk and classical music flecked with synthesizer beats — is unique. “There’s a lot of acceptance and demand now,” says Raj. “Earlier it was restricted to where there was an Indian populace, but now there’s a lot of excitement about our sound and what we do, and it has a lot to do with the fact that people have heard snatches of our music in a TV show or on a compilation. The EA FIFA 2010 soundtrack helped us get millions of listeners, and that’s just phenomenal.”
But how far has the Indian clubbing scene come? Most clubs feed their patrons on a steady diet of remixes and noise that shelters under the chic umbrella of EDM. DJ Sanjay Dutta who has been pushing the envelope of house music in Kolkata and the country for two decades has been at the receiving end of club owners trying to make a quick buck, but he, and a few others, have managed to stick around, carving a dedicated following for themselves.
“Everyone wants to make money,” he says. “Very few club owners have the gumption to stick their neck out to play serious house or EDM. They would rather call a DJ Aqeel, sell their alcohol and make some quick money, without giving any thought or respect to the music that is being dished out. Sadly, Indian masses will never like house music or EDM because of stupid event managers. The stuff that you hear in the name of house is sometimes atrocious. Some idiot DJ Nathu Ram agrees to play for Rs 5,000 and spins such hideousness that it’s a torture to listen. People will never want to hear house ever again and you can’t blame them. Music is like food. It needs specialization and care.”
Even Raj agrees that instead of faulting the audience, radio stations, TV channels and clubs need to change their programming. “If you don’t give people different sounds and genres of music then they will never know,” he says. “The Indian audience is open-minded and very receptive. We have amazing talent in India but most of it will never make it big because record labels are afraid or not interested.”
“Most people don’t genuinely enjoy house or EDM, they are there because it’s the in-thing,” is G-force Arjun’s take on the clubbing scene. A young member
of Jalebee Cartel, he makes an important point: Bollywood remixes don’t help EDM’s image. “At the end of the day, remove the vocals from a Bollywood remix and it’s like any commercial house track. They are using the technology and it sounds like what we do but it’s so different.”
Dutta couldn’t agree more. “Bollywood remixes are just extreme mediocrity reaching out to the broadest audience possible,” he says. “I have zero respect for the remix culture. It might be a fantastic way to catch attention and they are very popular but it just goes to prove that mediocrity sells in India. Remix producers are thieves. Personally, if I make a track, I would like someone like MIDIval Punditz to make a dub-step remix. Their work in Karthik Calling Karthik was brilliant and original.”
Another problem, and perhaps at the root of it all, is the lack of good clubs in the country, with the exception of the ultra-hip Blue Frog in Mumbai which gets a vigorous nod of approval from every musician and DJ in the country and outside. The search for Blue Frog’s Delhi franchise has so far been fruitless. “Bangalore is perhaps the best city in the country to play EDM and it’s just sad that the rules don’t allow for more flexibility,” says Dutta. “Delhi has the potential. It has the crème de la crème but Blue Frog in Mumbai is just doing a fantastic job.”
Hopefully in the not-so-far future, the annual Sunburn fest will spawn monthly festivals and clubs will not think twice about organising a house night. Till then we have Akon to smack Follow us on Twitter for more stories