Delhi’s Sufi Rock Scene Is a Mehfil of Sadness and Tears

It’s around 9 PM and Meeta Singh is devouring his naan and dal makhni while sharing porn on a WhatsApp group. His gig at Connaught Place’s My Bar HQ was supposed to start now, but the DJ, Vkey is AWOL, leaving Singh to feast alone on their complimentary dinner. He always orders naan and dal makhni.

Arora finally walks in, sporting black shades, a black tee and blue jeans. He gets on the elevated area behind Singh on the stage, orders a hookah and starts blasting ‘O Zalima’.

Singh, along with Vicky Arora, is one part of a duo who play Bollywood remixes masquerading as Sufi music. Their use of percussion to Arijit Singh ballads qualifies them as ‘Sufi’ in the club promotion world. It’s a club-synthesized Coke Studio, a form spreading faster than Fake News in the capital’s Punjabi dominated Central and West areas. To ride the bandwagon, Singh and Arora call themselves ‘The Sufi Duo’, as, they explain, they play “Sufi music”, and partly because they don’t smoke or drink. Excluding hookahs of course.

Meanwhile as Arora played Channa Mereya, Singh went through five instruments, sometimes in the same verse. He is clearly skilled. He’s played with Mika, and even Jassi of “Dil Le Gayi Kudi Gujarat Di” fame. And, Arora had played at some of South Delhi’s most popping places, but the two were now doing the rounds as a Sufi act.

It was my third night hanging with them in as many weeks, and I had figured out two things: young and affluent Punjabis love Bollywood and, despite appearances, Singh and Arora are actually talented musicians.

Singh first fell for the sticks when he was a teenager, carrying them in his bag while going to school to smash them against his wooden desk as a friend sang the latest Gurdas Mann. Then he would come home, and beat the sides of empty ghee boxes. ‘Kanjar’, his mother called him. After finishing school in Delhi’s modest Tilak Nagar, he started playing on tables, the dholak, whatever he could get his hands on, in the nearby Gurudwara.

“I haven't seen another percussionist play for two and a half hours,” Manmeet Singh said, the 26-year-old owner of My Bar HQ. “This is the best Thursday night in whole of Delhi.”

He’s partly right. The bar is filling up with young couples, customary white tourists and loud Delhi bros ordering shots and taking selfies.

Arora is from the other side of town, born and brought up in Delhi’s posh Greater Kailash area to a couple dependent on a middling job at MTNL. His geography transcended class, and he grew up with the hip-hop and house music of the mid-90s, falling in love with DJing at My Kind of Place (RIP) in the fancy Taj Palace when he sneaked out of home to go clubbing the first time. He started playing professionally while studying B.Com, finally landing a gig at the iconic RPM in Malcha Marg.

Singh’s father, on the other hand, went from helping people get erections to real estate. He was a hakeem. "Jab sab cheez badhane ka hi kaam kar rahe the toh unhone socha ye (land) bhi badha dete hain." he explained. If he could make things bigger, might as well try that with property.

They explain how they first met at 1 Cafe Boulevard in Saket, and decided to work together. They played several bars across Delhi and including Escape in Gurgaon where they quit after 4 years because of “payment issues” Arora said. Singh explained, ”Payment abhi tak nahi mili," Arora interjected. They didn’t pay us. “Nahi aisi baat nahi hai. Musically wahaan growth khatam ho gayi thi." No no, it wasn’t like that. We weren’t growing musically.

Weddings pay the most and are easy work, the two told me. And it shows: the two have played weddings from Kashmir to Bangkok. Once, a drunk uncle offered them Rs 20,000 for an encore. That was more than they made on an average night, which is already more money than many troubadours dropping “original singles” on YouTube in this country make.

All this adds up, as The Sufi Duo have families to support. Families of prospective brides would always ask, do you do something other than drumming, Singh said. He looked at Arora, who responded with the the slightest of nods. Singh launched into a tirade, ”Everyone asks what we do, no one asks how much we earn how much we have, it’s always ‘What do you do?’”

This work now earns him a solid living: Two big screen phones for himself, a pram and a play school for his son, and even a music room for the house.

But are they playing what they want? I asked.

"We wanted to do original songs,” Singh told me, “maybe even modify the instruments." But at end of the day, this is what pays the bills and deviating from that formula is too big a risk to take. "Everyone wants to play their own tunes in a stadium. I have unreleased stuff of my own," Arora said when I asked him what he’d do if quitting the daily grind was an option.

And this is a quandary that most musicians seem to face. Delhi musician Anahita Dawar, a teaching artist with Music Basti explained that surviving on original content alone is tough for many bands. Sufi gigs pay more, and are easily accessible. “There are places which allow you to play original music. I play at venues like Piano Man, Di Ghent cafe, Lock and Key, People and Co in Gurgaon when I have to play originals,” she said. The rest of the time? Balle balle.

In an ideal world, Singh would be touring rural Punjab with folk singers, and still playing at his local Gurdwara everyday; Arora would be Calvin fucking Harris, filling over-priced stadiums across the country, but that could take the food off their table, or the tiny dholak out of Singh’s son’s hand. The choicelessness of their predicament—sole breadwinners of first generation lower middle-class homes whose specific skills means they are stuck blasting Nashe Si Chadh Gayi—talent wasted at the altar of conformity.

Follow Parthshri Arora on Twitter.