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Queer and Here: How Young Indian Musicians Navigate Love and Identity in Indie Music

Sharif D Rangnekar’s 2020 feature follows queer musicians in India’s indie scene as they navigate visibility, artistic freedom, love and identity.
Opened Runtime5 min Written byDocumentaryTube Team
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In a July 2020 feature for Scroll.in, Sharif D Rangnekar profiled queer musicians finding space in India’s independent music scene. Their approaches ranged from pop and folk to jazz and R&B: some wrote directly about queer love and identity, while others resisted being defined by sexuality or a single “queer sound.” The feature is a snapshot of the artists and work it covered at that time, not a survey of the whole industry or a guide to what is available now. Read Rangnekar’s feature in Scroll.in.

What the 2020 feature says about queer music in India

Rangnekar describes a growing presence of queer musicians in independent music, both as solo singer-songwriters and as vocalists working with bands whose other members were straight. The artists’ sounds and working contexts varied; the article does not claim that they shared one style or represented every queer musician in India.

The feature also sets this visibility against a changing social and cultural context. Rangnekar recalls that Friends of Linger performed in Delhi with cover group Classic Collective soon after the Supreme Court recriminalised same-sex relations in 2013. He reports that more than 250 people attended the band’s first night. That attendance is his recollection in a 2020 article, not an independently audited count. He contrasts the earlier scarcity of openly queer singers with artists who had begun emerging in the three to five years before publication.

Indie Pride playlists as a moment of recognition

At the beginning of Pride Month in 2020, the article reports, an Indie Pride playlist appeared on Spotify, followed shortly by another. Jay Anand, a trans man and musician, curated one of them. He described the playlist’s significance as more than a collection of songs: “It reassures me that there are others and makes our existence known.”

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That response captures the feature’s account of visibility as both cultural expression and community affirmation. The playlists are part of the 2020 story; their present availability on Spotify is not established by the article.

Different artists, different relationships to identity

The musicians in Rangnekar’s feature did not agree that every song by a queer artist must be about sexuality. Their examples show a range of choices: personal songwriting about love and relationships, work that foregrounded queer experience, and artists who wanted room to make music without being boxed by identity.

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Writing about love and personal experience

Jay Anand’s YouTube singles at the time included “Fool To Want You,” a song about homosexual love. Kolkata-based Coup Jean described making jazz with an R&B tint and writing personally about relationships and sexuality; the article names his track “Hairfall.” Jean presented songwriting as a way to tell personal stories, not as a fixed genre label.

Teenasai Balamu, who performs as GrapeGuitarBox and identifies as non-binary, had studied music in London and released the EP Out. The feature discusses “Wait For You,” a queer video centered on love between two women. Alisha Batth, a lesbian singer-songwriter from Ludhiana who entered Mumbai’s independent music scene, later released the EP Prologue, which includes “Why Don’t You.” She described queerness as one aspect of a person, not the entirety of what they bring to a song.

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Rejecting a single “queer sound”

Smruti Jalpur, a lesbian singer-songwriter from Mumbai who was based in New Delhi at the time, said that being LGBT+ was not a prerequisite for making music about sexuality. “It isn’t a prerequisite to be an LGBT+ singer,” she said. That distinction matters: the feature presents queer identity as part of artists’ lives and perspectives, not a requirement that every song follow one subject or sound.

Sushant Digvikr likewise objected to being typecast as a “gay singer” and rejected the idea that music could be boxed as “gay music.” He described his own direction as pop and had collaborated with DJ Peter Wallenberg and Rainbow Riots. “Music transcends caste barriers and everything else. You can’t put it in a box!” he said.

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Collaborations, representation, and who gets heard

The feature includes collaborations as well as individual work. Delhi band Chaar Hazaari released “Soona Jahaan Hai” on January 26, 2018; its video features transwoman Rudrani Chettri. By the time Rangnekar’s piece was published, he reported that the video had reached more than 1.1 lakh views. That is a dated figure from 2020, not a current view count. The article also discusses the Kannada track “Maya,” by Sanjeev T featuring Gubbi and starring Alex Mathew as Maya The Drag Queen.

Rangnekar also reports criticism of a song released through Tinder, focused on who made it and whose voices were missing. The point in the feature is not that collaboration itself is unwelcome, but that representation can raise questions about authorship and participation. It sits alongside the article’s examples of artist-led expression and collaborative projects rather than offering a blanket verdict on either.

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Barriers in venues and on television

Several musicians described pressure to conform to gendered expectations of appearance. Jay Anand said some venues rejected him because they expected feminine dress and styling, while he found venues in Bangkok more open to performers regardless of gender presentation. These are his reported experiences, not evidence that all venues behaved alike.

Jalpur said she was asked to change her clothing and appearance to secure gigs. She also said a reality television music show sidelined her after she shaved her head, despite her having qualified. These accounts show how access to performance could be shaped by expectations about presentation; they should be understood as the individuals’ experiences, not a universal description of venues or television programmes.

Visibility and the limits of a single feature

The article records individual milestones as signs of presence, not as industry-wide measures. Rangnekar reported that John Oinam, from Bishnupur in Manipur and based in Delhi at the time, reached the top 30 of Indian Idol 2019. Oinam sang in English, Hindi, and Manipuri, and participated in the Times Music project “Let’s Pray For The World.” He described feeling “two times a minority” as a queer person from Northeast India.

These examples sit within the feature’s broader tension: Pride and visibility matter, while artists also want to make varied music and live beyond a single identity label. Coup Jean put the aim as “While we can’t entirely delink our sexuality or politics from our expression, our effort will always be towards co-existence amongst ourselves and the rest of the world”. Anand said “we aren’t going anywhere”; Oinam added, “And we’ve got lots of music to offer”.

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