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Desi beats
Siddharth Sharma
  The past few years have
seen international music festivals flooding India with genres beyond
Bollywood, Pop and Bhangra. The Club and Lounge music culture has also
supported this change that grew not only in the metros but also in
smaller cities all across India. If we look back, music always grew
with the youth. Keeping this in mind, new artists have been quite
successful in developing styles that would attract the youth. Today,
musicians are no longer afraid to experiment, as there is a ready
audience and market for it. Fusion has always attracted and impressed
the youth. For example, (standup comedian) Vir Das’s Band Alien
Chutney that fused comedy with Rock music. Nucleya (Udyan Sagar is a
music producer /performer from Delhi) who fused Indian street sounds
with electronic music. Bandish Projekt (Mayur Narvekar) from Mumbai
has a versatile way to deal with electronica and Indian classical
music. Shaa’ir and Func (comprising Monica Dogra and Randolph
Correia) are fusing western vocals with Indian rhythm patterns.
 Swarathma, known for their satirical style and The Raghu Dixit Project
for their "very Indian" flavours. Thanks to new music labels
burgeoning, there are a lot of independent artists flowing in. Television also played a
major role in this process. Music videos by a lot of Indie bands and
artists got placed on to major video-cum-music channels like MTV and
VH1 alongside Pop and other international hits. This, in a way,
encouraged the viewers to listen to new styles. Recently, I was in
Delhi to attend the NH7 Weekender (a major music festival) that had
six different stages dedicated to different styles of music and
everyone among the crowd wanted to visit every stage and apparently
loved all styles of music. This shows that the youth likes to hear a
variety of music and is open to all styles of music.
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