Music on the House: How living rooms are becoming India’s newest concert halls – Lifestyle News

‘Mahaul over money’

Deepika Seth, 28, Mumbai

When it comes to music, Deepika Seth prefers “mahaul (environment) over money”. This explains why the Mumbai resident’s (she originally hails from Delhi) love affair with home concerts began when she attended a gig on somebody’s terrace, complete with charpais and fairy lights. “The vibe of the show and the place can be a dealbreaker when it comes to the audience going back home happy or not,” says Seth, 28, whose initial career was in artiste management, and later at an organisation that conducts home concerts across the country.

After scouting for venues and setting up concerts for other artistes, Seth now runs The Grapevine Sessions, a “community-driven social experiment” that organises home concerts. “My last baithak was two weeks ago in my living room for family and friends. My mom made the food, and we took care of the decor and every other detail,” she offers. In her experience, “it allows the artiste to really embody the music”, and more importantly, “control the narrative of the show”.

Seth has performed at restaurants as well, but since the music is not the focus there, the artiste is often distracted by the atmosphere of the room. “People walk in and out, you can hear cutlery clanging on the tables, and people talking over the music,” she says, highlighting the importance of the artiste to feel in control of the space, and orienting the audience to their needs or convenience. “In my baithaks, there is much more scope of visibility and interaction with the audience,” she says, adding: “Not only can I look them in the eyes when I sing, but also ask them to put their mobile phones on ‘silence’ mode if I need to.”

In her experience, going solo on putting together her own shows, along with her fellow musicians and friends and with the help of family, has and continues to be a struggle as the entire production and labour work is on the artiste “who is getting paid just about Rs 5,000 for a performance on a good day”.

Seth describes home concerts as a completely different beast from stage shows, as everything, from the artiste’s performance to the audience’s reception and response, is different. “And while it may not become a sustainable model any time soon, I believe this is now my purpose to keep on organising these house concerts and make more people discover the intimacy and vulnerability of experiencing music the same time and the same way as the artiste, in such close quarters,” she adds.

Spaces to grow, and connect

Sarthak Karkare (Maqta), 29, Mumbai

Sarthak Karkare, better known as ‘Maqta’, has performed at over 40 home venues. They are the perfect spaces for him to authentically grow his audience, he says, as the spaces “lend themselves to attentive listening”. 

Having started his musical career with an English rock band, the 29-year-old Mumbai resident has since been a part of many musical groups, but has grown his repertoire in Hindi music alongside his home audiences. In many ways, he says, home settings are better for him to introduce his audiences to his Hindi compositions.

“I play so many original tracks and new compositions at these home concerts— with no demand for crowd favourites or cover songs,” he shares. Apart from the ease of performance, he says, home concerts also have great potential for growing financially in the future. Where earlier he was able to charge around Rs 500 per ticket, now he charges almost Rs 900. The largest audience he has hosted at a home concert was a group of 37 to 40 attendees.

“Still, home shows are largely volunteer-based and can often be erratic for that reason,” he adds, hoping that a sustainable business model can be arrived at, which can make this a more financially reliable model for artistes in the near future.

Karkare’s sets are usually about 90 minutes long, and since home venues do not have sound systems, he has to set up all the equipment on his own. “With time, I have experienced random people opening up their homes for a concert, and they become fairly regular hosts,” he says. He recalls one such event where the homeowners had even made and provided the food for the attendees, with a cover charge for the same.

“For some of the more recent shows, I have even been able to get food sponsors for the venues,” shares Karkare. Going into the brass tacks of the process, he says that one has to be very careful about publicity and marketing when the venue is a private home. “In that situation I publish the posters and ask people to reach out to me personally for bookings—once they have made the ticket payment to my account, only then do I share the location of the show with that particular person,” he explains.

“House concerts are just the beginning,” says Karkare, who has been in the music industry for over eight years and does home and stage shows in the approximate ratio of 70:30. “We are slowly seeing more and more spaces open up as venues for artistes to perform, not just for entertainment, but for full-fledged performances with the artiste as the focus,” he adds.

Maqta prefers the intimate setting of a home far more than that of a stage because it allows him to build his own community, and be physically close to them, rather than be connected via screens, online fanbases, or ticket sales. With his run of house concerts, he has seen packed rooms and terraces with repeat audiences who have returned with friends “because they connected with my performance and brought back friends to share in this experience”. It makes the artiste accessible to his or her audience in a way that was not possible before, he adds.

Intimate & invested crowds

Mahesh Raghunandan, 33, Bengaluru

Bengaluru-based Mahesh Raghunandan, a singer and songwriter, has recently completed an eight-city tour with Sofar, an organisation that finds home venues for independent artistes. While he still plays at pubs, music festivals and concerts “since a musical artiste cannot sustain only on house concerts”, he admits that home spaces are undeniably far more nerve-wracking than a larger stage.

“When the audience is small, and I am the only performer in front of them, sans band and fancy sound systems, I know all of their attention is entirely on me, and that definitely adds to the pressure as well as the adrenaline rush,” says Raghunandan, 33. As a solo artiste and a singer-songwriter, house concerts do take up a larger chunk of his performance roster. Moreover, he says his music is far better suited to these intimate settings.

Raghunandan notes a difference in the kind of audience members that show up at home concerts as opposed to other venues, saying that the former offers a much more honest and invested crowd. When performing at pubs or similar spaces, he says “there is an element of the music being a part of the entertainment act, or adding to the already prescribed ‘vibe’ of the venue”. “At home concerts, however, the performer knows that they are the only focus, and audience members behave as such,” he says. However, when the audience is louder than the musical act, which happens often at such venues, according to Raghunandan, “it is the most disheartening thing for an artiste”.

Further, he says, house concerts help to build a local community not just for artistes but also for audiences. Speaking specifically about his hometown Bengaluru, he says, “The traffic here is not just a stereotype but a real challenge—even people who want to watch live performances will opt out of making plans to go to a venue as it takes 1.5-2 hours to reach anywhere.” He explains that having spaces in homes as live music venues might encourage these people to go out and enjoy ticketed performances as well.

“Families and their children show up to my house concerts, which is not a sight I get to see very often at pubs or other venues,” he says. “With house concerts, it’s unlike any other live performance,” he muses, when speaking about the financial downside to house concerts. He admits that even if at a point in his career, stage shows were proving enough to sustain himself in the music industry, he would keep going back to performing at home venues nonetheless. “In house concerts, more often than not, the equipment is minimal, the instruments you are using are mostly acoustic, so there is an organic, bare and raw experience of sitting with an artiste and listening to them perform—it is an incredible stage for any artiste,” he adds.

Small gigs, big impact

Jeremiah de Rozario, 29, Kochi

Jeremiah de Rozario has just broken into the scene of home concerts, hosting his first ever in his living room. “I have always wanted to perform my music for an audience in the same space that I compose it,” he says.

The 29-year-old Kochi-based banker turned musician set up his living room with dim lights, passed around ghee biscuits made by his sister during the set, and put up a small merchandise stall as well. “I circulated a Google document for people interested to attend, with a ‘pay what you want’ model, and after the entry of the first 30, we had to close off the list, as my living room would not hold so many people,” he says.

For Rozario, playing his songs in the comfort of his own home was a long-held dream. He says the home concert was more for him, than for his audience—it was to satisfy a creative experience he wanted to have. “When I write my songs, it’s always been in this home, surrounded by these walls. So I wanted my audience to feel it the same way I felt when I composed it… These small gigs have always been very special,” he adds.

He shares that the production cost came to about Rs15,000-Rs20,000, of which he made back less than Rs10,000. However, Jeremiah is not looking for monetary payoff from his home concerts just yet. “As an independent artiste, I have to acknowledge that this cannot be a sole source of income,” he says, adding: “As a banker, I’ve found ways to be smart with money and income even with the home concerts. Having had many years to think about this, I had the time to plan it smartly.”

“I only recorded my first concert as a memory, I do not intend to make recordings of every living room performance,” he says, adding that he is not aiming for these shows to be a marketing tool either.

“Different parts of my home are where I make my music, and so I feel most comfortable performing it in the same setting,” says Rozario. Performing in such settings, he says, also allows for storytelling. “Many from my audience did not know the back stories to some of my songs, but learned about it for the first time,” he recalls, adding: “The feedback overwhelmingly was that now that they know what the song is about, it hits deeper.”

Rozario also intends to use his home for testing his original music on audiences before the release. “I played some songs from my EP (extended play) which is releasing next month, to gauge the audience reaction, and I plan to host another after its release,” he says.

Concerts held in such places also help Rozario to find his audience, and gauge the people who resonate with his sound specifically. As of now, he is not looking for a financial payoff from the concerts held in his living room. “As long as it can take care of 80% of the production cost, I am happy with it,” he adds.

Homing in on theatre

Tanvi Shah, 31, Mumbai

Mumbai-based theatre director Tanvi Shah, 31, and her team have performed across Mumbai in various homes that invite and co-host her immersive performance Unshared Childhoods. Her theatre company, Jaan Theatre, was born out of her desire to make theatre and plays more accessible and relatable for the general public. 

Shah’s theatre journey began 12 years ago, when she worked as a documenter, writer, theatre apprentice, and dramaturg before receiving training with Indian Ensemble’s Directors’ Training Programme in Bengaluru, after which she went to pursue her Masters in the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. “We have done 44 performances of Unshared Childhoods so far with the most unexpected audiences showing up to watch us perform,” she says. The idea is to bring ‘non theatre-goers’ to the theatre, by “bringing it home to them”. On one occasion, she had a roomful of 51 audience members. The first show of this performance was held at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. 

According to Shah, “all the big things in our life happen in the home—be it celebration, love, loss, or anything else”, which is why she also felt that homes are more than ideal to stage dramatic performances for an audience. “I want to make people more comfortable with foreign and unfamiliar concepts and ideas through my theatre in a familiar and intimate space,” she adds.

The performances are immersive and interactive and supported by live music and movement with the audience participating. “We visit the homes for a recce, before finalising them for a performance. We take pictures and make notes, and then rehearse accordingly for that particular venue,” she says.“We have to keep in mind the locality, the family members of the host and take stock of their house rules when we work with a venue, very often using their furniture and articles available in the space as our props,” she adds.

Another interesting aspect of Shah’s use of the home space is the concept of open rehearsals. She opens her team’s rehearsals for audience members as well— giving theatre-curious people a much more easygoing and intimate opening into the theatre world.

Shah imagines her theatre practice— most consummately experienced through Unshared Childhoods, and continued with Jaan Theatre’s work at large—as one that encourages vulnerability. It has audiences experience art in one another’s company in intimate and non-judgemental settings, and explores myriad definitions of theatre and their own relationship to and stakes in the cultural ecosystem of their city, not as consumers but as co-hosts.

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