Music in new spaces: How intimate gigs are moving to unconventional spaces in India

It is at a house down the street, not a large performance venue but one that is small and intimate. Sometimes an apartment, other times a spacious bungalow with a lawn that can accommodate less than 50 to 100 or at the most 200 people.

It is rarely a big stage where musicians are just 10 feet away and in fact interact with the audience. The audience trickles in twos and threes and everybody seems to know the other person, but there are also those who are there for the solo experience.

The lights are dim, the stage is set. A solo singer-songwriter or musician walks up to the stage as a bunch of his friends and listeners cheer him on. There are also other times where a three or four-piece band, mostly up-and-coming musicians or local favourites and others who are considerably famous, are greeted with hoots. However, when the start performing, there is pin-drop silence as every single person immerses into a very unique experience.

‘Intimate gigs' as they are popularly called have become more popular in the last decade in India. These are curated experiences, which neither have headliners nor are limited by genres and are on the rise and right in the middle of your city. Over the years, there have been many organisers like Sofar Sounds making them accessible in many cities in India but as the years pass, more music enthusiasts are making them easily available to people. Interestingly, these intimate gigs are so small that they have anywhere between 20 - 100 people, where the attendance in all likelihood depends on performing artist.

One of the earliest experiences of this kind was made accessible to people in India by Sofar Sounds, also known as ‘Songs From Your Room', which started in London in 2009 after Rafe Offer, Rocky Start and Dave Alexander invited eight friends to the latter's North London living room to watch them perform. Ankit Dayal, the Mumbai lead of Sofar Sounds Bombay, has seen a visible growth in India and more importantly in the city, since he started as an occasional one-day volunteer in 2017 and eventually became city lead in 2019.

He shares, "Intimate gigs are definitely special in how they allow artists and audiences to interact more freely and even amongst each other before and after the performances."

Since starting out as an experience in 2016, Dayal believes Sofar shows - with their format of secret and diverse lineups of quality artists performing in unconventional spaces - they have been able to attract all sorts of people. "We see a whole bunch of like-minded creatives finding their clan and a strong sense of belonging - whether it's longtime music-lovers that don't enjoy the club/restaurant/stadium experience anymore, or even recently migrated hobbyists that can trust our team to curate a great experience," he says.

While these gigs were traditionally in homes, they are now evolving and Dayal says Sofar Sounds has also done that. "Our venues also tend to cover a wide range of spaces, from someone's living room to a museum amphitheater, an art gallery, a boutique rug store, a co-working space, even a refurbished ice factory in the heart of the city," Dayal adds.

Covid-19 pandemic
When one talks about live shows, even though they are intimate gigs in small spaces mostly homes, it was impossible to ignore the Covid-19 pandemic that took over India in March 2020. Like everybody else, Sofar Bombay decided to take a break in May 2020 but not without hosting livestreams with the Sofar community around the world, before they returned in September 2022. Have they been able to get the same buzz? Dayal shares, "It has been overwhelmingly positive. Since our venues and lineups have always been a secret until the audience shows up, it was heartening for us to know that no matter what happens, people yearn for a connection with an artist in a way we're able to provide, even ones they don't know of at all. This was easily the biggest reason we decided to get back to organising Sofar Bombay shows again." In the past year, they have had shows that feature hip-hop, soul, Hindustani classical, jazz, electronica and spoken word poetry in the same lineups.

This, he believes, has been mostly due to how unique the experience was before the pandemic, as they hosted a gig every month between May 2016 to May 2019 without fail. However, since the pandemic took a toll on everybody and since Sofar Bombay is a voluntary operation, they didn't want it to be additional pressure for people, doing it in their free time. "In early 2022, as soon as things started to open up again, we would get tons of queries from people online about when we would be back," shares Dayal. However, he does admit that when they returned with their first show, there was a slight hesitation because some people did not show up, but ever since then, every show has had full capacity, which he says is a relief.

More to the music
It was no different for Little Sounds, another Mumbai-based small-scale intimate gig organiser, started by Romel Dias and his former partner, in 2018. As soon as they started gaining momentum, the Covid-19 pandemic played spoilt sport and they had to shut down, just like Dayal and his team. "I always thought about reviving the intimate gigs, but I also didn't want it to be something that I did because I wanted it to be a space - where not just the brand but also the experience evolved - because we are also able to offer artists something different."

Discovering places beyond the traditional stage setup pre-pandemic has led Dias to yoga houses, basements of tech institutes and lots of spaces that one wouldn't associate with live gigs. "There was also one in a woodwork workshop in Thane," shares the Bengaluru-based. Opening such spaces and seeing how to work around them and how people react to them is what made it more interesting. "We evolved to become a property where people could explore both live music and space," he adds.

They have come a long way from when they first started out. "When we started out, we thought we would do house gigs and take it around." However, with time, just like the evolution that the ecosystem is experiencing, Dias also realised that it is also about finding spaces that can help artists perform. "Just widening the scope of where live music could be," he adds. Dias says it is because there is not much of profit in the small intimate live gigs. "The artists do not make boatloads of money with these live gigs but if we enrich the experience then we can push the envelope, and hopefully people respond to the gigs because it is a niche experience."

While there are other ticketed events, Little Sounds functions on a pay-as-you-like model so that more people can access such performance spaces. Given the nature of the model, there is no guarantee about the earnings for the day; however, Dias says they pay the artist a minimum fee, irrespective of whether they make that much at the gig, which usually has two musicians performing on the given night. Interestingly, Dias says the artist-first effort means that he has also collaborated with other intimate gig organisers like Sofar Sounds and House Concerts in Bengaluru, Delhi and Hyderabad to help host the artists at their performances, when they are on tour. Because, he says, one gig wouldn't do much for the artist and the new space gives them new audience to interact with.

The Mumbaikar says he simply wanted to be right by the artists - it's been his aim ever since he started for one reason. It comes from the fact that even though Dias isn't a musician himself, he has a lot of musician friends and they used to always talk about 'Oh, the venue was bad', among other issues. "The whole market is very warped and very stacked against musicians."

It only gets worse because he believes people also don't get how curation is done, which is often a challenge in these spaces. Dias adds, "I had a conversation with a venue curator once, who said bands should get their social media going because it's the new age and they need to understand that." However, the Little Sounds founder says what they don't realise that collaborations happen on the go. He shares, "As a curator, you need to curate the music and sound, not the social media. If social media following is what you want, then you might as well bring on Tik Tok artists."

Besides the venue, Little Sounds for their most recent gig made efforts to help the artist beyond the music by styling them with the help of Alma Pictures LLC. "Since we do a lot of photoshoots for talent because I run a digital agency, along with the collection on the day, we also style the artist with the help of a celebrity stylist and their makeup with the help of a makeup artist." Even though these are small things, Dias hopes this lets the artist know that we think of them. Their most recent performance saw Lojal perform along with Niche in Andheri. They also had a gig for children that saw two Mumbai-based musicians, Nathanael Mookhtiar and Meera Desai, who are also educators, take centrestage in an arthouse, and engage with kids in Khar. The gigs by Little Sounds aren't limited to the suburbs but take place across Mumbai including Thane, Mahim, Chembur and even Madh Island and Mira Road.

One must admit hosting gigs is no easy task, especially for independent organisers who try to bridge the distance between music and the audience with intimate settings. At such times, sponsorships play a huge role because ticket sales may not always be enough. However, Dias says even if there are sponsorships, they come from alcohol brands who are able to do it easily. "Culturally, people think that the only way to have a gig is to have alcohol. So, many brands give in to alcohol." However, he says Little Sounds doesn't really care about alcohol and that is why it doesn't feature at their gigs. "We have been in spaces like the yoga studio where people had to even keep their chappals outside. So, people come because the experience means something to them and not the alcohol. If there is alcohol sponsorship, then they should tell us how it is adding to have a better experience."

Taking intimate gigs on tour
Chandigarh-based Kunal Malhotra is another organiser like Dias, who started his entertainment company, Worker Bee, a little over 10 years ago, and has witnessed how alcohol takes away the essence of the experience. He explains, "The consumption of alcohol is a big factor when having gigs in clubs. Unless you are somebody who pushes for sales, the venues tend to keep a distance from you. Even if you get good ticket sales, the bar sales are also there." However, he doesn't have a problem with it because that is how the ecosystem works. "If we actually want to create a loyal fan base, it has to be from the roots and that is intimate shows. And then, if they like you and what they hear, they will follow you to the clubs and music festivals. That's the idea that we have felt always works for the artist," shares Malhotra, whose company has handled the likes of The Local Train and Samar Mehdi over the years.

It was a turn in approach the entertainment company, which has been doing all kinds of gigs for over a decade, saw a little over five years ago. He explains, "We started doing intimate gigs when a lot of requests were coming in for my roster artists to perform at Sofar Sounds in Delhi." In mid-2019, Worker Bee did an intense tour with Samar Mehdi and Saby Singh called 'Hai Khabar', which was for 45 days and covered almost 22 cities, which taught them a lot.

They realised that a very large number of the audience were coming to these intimate shows and that was around 100 - 120 people, which was large in the context of the indie scene then. He explains, "We understood that when it was intimate gigs the audience just wanted to break down the wall that they possibly see at a music concert or club between them and the artist. They wanted to absorb the music in a way that it was just them and the artist. There was no food, no alcohol, no uninterested set of people who were just there to have a party."

It also gave birth to their property called Home Bound Festival, which is an outdoor music festival with a multi-artist lineup. The other one is called Home Bound Sit Down Sessions, which happens in theatres with 100-150 people in attendance, apart from their house gigs. Interestingly, Malhotra's Worker Bee doesn't limit intimate gigs to one city. In fact, they take gigs on tour to not only Tier-1 but also Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities. In fact, they have one lined up with singer-songwriter Samar Mehdi, who announced an intimate gig tour of eight cities, which will have about 80-100 people in each, with Mumbai being one of the pitstops.

While the venues are bigger now, even Malhotra experiments with venues like Dias and Dayal. While it initially started with only house gigs, now, the gigs are hosted in a variety of unconventional spaces. "A lot of dance studios, art galleries, collaborative spaces in Delhi, sneaker showrooms open up their doors for us for the day. Now, people are also thinking about how they can make money, so dance studios are giving their space for 4-5 hours with a minimum rent. Even if you host two gigs a month, your rent is taken care of and these are also places that people feel safer to go to," he concludes.