Jam session: Why a train or a church may be the hottest new music venue
DJs on trains, gigs in elevators, concerts inside churches, raves at cafés. Don’t be alarmed. Music venues are enjoying a bit of a stretch
It’s one thing to walk into an elevator and hear Fatboy Slim. To walk into one and actually see them perform? Gosh, what a ride! Elevator Music, an American digital music platform, got the English musician and DJ to perform a one-hour set at the company’s own private elevator in Chicago last year. We’re guessing that everyone at the company made Right Here, Right Now jokes, so we won’t. But we will tell you that music’s biggest flex at the moment is getting bands and artists to play at unconventional venues.
In 2021, Switchfoot livestreamed themselves performing their hit, Float, while riding a hot-air balloon over San Diego. In India, Crab Culture, a music events and creative agency based in Gujarat, got a DJ to play a hip-hop set on a Mumbai train between Borivali and Bandra in October last year. They also organised a set inside the trailer of a moving tractor.
“For years, DJs made money mainly through performances at nightclubs and other venues,” says Dhiraaj Doriwala, founder of Crab Culture and the DJ who played on the Borivali-Bandra train. “With digital streams opening up, a video of a session in an abstract location gets me followers and views.” That, in turn, leads to real money once brands get involved. “A portable speaker company might want to integrate its product into the kind of abstract sessions we do, as our audience is their target.”
Picking the right edgy venue, however, is only the first step. Musicians are slowly finding out that unusual venues come with unusual challenges too.
The where is the why
Coffee raves sit squarely in the centre of this trend. Young people would rather queue up for a matcha latte than get drunk at a nightclub, anyway. So, when Tanishq Gaikwad, aka Tanishq Audio or DJ Tanishq, saw people grooving to a DJ in the middle of a coffee shop in London last year, he recalls being “blown away by the energy just music and coffee can create”.
He returned to his hometown, Nagpur, tied up with a local roastery and played a set in December last year. “It was equally packed and had a similar energy,” he says. “It convinced me that people want to party and enjoy performances in spaces outside of nightclubs and bars.” The raves were popular enough for District, Zomato’s event and ticketing arm, to team up with him on a 10-city tour of coffee shops earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport is planning to build a permanent wing for live music, comedy, dance and other performing arts. One space, The Quad by BLR, outside Terminal 1, already hosts performances for fliers and ticketed customers. At T2, two more open-air stages are being built. “By next year, we will have three stages that can host larger festivals, weekenders, farmers’ markets, and more,” says Hari Marar, the airport’s MD and CEO. “Of course, marquee events and partnerships do create commercial value. But our intent is to make BLR Airport a destination that is as much about connection and community as it is about travel.” So, you needn’t have to catch a flight to catch a gig (though you must be willing to brace Bengaluru traffic).
Stage right
To know how to do it well, tune in to NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts, a video series of live concerts performed by various artists at the desk of music journalist Bob Boilen in Washington, DC. The gigs – NPR has been doing them since 2008 – make the most of the intimate space and receive some 45 million views a month.
In India, gigs have been held inside Delhi’s Tihar Jail (ska band Ska Vengers and the hip-hop group SlumGods performed for inmates there in 2012). We’ve held live music events inside Mehrangarh Fort, by the banks of the Narmada, inside caves in Himachal Pradesh and on the steps of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai. There have been candlelit concerts inside Mumbai’s Afghan Church and Goa’s Aguad Port and Jail Complex.
But when it comes to looking for unlikely venues, we’re just scratching the surface, says Nikhil Chinapa. The DJ and former MTV VJ runs his own music events company, Submerge, and co-founded the Sunburn and VH1 Supersonic music festivals. He’s seen how audiences have responded to music over the last few decades. “There are spaces in every city that have the potential to be reimagined as art, culture and entertainment hubs,” he says. “They already have the infrastructure, connectivity, power, water and security.” So, it makes sense to include them into a city’s cultural and social map.
Change of scene
Chinapa is currently trying to integrate DJ sets into sporting events such as pickleball, and is consulting with the Bengaluru Airport. Crab Culture is hoping to organise gigs in skateboarding parks. They’ll likely run up against that old villain in India’s live-music story: Bureaucracy. When Doriwala organised the train gig in Mumbai, he was slapped with a fine for filming on Indian Railways property without permission. Rules for commercial performances at elevators, skate parks and prisons are hazy at best.
Chinapa says, “a single-window clearance for permissions would go a long way” in making this easier to organise, and the city to earn revenue from too. Gaikwad says he charges less than his usual club fee when he does his coffee shop gigs. And most creative folks are excited about performing somewhere that’s literally out of the box.
Besides, India has one advantage over Elevator Music. We may not have had a concert inside an elevator yet, but if the Jio World Centre in Mumbai were to slide open the doors of the world’s largest elevator, it could host about 200 people. The lift moves slowly when it’s full – all the better for performers and audiences to savour an unusual experience.
From HT Brunch, October 25, 2025
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