The New Glocal DJs

“ Till about three years ago,nobody really took Indian DJs seriously. But with the access to the Internet,we began uploading our music and found that these were being received well in the West. I started uploading my music sitting in the small town of Kalyani,a town located more than 100 km from Kolkata,” says Abhishek.

Today,every club and pub proudly proclaims that they have a DJ,of international repute of course,playing. Every Bollywood song,and indeed songs from the West too,have a million remixes. “When the club culture started in India,nobody in the country knew what a DJ was. Bringing in DJs from abroad helped to a certain extent,because it exposed people to electronic music,but it was also detrimental because club-owners and sponsors wouldn’t give the few Indian DJs there were a chance,” says Abhishek.

But with electronic music becoming more and more popular,small clubs and discotheques started hiring the Indian DJs. Today,at the Sunburn festival in Goa our country boasts of one the best electronic dance music festivals in the world. But most DJs were restricted to their own city,and their own club scene. Feeling claustrophobic,some decided to shift base,often moving abroad. Abhishek is one such person,who briefly decided to shift to Birmingham,coming back to India only in 2007. “We realised what kind of music the world loves,and it coincided perfectly with what audiences liked back home. In the UK,I found a lot of desi DJs,but I was accorded a lot more respect,because I actually had a base in Indian music,” he says.

Some cities had it easier than most. Khalid Kazeem,a DJ based in Chennai,says,“DJs in Delhi and Mumbai could learn from the foreigners; we had no such option. We had to do it all on our own,and even after we learnt the art,there are few places down South where we can play. Now there are too many DJs,and too few venues.” But then,the country saw a competition being held that completely revolutionised electronic music,while also putting its artists under the global microscope for the first time – ‘War of the DJs’. “The competition was really good because it helped DJs from all over the country get together and mix and compare ideas,” says Kazeem. “DJ-ing was not a hobby anymore. We weren’t sidelined as ‘sound guys’ – we were now referred to as what we really were – artistes,” adds Praveen Nair,widely regarded as one of the best Indian DJs in the business.

Abhishek predicts there will be a separate space for Indian DJs in the world scene soon. “There are distinct genre called Israeli trance,Moroccan beat and African beat. I feel in the next few years,there will also be something called Indian Dance Music,” he smiles.