Indian indie stars are now running with the Big Dawgs

The most astonishing, and heartwarming, of all statistics that Indian rapper Hanumankind x Kalmi’s viral, crossover hit ‘Big Dawgs’ has racked up — and it has quite few notches — is the fact it peaked at No 23 on the Billboard Hot 100.‘Big Dawgs’ isn’t the first track by an Indian artist to crack this coveted benchmark for measuring success in music though. That would be ‘Jai Ho! (You Are My Destiny)’ by AR Rahman & The Pussycat Dolls Featuring Nicole Scherzinger back in 2009, which reached No 15. But for an independent artist in India to cut through the swathe of millions of songs released on a weekly basis worldwide without a massive marketing campaign — ‘Big Dawgs’ released on the Def Jam India label, a subsidiary of Universal Music India — or a huge Hollywood production is indeed worth applauding.Its YouTube views and Spotify streams are impressive too.It has been streamed more than 20 million times on Spotify and the Bijoy Shetty-directed video for ‘Big Dawgs’ has garnered 118 million YouTube views and a crazy number of reaction videos that helped the songs go viral, as did Reddit forums and the music identifying app Shazam. Last we checked it had been Shazamed 2.8 million times.SHAZAM EFFECT Rohan Venkatesh, manager for Hanumankind aka Sooraj Cherukat and producer Kalmi, in an interview to The Indian Music Charts Podcast outlined how the track amplified.“This is something that most people didn’t realise,” says Venkatesh, who runs an agency called Imaginary Frnds. “We actually hit number one on Shazam (and) that really did affect our success in the US and had a big ripple effect on other markets like UK, Germany, Slovakia, etc,” he says.Cherukat, the Kerala-born, Texas-raised and Bengaluru-based rapper has now been co-signed by many including Tennessee artist Project Pat, who he namechecked on ‘Big Dawgs’. He also has US representation with Wasserman Music. But what now? How can Hanumankind build on this success in the most cutthroat market in the world where big money often sings the loudest song?For answers, inspiration could be closer home. medium113552575UNIVERSAL APPEAL Genre-defying band Peter Cat Recording Co. (PCRC) are about to complete the US leg of their 77-city mammoth world tour — mind boggling for an indie band — that includes being the accompanying act for Houston funk-rock trio Khruangbin with a devoted cult of fans, across US and Europe.The band, whose sounds swivels between heady psychedelia, disco, indie, bossa nova, jazz-pop, and Indian folk as the mood takes them, have been described by Variety as “one of India’s best kept music secrets”. They have just released their third official album ‘Beta’ even as their 2019-released album, the immaculate ‘Bismillah’, is still winning fans in faraway corners of the world, especially in their most important market, North America.While there might be nothing in common musically between PCRC and Hanumankind, they are both singular acts who make music with universal appeal and happen to be India-based. “As a band, PCRC have always always stood out,” says their manager Dhruv Singh, co-founder of artist management agency Pagal Haina, while taking a break from dealing with tour bus issues.“Nothing about what they do from a sonic point of view is inherently Indian. I mean they are an Indian band, from India but they aren’t an Indian-sounding band in that sense,” echoing the reaction that Hanumankind has received online for the ‘swagadocious’ ‘Big Dawgs’.Singh credits the pandemic-induced slowing down of life for fans discovering ‘Bismillah’ and kickstarting PCRC’s meteoric rise. By that time, they had also been signed by French label Panache and toured Europe a couple of times, including festivals like Rock en Seine. “What we saw was their streaming numbers were going up tremendously in North America, UK and parts of Europe. And that’s when conversations with William Morris Endeavour (WME) started about bringing PCRC to North America,” he adds.Plans to tour the US in 2022 fell flat due to visa issues but a 30-show self-funded, sold-out tour in 2023 – with 90% non-Indian audiences – told the band that they were onto something. That also meant the band was able to demand and receive bigger guarantees and play bigger venues in 2024.“That obviously was a big sign for us that yes there are people in North America who are willing to spend their hard-earned money on tickets. But just because you have big streaming numbers doesn’t mean it translates into bums on seats and the only way to test that is to put yourself out there and find your fans,” Singh, who previously worked with singer-songwriter Prateek Kuhad from 2011 to 2018. ShowQuotesThe biggest lesson for PCRC, or any other Indian act, is understanding how crucial it is to plan in advance. In India, it’s not uncommon for artists to finish an album and release it within weeks, and then start working on another. Internationally, however, artists usually tour an album for at least a year, travelling to as many markets as possible. “You have to start thinking the way the rest of the world does in terms of how touring and album release cycles work if you want to make it big,” he says.STOP CHASING VIRALITYAnother trait of the Indian music industry that Singh cautions about is our love for virality. In India, the game revolves about creating moments, rather than chasing longevity. “We care about vanity metrics a lot more in India than the US. We care more about Instagram followers, Spotify streams, YouTube views but does that translate to real fans or fans buying tickets to your shows? It takes a lot more than one viral moment to keep bringing fans back. In India, the bigger the label, the bigger the viral moment they chase,” he adds.Singh’s parting words could very well be a blueprint for Hanumankind, and for every other artist making music in English in India. “There’s a glass ceiling in India, and you have to focus on taking your music outside of India and building a fan base. There has to be more to it than just millions of views,” says Singh.