New Tune

The Indian indie music scene has been growing in leaps and bounds, but continues to be largely populated by men. Amit gurbaxani meets five of the industry’s leading women to find out how they’re changing the rules

- Amit gurbaxani

Out of the 70-plus acts that will perform at this year’s edition of the NH7 Weekender music festival, which will be held in Meghalaya at the end of the month and in Pune in December, less than a dozen are women or female-fronted acts. The Indian independent music scene is still nascent, but it has been growing exponentially for nearly a decade now. Yet female players, even after all these years, are still a novelty. To understand why this remains the status quo, ELLE rounded up a group of accomplished women in indie music. Over breakfast at AKA Bistro in Mumbai’s Kala Ghoda arts district, we got rapper Sofia Ashraf, artist manager Anu Anna George, singer-songwriter Ramya Pothuri, video producer Reema Sengupta and podcaster Mae Thomas to tell us what it’s like being a woman in the scene, and why there aren’t more like them:

ELLE: From performers to managers to producers, the Indian independent music industry is dominated by men. Does working in this field require you to be “one of the guys” sometimes?

Sofia Ashraf: For me, not at all. In fact, I get more gigs for being a female rapper. The reason why there are fewer women in the scene is because we aren’t encouraged to pursue music professionally when we’re young. I come from an orthodox Muslim household. The whole idea of the nautanki, the performer, is something relegated to prostitutes and dance bars.