Lollapalooza India: Equal parts nostalgia, discovery and unbridled joy

Lollapalooza India 2023. (Photo: Fleck Media)

At Lollapalooza India last night, AP Dhillon flung his ukulele into the crowd. Imagine Dragons’ frontman Dan Reynolds took off his shirt and allowed his front row fans to touch his abs. Greta Van Fleet’s lead singer Josh Kiszka romped through an extended set, armed with just a tambourine (and, of course, his gifted voice). Bloodywood turned up the temperature with their rousing folk Punjabi meets metal set, as helicopters hovered dangerously close above their stage. Do we mosh? Do we bhangra? Their audience gathered in the sweltering afternoon sun, did both.

In short, Lollapalooza brought the party that we were promised.

Lollapalooza India 2023. (Photo: Fleck Media)

In July 2022, Lollapalooza, one of the biggest music festivals in the world, announced its debut in India with a multi-day event in Mumbai. This was huge. What began in 1991 — a farewell tour conceived by Los Angeles rock band frontman Perry Farrell, which travelled to over 20 American cities — became a mainstay of the American live music scene over the decades. The annual music festival in Chicago became a destination in itself, known for its sharply-curated line-up of acts. Its initial focus was alt-rock, but eventually became a significantly more diverse, inclusive festival.

Lollapalooza Mumbai makes India the eighth country that the festival has set up base in, ever since it began its global expansion in 2010 with an edition in Chile. It also marks Lollapalooza’s Asia debut. Naturally, anticipation ran high; and it wasn’t any one group — any one generation or fans of any one genre — that got excited. With its weighty history and reputation, Lollapalooza Mumbai spoke to all.

People bought early-bird tickets in droves. But when the line-up was announced closer to the end of 2022, they began to face the wrath of India’s music-loving folk. Why were so many Indian acts on this lineup of an international music festival, they demanded to know. And what was up with the headliners? Imagine Dragons hadn’t really returned to our radar since they took a break in 2019 — despite their 2021 comeback. Who were The Strokes?! An early-millennium rock band that only a small section of older millennials might have loved. And Diplo — well, he’s here every year, so, what else is new? Even a food-app concert had outdone Lollapalooza, fans whined on Twitter; and began to hawk their tickets online.

AP Dhillon

Such was the volume of complaints, I was expecting a deserted venue, with, perhaps, a small crowd for AP Dhillon on Day 1. But no, people had turned up. They had taken their trains and buses, as the festival’s organisers exhorted them to do (by allowing no parking at the venue)—and thanked their stars they did, as they marched down heavily-dug up roads where traffic jams are now just a state of being. The 225 acres of the Mahalaxmi Race Course had been turned into a sprawling circus, with four stages, over 50 food and drink “experiences”, and a giant ferris wheel at its heart, with perhaps the longest queue of them all.

Easy Wanderlings

Indian indie lovers turned up early to catch favourites Easy Wanderlings, AsWeKeepSearching and The Yellow Diary in their afternoon sets. At the Walkers & Co stage, Delhi folk-metal band Bloodywood were on fire with a set of their most popular songs from their Billboard-charting album Rakshak—where Karan Katiyar, Raoul Kerr and Jayant Bhadula fuse dhol beats and well-known Punjabi folk poetry (think “Ari Ari”) with loud growls and distorted guitar work for infectious results.

Madboy/Mink

Over at the Perry’s x Budweiser Beats stage, indie darlings Madboy/Mink — Saba Azad on vocals and Imaad Shah wielding an electric guitar — got their disco-funk on in rainbow-hued glittery outfits and trumpets-accompanied set. As the sun began to go down, crowds gravitated toward the main BudX stage for Korean-American musician Michelle Zauner’s citrusy pop.
As Japanese Breakfast, Zauner and drummer Craig Hendrix played most of their 2021 album, Jubilee, a sunny, synth and brass-tones soaked record about joy. Most of their audience here, who clearly hadn’t heard them before this, left looking for @JBrekkie to follow on social media. Some even left discussing how to get their hands on Zauner’s ground-breaking, bestselling memoir, Crying in H Mart.

Chelsea Cutler

Gen Z favourite Chelsea Cutler (a singer-songwriter from Connecticut) and Indian indie’s reigning queen of electronica Sandunes were on at the same time on diagonally opposite stages — and those who didn’t care for either niche chose to queue up for burgers instead, and/or bop to the mysterious dance music duo Kasablanca’s hard techno beats booming from the Perry’s x Budweiser Beats stage.

The crowd came together again for AP Dhillon, the sensational Punjabi rapper who broke through in 2021 on the back of his multi-platinum track “Brown Munde”. Up on the Bud X stage in his Louis Vuitton varsity jacket, Dhillon repeatedly asked his gigantic audience to sing along to some prime ribs from his growing R&B-infused discography. Maybe it was because we were in a non-Punjabi speaking part of the country, but it appeared as if the majority was here for maybe two songs: the other one being “Summer High”. Dhillon obliged, but not before he sang his heart out and had everyone turn their phone flashlights on.

Greta Van Fleet

Unexpectedly incredible performances — surprising even for those who know them — came from the rock band Greta Van Fleet and the French DJ Madeon. The former channelled all the aggression and theatrics of good old ’70s rock, complete with gold-embroidered coordinated outfits and long, meditative instrumental interludes. Madeon aka Hugo Leclercq stood jesus-posing against a gorgeous visual track of clouds on the screen behind him, as his nu-disco, dance-pop tracks recruited a whole new fanbase.

Zhu

Finally, while American electronic and dance music producer Zhu (who some consider to be the next Daft Punk) dropped shards of bass in one corner of Lollapalooza; Imagine Dragons came on to the main stage after a slight delay. Reynolds begins and ends the nearly 90-minute set with the same track: “My Life” from 2021, improvised as a vocal solo in the beginning, and a rip roaring rock version in the end. Littered throughout were Imagine Dragons’ greatest hits: “Believer”, “Radioactive”, “Thunder”, “Demons”. Many suspected that something was off with the sound; but it didn’t matter. This time, the crowd did join in, loudly enunciating each “wo-oh” and syllable of Reynolds’ songs with and without him.

Imagine Dragons

With fireworks, Lollapalooza Day 1 came to a close; but before most of us had reached home, news of Gen Z pop star Jackson Wang’s (the Hong Kong singer and ex-member of the K-Pop giant GOT7) had landed. Wang, it is reported, was greeted by hordes of shrieking teenagers at the airport last night.

He goes on at 7.30 pm tonight — on a line-up that also includes Prateek Kuhad and DIVINE, Kayan and Cigarettes After Sex, on at the same time. Sure there are clashes, so wear your best, most comfortable shoes. Keep a bottle handy to refill at the hydration stations. And stay safe as you watch history repeat itself — as older generations did with The Beatles, U2, Bryan Adams, and now, as the young ones go ape shit over Wang.