Electronic dance music comes of age in India

Shravan Bhat/Forbes India

Armin van Buuren stood, eyes closed, arms outstretched at a music console, in front of 10,000 screaming fans at Mumbai’s Turf Club. Under the huge LED panels, psychedelic lasers and thundering speakers, he hoisted an Indian flag atop his shoulders and the crowd went wild. The skinny Dutch superstar had landed in India four hours earlier from a festival in Kuala Lumpur; four hours later, he would leave for Miami for another gig. His signature property, ‘A State of Trance’, showcases local and international support acts as it tours the world. But at that hour, on a balmy evening in March, the fans, in their 20s and 30s, had paid Rs 3,000 to Rs 10,000 to see van Buuren perform. And he was there to make Mumbai dance.

Electronic Dance Music (EDM)—made up of genres like House, Trance, Dubstep and Drum & Bass—has become globally mainstream relatively recently and has taken India’s young, affluent urban populations by storm. In 2013, the Swedish House Mafia, Armin van Buuren and DJ Tiesto—arguably the three biggest names in the EDM scene—have all played their tracks at sell-out concerts in Indian cities. The top DJs all produce their own music. And if you think you haven’t heard or danced to their tunes, think again. “Go to any wedding these days and Avicii’s ‘Levels’ is always one that gets kids, aunties and everyone in between onto the dance floor,” says Nikhil Chinapa, whose company Submerge books and manages artistes when they come to India. A TV personality and a top DJ himself, Chinapa has seen electronic music in India grow from Bollywood remixes in the mid-2000s to today’s thriving nightclub scene that’s penetrating cities like Bhopal and Indore.

Electronic music has managed to do what other music genres could not: Tap into the potential of the Indian market and make money. Some 18,000 tickets were sold for the Swedish House Mafia concert in Mumbai in January at an average of Rs 4,000. Compare that to rapper Snoop Dogg’s concerts in Delhi and Pune where about 1,000 tickets sold, at an average of Rs 2,500. Sunburn, the three-day year-end music festival organised by Percept in Goa, is Asia’s largest. Sunburn Arena events with DJ Tiesto, Armin van Buuren and Swedish House Mafia sell 2,000 VIP tickets (at upwards of Rs 5,000 each); in contrast, when Guns N’ Roses came to India recently, 2,500 people showed up. Indeed, seven of India’s 10 biggest music concerts are EDM gigs: Tiesto pulled in more people than Carlos Santana.