The Underground and the Underdawg

Nearly a year ago, Hanumankind performed at a Boiler Room to mixed reviews, and YouTube comment sections (at the time) were quick to point out the gig’s clash with hanuman jayanti - the festival, not the rapper’s birthday. Last weekend, the prodigal son played independently on the same weekend as another Boiler Room in Bombay, where he upstaged – dare we even say, remade – the idea of the country’s music scene entirely.

We were accustomed to electronic and hip-hop gigs, but not to the chosen venue for both on this particular weekend.

It’s a setting that stood in contrast to the venues we were used to, like the textile mills in South Bombay or the make-shift bar-turned-live music-venues in Bandra-Khar, emulating a ramshackle atmosphere for the rich and beautiful to feel loose and rowdy. NESCO centre (where both the gigs took place), is in Goregaon: a booming suburb off the Western Express Highway in North Mumbai, made up of high-rises, malls, and Film City, with an average demo comprising IT professionals and the upwardly mobile “middle class.” On cue, we heard someone in the crowd go: “Yeh apna Gurgaon vibes hi hai (these are our Gurgaon vibes only).”

Like someone said, “Yeh apna Gurgaon vibes hi hai (these are our Gurgaon vibes only).”

Image Credit: Naman Saraiya & Desiree Saldanha

Boiler Room is a legendary global name. If you know, you know. And all the people who lined up on Saturday afternoon – with doors opening at 3pm – knew. It was Boiler Room’s biggest India outing since their humble debut back in 2016. The kids and the punters showed up in their cyberpunk shades, cut-off tees, and coloured hair, a uniform that is now typical of any techno party (dare we venture far enough to call them raves). We’ve had our fair share of electronic parties, but not like this: at 6 pm, a bunch of kids were seated on the bleachers while hard electro – courtesy an-oddly billed CASHU set – blared inside. Influencers started walking in around 7pm; the tees started coming off around 8pm. There were a lot of “Brooooo”s all around, especially when the MC screamed into the mic, unhinged, like it was a college fest.

“Being at Boiler Room is for most people who wear tees that say BALMAIN upfront,” we heard someone say, dismissively. And true to the 2024 moment, there were more than a few Charli XCX cosplayers (even through BRAT summer is officially fucking over). “This is how we should do techno,” said one attendee, sagely. “In a massive, dark warehouse.” But like most things in Mumbai, everything is bought – the warehouse aesthetic and the general entry pass to BR (2,500 INR a pop). The air conditioning was great. The space was large. The toilets were clean. But did the ravers rave? The word on the street – from people across industries – is that the market is bad and a global recession is incoming (ask anyone who’s had an appraisal review in the last 6-12 months). Which raises the question(s): how are events at this scale (and price points) being held consistently, how are the young’uns affording them, and which young’uns specifically?

“Boiler Room is usually a good vibe but this was my least favourite edition. Barring Octave One, everyone felt bleh. The music was extremely repetitive with an awful sound system,” exclaimed a frustrated Saloni, 25-year-old fashion stylist attending her fourth edition of the series. “We couldn’t understand how to dance to it or when one act ended and the other began.” She also maintains that people didn’t dress the part. Among other complaints from fellow-attendees: Boiler Room in Europe, and even Dekmantel, are way better, and that this is the best one could hope for from Bombay.

Chhab, a DJ on the Boiler Room line-up, later described the experience as “amusing.” “I’ve never played to a room of that size,” they said. “Either way, it was really nice to see an audience that hasn’t heard this side of house and techno interact with this kind of music. I’m hoping we opened a few ears to a new style of electronic music.” Translation: The night’s soundscape forced most patrons out of their comfort zone. Every artist on the lineup was accomplished in their own right, staying true to their customary dark hallucinatory sound — so what changed as far as the veterans were concerned? Was it the bigger crowd size, the lack of adherence to the vibe, or the oddly motionless audience behind the DJs? Perhaps the biggest downer of BR becoming this mainstream was the loss of exclusivity: folks attending because it seems like the place to be. The actual music becomes a minor detail, the “Europe is better” purists are left wanting for more, and the uninitiated rich kids get the requisite hazy pictures for the ‘gram.

Devarshi, a 32-year-old designer and Boiler Room veteran, told us the whole thing gave her “‘Ganpati Bappa Morya’ festive vibes.” Was it the crowd, the lack of in people, or both? “Boiler Room is always supposed to be intimate, lekin babe, idhar bahut commercial hai (this is super commercial).” “We’re ravers”, she says, “but this is NOT it. You remember that Helena Hauff gig? I took off my chaddis there.” The disproportionate number of men in the crowd – despite Absolut’s marketing message around inclusion and diversity – perhaps made such abandon a distant prospect for the night.

One of the most well-organised, well-produced Boiler Rooms, with a crowd size of nearly 4,000 people, thus rang strangely hollow. Maybe it was the inconvenience of the Boiler Room x Absolut top-up cards to purchase booze that broke the trance, maybe it was the diluted cultural signifiers unique to being a Boiler Room enthusiast. As somewhat longtime scene kids, we’ve generally observed that uninitiated audiences in the city love a big production with frills and fancies, and seek a connection with performing artists and their music that often goes beyond four on the floor. The last few hours of unadulterated to-the-point techno without familiar melodies or crowd interaction – which may have evoked euphoria in a city like Berlin – did not spark joy on the Goregaon dancefloor.

There’s the aforementioned recession thing, coupled with changing tides in the cultural discourse. What comprises an authentic scene in a city like Mumbai, and what does inclusion mean outside of Absolute’s definition? One answer: when in Maharashtra, do as Maharashtrians. Perhaps Bamboy’s Boiler Room set from last year, filled with folk influences, Maharashtrian political edge, and frenzied dancing to the drumbeats is what it takes to get larger crowds going. It all boils down to the question: should a subculture expand and adapt to become accessible? Is “the scene” no longer about swimming against the mainstream, but with it? It’s no wonder, then, that the ghost of Hanumankind, both from the past collaboration and the future gig, lingered for those of us who had known and loved this scene forever, especially during its highs.

The internet’s favourite new Mallu boy, rapper Hanumankind (aka Sooraj Cherukat), hit the stage at 8.50 pm on a Sunday night in Mumbai to a crowd of 2,000 – on what was perhaps his most #blessed Onam to date. Regrettably missing out on any sadhya earlier in the day, we found ourselves at a second night out in a row at Goregaon’s NESCO Centre. After the previous night’s experience (a chunk of which we had endured stone-cold sober; possibly a bad idea), we were now asking ourselves: where, if at all, is “the scene” in India? And who gets to be a part of it anymore?

The idea of a unified scene arguably did exist a couple of decades and generic-social-media eras ago. That has since devolved into very, many fragmented scenes of niche sounds, cultures, cliques, nostalgia and a gigantic clusterfuck of a music industry that wants to push I-Pop. Perhaps the fragmentation isn't such a bad thing: not everyone is vying for the same ticket buyers, listenership and demographic per se. This, then, provides more opportunities for niche scenes to be lapped up by the mainstream for extra cred, given the marketability of a dance move, song, incident or a piece of art with cultural capital.

"I’ve been listening to him for years. I’m an OG fan.”

Image Credit: Naman Saraiya & Desiree Saldanha

Hip-hop in India isn’t immune to the fragmentation either. In the six weeks since producer-DJ Kalmi and HMK dropped their single “Big Dawgs” to instant virality, the rapper’s life (and streaming numbers) have been on the up - thanks to an audacious, perhaps contrived, but nevertheless jaw-dropping music video. With co-signs from personal heroes to huge collabs with football clubs, cute covers by kids and Gods, and signing with K.dot’s agency and Capitol Music, Indian hip-hop is arguably undergoing a new phase. One of the first significant ones was in 2018, when Gully Boy enabled Apna Time Aayega t-shirts to replace Being Human ones en masse; another was the rise of politically responsive, anti-caste rap courtesy Arivu, Kinari, Prabh Deep, and more. Even diaspora rap isn’t particularly new – from HEEMS to Priya Ragu. But a diaspora kid who returns home and raps in English, a language that is not only universal but also aspirational in India?

When we got there, one of the first things we saw was the “maut ka kuan” themed bar – the set built to look like the death-defying stunt-well from the Big Dawgs music video. Overheard, in many iterations, was a recurring sentence that would go on to become the theme for the night: “I’ve been listening to him for years. I’m an OG fan.” Or, the inevitable melting point of OGs and newbies, as below:

“My buddy Suryaaaaa!”

“What? His name is Sooraj!”

On Hanumankind’s headlining night, with support from collaborators Kalmi and Parimal Shais, and upcoming rapper Reble, the mood was more celebratory, with everyone from corporate bros to 7-year-olds to Bollywood-adjacents in abundance, beside the usual hip-hop fans. Heck, Prateik Babbar (#youremember?) snuck up backstage and wanted to meet HMK too.

The theme was this: some loyal audiences clamouring to claim Hanumankind, setting themselves apart, gatekeeping their artist long after the gates have been thrown wide open to the typically dreaded mainstream. There were HMK cosplayers – three gentlemen in white vests and baggy pants, a la the artist himself in the now globally famous music video. In addition to the Gen-Z coded, homogeneous Instagram-ad-you-didn’t-ask-for vibes, there were of all things, smatterings of mundus and Kasavus in timely expressions of Mallu pride. A kitschy mix of all that is “mainstream” – a dirty word as far as any subculture is concerned, but who is to say anymore? If you were at the smoking room at Boiler Room, you might have heard rants about it having become mainstream (derogatory). If you were at Hanumankind, you might have seen that the mainstream is, perhaps, the moment. Just ask the seven-year-old who was there for Big Dawgs because his mum loves the song, or the 22-year-old who was there to see HMK shirtless. Or the college student who said: “Why’s he breathing so hard into the mic bro… I’m getting naughty thoughts.” Or the corporate dudebros in blazers, stomping to the “big steppas” part all three times that HMK played Big Dawgs. And overall, the healthier gender composition of the crowd, the elders and the literal children, an affair that provided a new flavour to the otherwise deathly Indian “family function.”

Amidst it all: “Is he gonna take his top off? 10 bucks says he’s gonna wear a mundu.”

A subculture has a certain classic iconography and insider knowledge that leaves you either in or out of it. In HMK’s gig, there was no uniform aesthetic signature to speak of, or a demographic pattern – only the unanimous desire to reach out and touch this overnight star in some capacity. He probably felt the camaraderie too, prompting his mid-set war cry of “All that outside shit doesn't matter, cause we know what’s going down, you hear me? As a country, as a people, as a movement, you understand?” A sufficiently universal yet non-specific and rousing message if there was one. But maybe it was also a response to the racism in some of the international reactions to Big Dawgs, with many Americans, shocked at his accent, his stunts in the video, and the colour of his skin.

The fact that he performed Big Dawgs three times at both his scheduled gigs raised some doubts about longevity, having seen many come and go in waves. But backstage, we watched him finish his set, encores included, and in a tone uncharacteristic of the pyrotechnics on display, asked his manager “was that good?” To us, it was a sign of an artist (and crew) who keep their feet on the ground and beyond the Internet’s short attention span, despite having experienced meteoric success on exactly that platform.

Rave culture has always been a safe space for queer communities; hip hop for the racially oppressed. The most interesting subcultures are the ones with a story, a larger purpose; the aesthetic sensibilities born from them are accordingly coded with identifiers unique to the communities that created them. A community with shared interests is key. But the requirement for corporate sponsors to sustain any kind of music-related subculture makes the question of community complicated. Drag nights, hip-hop cyphers, queer mixers, breaking, techno, street art, you-name-it - are brought to you by <insert generic alcohol/sneaker/dating app brand> in India, more often than not. While many communities are naturally formed around niche subcultures, the creator economy coupled with brand sponsorships creating the aesthetic of fun-on-camera, has arguably drained the fun out of events.

So what does it take to create a feeling of community around techno music or hip hop in India? We saw a marked difference in the kind of audiences that were present that weekend. For Hanumankind – an eclectic mix of focused, older fans out to support an artist they love, newbies by way of his recent success, and curious industry onlookers, all coming together to celebrate the rapper, at a relatively lower starting price point of Rs. 847. In contrast, Boiler Room – despite its queer-friendly marketing – had a fragmented audience, partially held together by substance(s), and a sense of community that was overshadowed by the scale of the event and the costs, more accessible venue notwithstanding.

So while Boiler Room broke ground with production and new audiences, clocking in at over 4000 pax, Humankind’s gig was likely one for the history books. More than one attendee will be claiming, much like earlier fans who were happy to see his success, that they were at the first HMK gig since ‘Big Dawgs’ and witnessed a moment in time. We encountered a breathless Rohan Joshi, stand-up-comedian and self-professed pop culture nerd, who attested to this: “That was fucking insane… The energy at this gig felt like an inflection point was happening. This is one of those things where people are gonna be like, ‘oh shit, you were there too?!’ I don’t know if you can tell but my voice is gone.”

What does this mean for the future of music culture in India, which has always been a complicated confluence of class, caste, and corporate baggage? As the weather eases up, the country’s entertainment calendar is packed - ranging from heavy hitters like Coldplay, Green Day, Shawn Mendes, Dua Lipa, Diljit Dosanjh and half of K-pop group EXO all within the next six months. Niche but globally relevant artists like Pusha T, Peggy Gou, Nicola Cruz, Chase & Status, Mount Kimbie, Yung Singh amongst others are slated to make their way to our shores too. This list doesn’t include all the local tours, regular venue programming, cultural events and seasonal parties yet to be announced. HMK’s crossover in the opposite direction will be an interesting journey to follow, given his audience will largely remain English-speaking beyond this virality - translating to collabs and shows in North America. As fellow rapper Yashraj said to us backstage, “I have seen this person play in venues for 100 people, 80 people, and to see this crowd of 2000 plus plus people on a Sunday in Bombay, it’s just hope… he’s the most ready artist in this country… Wearing Bangalore on his chest, wearing Kerala on his chest, wearing India on his chest.”

It bodes well for English-language artists — but it also raises the question of upstaging homegrown artists: HMK is currently billed over Raftaar x KR$NA on the Lollapalooza India lineup; this subreddit was conflicted. With the Indian-indie scene always consumed by in-fighting and Bollywood co-option, who speaks for whom?

We came away from the weekend, both sceptical and hopeful. Sceptical because the goalpost for Indian artists crossing over keeps shifting every few years, and will keep doing so. Hopeful for the tides turning in favour of better and diversified programming and politics — but that’s a much larger conversation most people aren’t ready to have.