Digital dharma: the day of the desi DJ dawns

The world of the urban disc jockey has arrived in India. And it is not just about the underbelly of sex, drugs and rave ‘n roll. Sumit Bhattacharya explores the underground language and lifestyle of these new age ‘Beatniks’

The computer monitor blimps first. The castanet of the incoming signal fades away as a sleepy form reaches out to read the SMS. “Liquid grooves growl under sounds from the urban jungle. Be there at Zonkos tonight. DJ Dracula fights it out with Psychotic Microbe.” “Shit, it’s 8 (pm) already?” DJ Kitsch suddenly springs into action. He has his own SMSes to send, e-mails to fire, messages to post on Internet bulletin boards. He has a gig coming up the next day.

This is the world of the urban disc jockey, or the DJ. And here in India, the ‘scene’ is as close to a postmodern urban tribe as it can get. It is a generation for whom Kaaza, Soulseek (peer to peer file sharing software) and the Web are lifelines, Reason is a software, Tchaikovsky is Psychovsky misspelled, medieval has only ‘i’s and ‘getting sorted’ means arranging for the drugs — ecstasy, cocaine, LSD, charas. “There is a lot of ecstasy and acid that goes with trance music,” admits Mumbai based 20-something DJ Pearl, who’s among the handful of women DJs in the country. “But there’s more to DJing than trance,” she adds.

DJing can be as easy as inserting a CD and looking cool and as complex as playing with live musicians, changing samples faster than ramp models change clothes and improvising on the spot. “Everyone wants to become a DJ now. Because they think it’s easy. Few mix tracks, and fewer produce their own tunes. They just rehash CDs,” says 23-year-old Sanath Bindra, aka DJ San. He stays in his sprawling house in Jangpura in New Delhi and drives around in a fluorescent green Maruti Esteem. “I first started on the computer, playing around with DJ software, I did some parties and that’s how I got my equipment,” says 18-year-old Madhav Shorey, aka DJ Haze, who has been DJing since class VII, played in the finals of Mumbai’s War of the Djs contest and has dropped out of his class Xll studies in Delhi’s Air Force School to get into music full-time.

Says DJ Pearl: “I freelance, so I play just a few nights a week. I suppose I’ve just become a nocturnal person and my body clock has changed. After every few weeks, though, I need to just take some time off and sleep all night. You need a lot of resilience to be a DJ.” And for 26-year-old DJ Saranjit Singh, who plays at the Big Ben in the City of Joy, “The scene here in Kolkata is not as happening as in the other metros, but it’s slowly catching up. When people think of DJs, they immediately associate it with sex drugs and booze, but it’s not really true.” And these are just a few of hundreds of DJs spread all across urban India.

From the guy who inserts the mega hits CD into your shaadi party dancefloor’s music system to the glow-in-the-dark T-shirt toting frequent flier between Tel Aviv, Berlin and Goa, DJs come in all shapes, sizes, and money. There are mobile DJs, nightclub DJs, remix DJs, House DJs, Drum ‘n’ Bass DJs, Trance DJs… the list can go on ad nauseam. And it’s not a just-for-kicks party; some of the big spinners — Dj Whossain, DJ Sunny Sarid (who has his own event management company), DJ Rummy — can charge as much as Rs 10 lakh per night. No surprise then that “How many kilos do you need dude?” is DJ San’s reply when asked about a rough estimate of how many DJs there are in just Delhi. “And the media people are also bought off. So, they only highlight a few names,” adds San, who is now jamming with a jazz/lounge music band called JAB (Jazz and Beyond). He says he has played gigs “with four thousand people in the crowd.”

But does the music sell? “It’s the in-thing now — remixes and DJ music. So, we sign DJs up and help them produce their albums. Most are one-hit wonders, and you have to latch on to an already-famous track to hit big time,” says an executive at of India’s top music labels, on condition of anonymity.

It’s a world where a cool name helps. So Nikhil becomes DJ Nick, Shravan becomes DJ Ravan, Jai becomes DJ J. And it’s also an expensive affair. A console, the DJ’s instrument, can cost anything from Rs 50,000 to over 2 lakh. Add to that a PA system and lights, and the bill becomes scary. But for most, it is the computer that is the first toy. “I got hold of a computer magazine CD with Soundforge (a sound editing software) and got started. I hope to start producing my own music soon,” says 19-year-old Delhiite DJ Nick, who is doing his graduation through correspondence. He plays around Delhi, mostly private parties and hopes to “produce my own tracks soon.”

“The scene began perhaps 15 years ago, and it sort of grew with the technology and the hype. College kids were attracted to the lure of glamour and money. Now, everyone wants to play internationally and produce their own tracks,” says DJ Rummy, one of the capital’s old-timers, from Hong Kong. “You have to know people around, must network well, must handle your PR well — all these go into making a good DJ,” he adds. And the dream of playing internationally is within grasp of the desi DJ now. For example, Pune-based Ma Faiza’s website lists her itinerary for the coming months. And it reads like this: March 28-April 3: Festival of Art, Portugal. April 7-10: Boombamela festival, Israel. April 11-12: Ravevolution Israel. April 22 Atisha, Hamburg, Germany. April 25–May 27: India.

Although people like DJ Rummy deny that the musicians and the DJs make up a close-knit community, but the fact remains that the scene, especially the rave crowd, is well-knit. They’re rich and they like to party. “Everyone knows everyone, maan, he drawls. “You go to a party, meet people, chill, have a good time and you exchange contacts. Next party you meet the same people again, and that’s how you get to know everyone. You have to be in the scene, dude,” says twenty-something Delhi party animal Adip Khanna. “But you can’t write about the drugs and shit, dude, the cops have busted the scene in Delhi, maan,” he warns. “The scene is much better in Mumbai. There, people listen to you for what you play, and there’s a lot of good stuff happening there,” says a dreadlocked Abhishek.

The rave party network spreads from farmhouses in Chattarpur and Alwar Road near Delhi to Khandala near Mumbai to as far as Pulga, a remote village in the high mountains of Himachal Pradesh. “A lot of parties happen in the hills, with the foreigners, especially Israelis, hosting their own parties,” says twenty-something Rajiv Khanna, who often heads out to Parvati Valley in Himachal in his steel black Skoda Octavia to party. But for the electronica addict, the hub is Goa. “That’s where the scene is maan, that’s where you meet the right people,” adds Khanna. A rave party, for the uninitiated, is a by-invitation do with loads of drugs, mineral water (ecstasy causes dehydration and you can die of it), huge screens with computer animation and laser lights. “You mix, get to know the people, arrange your own parties. More gigs come your way, you make more money,” says DJ Sach. “Entry fee is Rs 500 per person, plus you make money on the pills and stuff going around.”

Net profit from a private rave party can be as high as Rs 1 lakh. For a college kid who gets to live out his fantasies plus the dough plus the dream of playing in an international Love Parade, it couldn’t get better than this.

With inputs from Leo Mirani in Mumbai
(Some names have been changed on request)