Making Music to Remember

From ballads to pop hits, the Delhi Indie Project completes a decade of making foot-tapping music. The Perfect Voice speaks to this young band about their 10 year-long journey.

December 12, 2024 was indeed a 'night to remember' for Byran Adam fans in Gurugram. And leading those fans was the Delhi Indie Project which performed the opening gig at the concert, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for musicians. As the popular Delhi-based band celebrates a decade of musical highs, Ashish Chauhan, vocalist and guitarist talks to The Perfect Voice about their journey and evolution.

You mark 10 years of the Delhi Indie Project. How are you celebrating?

We are launching an album with seven or eight new songs. And we are going to take off on a 10-city tour where we will perform all the original songs from our album. We will start in September this year and the tour will go on for a month.

Your band members come from varied musical backgrounds. How does that bring diversity in your musical offerings?

We are all from different backgrounds in music. We started out in 2015. I was a musician and I wanted to write my own songs, have my own band. I got to meet different musicians from different backgrounds and we got together to create music which has a fusion of various genres. I am trained in Western music while our female vocalist Srijita is trained in Indian classical; the violin player is in Indian classical. The keyboard player’s influences are rock n roll and jazz. All our members—on the keyboard, violin, guitar, drums—have different backgrounds. When we play together, we create music that’s unique and different. The fusion that we create is unique.

Do you see musical preferences changing?

The main change we see is that music is becoming shorter. If we talk about music on Instagram music and reels, it’s all becoming shorter. Earlier, songs were longer. If you remember, Pink Floyd’s Shine On You Crazy Diamond was 22 minutes long. Now, people don’t want to listen to long music pieces. Standard songs these days and 2.5 to three minutes long. We want to change that. So, our song Laksh which we are releasing in April is a 5.5 minutes-long song. We play to go to the old ways of having longer songs. Yes, we will make reels using the main hook of the song. But we want to try going back to longer songs.

How to make music that appeals to people from different parts of India?

We perform songs in different languages; we perform in Bengali, Punjabi, Hindi, English and Marathi. In fact, Ajay-Atul are one of our favourite artists, we like performing their songs. But when we perform, we make sure that the pronunciation is correct. We don’t just mug up a song. We recently performed in Faridkot in Punjab and when we sang there, we ensured that our pronunciation and accent were just right. We put a lot of focus on that. We always write the song in Hindi because that enables you to get the pronunciation right.

What does the name of your band signify?

We wanted a name that signifies our work. Delhi, because we are all from Delhi. But Indie Project because we play independent music and most importantly, our music is like a project because we experiment all the time. We don’t do repetitive stuff but experiment with new sounds all the time. We’ve used the flute, the sitar, the violin, and different sounds to create music. We want to do something unique. Hence, we call ourselves a project.

Is your music ever evolving?

The credit for that goes to our band members. For instance, Suhail Ali Khan who plays the violin—when he brings his music to the table, there’s a new sound. We use his classical skills with our Western music and create music that's unique and original. Every song we do is different. If Guzarish was a happy, pop song, Main Teri Yaad is a slow, love ballad. The next one coming up is a rock n roll song. We try not to repeat the genre of the songs. Even in the upcoming album, all songs are going to be different.

Are there new opportunities for musicians and independent bands today?

OTT platforms have given opportunities to independent bands and musicians who are producing new sounds. Earlier times, we had a fixed set of composers for Bollywood. Now OTT producers are taking music from different musicians and bands. One OTT film took music from a band called When Chai Met Toast. Similarly, lots of bands have given music to OTT series. Last year, we made the background score for four episodes and the theme song of the series I Should Have Stayed Home. We have given music to a film, Jalpari: A Desert Mermaid which was an interesting story. I got to meet the director Nila Madhab Panda. He had visited one of our shows, liked our music and he asked me to meet him. When I went to his office the next day, he asked me to compose a song for the film. Apart from our song, Shubha Mudgal and Piyush Mishra have also done songs for that film.