The dance floor was going mental. Eight hundred clubbers roared and raised their sweaty hands in unison towards the DJ console as Armin van Buuren, the world’s number one DJ, took over the decks one night in November. Twisting basslines and snatches of melody bounced around the massive 6,000-sq ft Hard Rock CafĂ© in Lower Parel.
Among the footstompers was 27-year-old Anand Kamble, who had been laughed at by a friend only six months ago when the travel manager suggested that van Buuren might tour India. “‘Not even in your wildest dreams,” Kamble’s friend told him.
Kamble’s dreams are coming true, and how. When you weren’t looking, Mumbai’s electronic dance music scene began to shoot off into the sky. Every month, at least 25 electronic music artists drop sets in Mumbai, performing a rainbow of genres like house, dubstep and psy trance. The venues that host them range from posh clubs like Dragonfly in Nariman Point to Raw, a club past Vasai on an isolated stretch of Ghodbunder Road. It isn’t only the clubbers who are revelling in the music. Nightclub owners and promoters, liquor and energy drinks companies are all working enthusiastically to keep the great Bombay beat bazaar growing.
The rewards aren’t insubstantial. Van Buuren’s gig earned the organisers Rs 24 lakh on gate receipts alone. Within a week of the Dutch DJ’s performance, 1,200 psychedelic trance fans packed Enigma at the JW Marriott in Juhu to listen to Israeli psychedelic trance duo Infected Mushroom. Each fan coughed up Rs 1,200 at the gate, translating into sales of Rs 15 lakh –and that was before bar sales.
Matan Schabracq, one of the partners at suburban lounge Zenzi, has seen the city go from only a couple of bars playing electronic music four years ago to the genre now dominating DJ sets in nightclubs. “Electronic music is so ubiquitous that you now have to seek out Bollywood music,” he said.
Leading the electronic boom is Submerge, which was started in 2002 as a dedicated house music night by DJ couple Pearl and Nikhil Chinapa, with their friend Hermit Sethi. Twenty people showed up for their first night at basement club Rock Bottom in Juhu in November 2002. “The plan was that Pearl would DJ, Nikhil would jump around like a monkey and I would look cool,” said Sethi. Five years later, that one-off night has grown into a firm with networks in seven cities. Submerge organises 15 events every month, has a website with 13,800 registered members (Kamble is one of them), and its seven employees deal with tasks such as artist management, brand association and licensing. Sethi wears the title of brand manager, Submerge.
For club owners across the country, hosting nights like Submerge and promoting DJ acts makes a lot of commercial sense. Established DJs in Mumbai charge anywhere between Rs 20,000 and Rs 60,000 a night, depending on the size of the event and the time of the year (October to February is season time). With international DJs, prices shoot up to Rs 75,000 up to Rs five lakh for middle-tier DJs, and between Rs 10 and 20 lakh for headliners like Armin van Buuren, Paul van Dyk and John Digweed. Firms like Submerge subcontract DJs to venues across the country, and enter into revenue-share arrangements for expenses like international flight tickets. “Alcohol sponsors save venues the cost of booze in exchange for promotion, and at other times chip in with finance,” said Sethi. Recognising the potential of electronic music in India, Defected Records, the world’s biggest house music label, launched a four-city tour in association with Submerge in April.
No one quite imagined that the scene would grow so huge when Ketan Kadam set up Fire ’n’ Ice, Mumbai’s first superclub, in 1999. Fire ’n’ Ice regularly flew down international acts and also pioneered themed nights through the week, a concept that most city nightspots still follow. Kadam said that the Tuesday electronic music nights earned him Rs four lakh – he made Rs eight lakh over the weekend – but this was before the genre exploded into the market.
Today, the Friday house music night at Aurus in Juhu is estimated to make anywhere between Rs five lakh and Rs ten lakh, depending on the DJ’s skill, talent and reputation. The event draws in an average of 400-600 people each week, each of whom spend a minimum of Rs 1,000. The event is so popular that Dharmesh Karmokar, vice president (fine dining), said that the bar is forced to shut its gates by midnight because it gets as packed as a local train. “We have a strict couples-only policy and our demographic is 25-to-36-year-olds, but we’re full-up regularly beyond capacity,” he said.
In Bandra, Poison’s Wednesday Ibiza nights pack in at least 300-500 people with guest DJs, said DJ Aqeel. Each of them pay a Rs 1,500 entry free. Across town in Parel, Blue Frog’s weekend house music night averages revenues of between Rs six and eight lakh. The increasing profitability of electronic music has resulted in a practice many partygoers couldn’t have imagined until recently: venues like the Grand Hyatt’s China House in Santa Cruz, Blue Frog, and Dragonfly in Nariman Point have all shut out Bollywood music.
The boom at home has propelled some city DJs to find a place on the international circuit. Along with Pearl, DJs like Kris Correya and Ritesh D’souza, who performs as DJ Nasha, have performed at clubs in France, the UK and New York. DJ Arnold Misquitta has been producing tunes that rank highly on charts kept by beatport.com, an online music store.
It’s taken Mumbai’s nightlife scene a long time to get here. The late ’90s were marked by an underground psychedelic trance scene, with parties being held on the outskirts of the city. There was also drum ’n’ bass-inspired music of Bhavishyavani Collective, which held gigs in seedy suburban nightclubs. But the club scene was dominated by Bollywood music and Indi-pop. Mumbai’s DJs were mining Bollywood hits from the past, isolating the vocals to loop over dance tracks by artists like Erasure and 2 Unlimited.
In 1998, the first Disco Mixing Championship to test the technical proficiency of DJs on turntables was organised in Mumbai.
A year later, Times Music logged on as a co-sponsor and took it over in 2000. They renamed the event the Times War of the DJs, rewarding the winner with recording contracts and music videos. But winners found themselves tied down by knotty contracts and were expected to deliver remixes of popular Bollywood tracks on tight deadlines.
Ironically, those commercial remixes have opened Mumbai’s ears to more-esoteric house music beats. Bollywood remixes are often directly lifted from international house music hits, so even clubbers unfamiliar with electronic music have, at some point, grooved to the beats. When the remix industry became saturated with Bollywood composer Himesh Reshammiya’s tunes (he did 14 films in 2005, following it up with 12 more in 2006), clubbers went looking for a new sound.
It’s the beat that turned Kamble, who attended the van Buuren gig in November, from being an alternative rock fan into a house music aficionado. “I found out about Submerge through the internet and was hooked on to the beat,” he said. DJ Pearl agrees that electronic music wins most of its fans with one-time exposure. “If you’re put in a club with a half-decent DJ, you’re likely to get hooked,” she said.
Pearl’s dream is to organise a Mumbai equivalent of Submerge’s year-old Sunburn festival in Goa, at which over 30 artists from across the globe gig for three days by the beach. She said: “The day Mumbai’s scene would have truly arrived is when we have 15 festivals like these happening simultaneously in a city.”
DJs Nikhil & Pearl
Carving out an alternative dance scene across India couldn’t have been an easy task, but DJs Nikhil Chinapa, 35, and his wife Pearl, have successfully created the nation’s first network of clubbers. Her carefully constructed media image means that she never reveals her real name, but we can tell you that besides DJing, she’s also good at painting.
Style: House, progressive house, minimal, techno, trance.
First gig Nikhil: At Rain in 2001 I played for free with 12 LPs and three CDs. I had no idea how to mix but no one else had my kind of music. Pearl: I played for free at this Delhi club Someplace Else in 1999.
Most important thing you’ve learned this year?
Nikhil: Not all cheese is stinky and tastes like it died and crawled up its own ass. Pearl: Learn more next year.
DJ Pramz
Pursuing law by day and honing his music skills in the dead of the night, 27-year-old Pramod Sippy has worked residencies at several city clubs. During his reign at the Phoenix Mills lounge White (from 2002-’04), he established a weekly tradition of quality house music sounds that few contemporaries could emulate. “Every DJ who is in charge of his dance floor is a celebrity in his own right,” he said.
Style: Minimal tech, tech house, techno.
First gig: A wedding party at a banquet hall for Rs 800 in 1997.
Weirdest thing you’ve seen on the dance floor? A short bald chap in shades, dancing with a mop, performing house-keeping moves.
Most important thing you’ve learned this year? We are all human but strangely many people lack humanity.
DJ Nasha
One half of DJ duo Order of the Essence, 36-year-old Ritesh D’souza, who performs as DJ Nasha and BassSociety (for his dubstep nights), is one of Mumbai’s first DJs to go international. He’s hooked up with Indian drum ’n’ bass DJ collectives in the UK and the Sub Swara dubstep crew in New York.
Style Dubstep, breakbeat, drum ’n’ bass.
Known for His 2002 remix of the “Flute Fantasy” track from Hero, a 1983 film with Jackie Shroff and Meenakshi Sheshadri.
First gig At the Grand Canyon in Kumaria Presidency for a monthly salary of about Rs 1,000.
Most important thing you’ve learned this year? Definitely look for exit points at a party.
Most memorable gig? Playing at the Burning Man Festival in the Nevada desert to a sea of people.
DJ Reji
Electronic music portal Indivibe.com’s artist of the month for December, 27-year-old Reji Ravindran is one of Mumbai’s most in-form DJs. He’s a DJ professor (he’s taught 500 students in the past six years), promotes One Sunday, a monthly night at Khar club H20 to find new talent and encourage fresh sounds, is skilled in the art of turntablism and plays smashing house music sets across the country.
Style Breaks, techno.
First gig Spinning at the local parish fete in Marol in 1999, for free, of course.
Weirdest thing you’ve seen on the dance floor? A woman doing a Sridevi-style snake dance on the floor against the walls and the speakers.
Most important thing you’ve learned this year? Keep the faith.
DJ Ryan Beck
A maverick who’s left a trail of success at every club residency he’s undertaken, 37-year-old Ryan Beck is the original poster boy of Mumbai’s DJ scene. Beck combines his unusual name and good looks with an obsessive mastery of the craft.
Style House, Euro trance, trance.
First gig ever I got a monthly salary of Rs 900 for DJing at the Piano Bar in China Garden restaurant.
Weirdest thing you’ve seen on the dance floor? A fully dressed bridal entourage that stepped out of the banquet hall at the JW Marriott hotel in Juhu, entered Enigma, and danced to my psy trance set for two hours.
Most important thing you’ve learned this year? Being versatile is the key.
DJ Arnold
Arnold Misquitta, 25, is one of Mumbai’s most talented yet undiscovered gems. His first single “Am I?” released by Russia’s Carica Records in January catapulted him to the charts kept by Beatport, an online music store. Misquitta has also put a prominent Bandra street on the global dance map: DJs across the world are playing the tune “Carter Road”.
Style Techno, progressive house.
Weirdest thing you’ve seen on the dance floor? This guy at Club Elevate in Delhi dancing like it was someone’s wedding to techno and progressive house. He thanked me for a great time at the end of it.
Most important thing you’ve learned this year? Smoking cigarettes in a club is hazardous to health but smoking on polluted roads increases your life span.
DJ Asad
Asad Zaidi started out as a DJ in the ’90s, establishing a successful DJ duo and business partnership with his friend Hussain Babbai (DJ Whosane!) as well as organising the earliest psy trance and house music nights at clubs across the city.
Style Electro, minimal tech, progressive house, psy trance, trance. Known for Initiating the Dance Ganesh festival in 1999 with DJ Whosane! The Berlin Love Parades-style gathering of revellers dance to electronic music en route to immersing the idol.
Weirdest thing you’ve seen on the dance floor? On a searing day at the seven-day psy trance Boom Festival in Portugal, the fire brigade was called in. Just as everyone was looking around for the fire, the fire fighters sprayed people on the dance floor so they would cool off.
DJ M.Mat
Mathieu Josso forms one-third of the newest avatar of DJ collective Bhavishyavani Future Soundz, with Charles Nuez (DJ Charlee) and Cyril Michaud (DJ Loopkin). Josso was first introduced to the old guard of the Bhavishyavani crew in 2005, after organising a tour for house guru Laurent Garnier: “We decided to join forces instead of working in our own corners.”
Style House, techno, drum ’n’ bass.
First gig ever We rented a farm in Britanny for a student party when I was 21. Weirdest thing you’ve seen on the dance floor? A clubber performing old school Michael Jackson moves to house legend Laurent Garnier’s music at Kamala Mills in Mumbai in 2005.
Most important thing you’ve learned this year? Never postpone pest control appointments for your apartment.
DJ Kris
Kris Correya, 36, is one of the city’s most influential DJs, mentoring the current crop of top beatsmiths early in their careers and leading the pack with residencies at Razzberry Rhinoceros, J49, Black Out and now at Zenzi. “I haven’t won any Grammys yet so don’t even think of calling me a veteran,” he said.
Style Breakbeat, minimal, techno, drum ’n’ bass, dubstep.Known for His four-year stint at Zenzi, where Mumbai has been introduced to several cutting-edge artists and genres.
First gig A private party at a Versova beach bungalow in ’93 for the owner of Lion Pencils. I was paid Rs 500.
Most important thing you’ve learned this year? Only God knows the future of electronic music and I am not God.