Single lives matter

My joy was bottomless when I became aware that footwork music pioneer RP Boo (aka Kavain Space) is going to dice and splice some of his Chicago house music in Delhi. The music that spawned dance battles on the streets of Chicago in the 1990s drew its vitality from wicked fast tempos, uncanny samples and polyrhytms. It was basically EDM way before EDM but for black people of Chicago who were on the fringes. Pop Matters’ website even compared Space to Philip Glass and that’s quite an apt description considering he seems like someone conceived during a Wagnerian ecstasy.

His Planet Mu record label launched a bevy of footwork geniuses, the latest one being Jlin. Armed with this knowledge and days of listening to RP Boo’s super addictive music non-stop, I landed up at Summer House Cafe only to be turned away by the authorities because single men aren’t allowed inside. I knew this sub-human practice existed all over the country and begrudgingly accepted it. But here's a gig that was not just another dance music gig. It's a slice of history that I wanted to experience but then, I was supposed to either be on the guest list or with a woman. Unaccompanied women, however, can go inside.

An array of pubs and restobars in South Delhi’s Hauz Khas

In my near desperation, I even rattled off my knowledge to the seemingly illiterate person at the helm of affairs that night so as to be on the floor inside but he said “single men make vibes uncomfortable”. The dismaying state of affairs in the country is such that every single man is perceived as a potential sexual predator. In their manic and, frankly, imbecilic quest to be safe spaces for women, dance places across the country have been throwing the baby out with the bathwater. All the people I know who are exposed to Western music keep lamenting that not many underground global acts come to India. If they can go as far as Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai, India is only a stone's throw away. But then, despite the huge population numbers, artistes fail to reach a critical mass here because of such ad hoc rules where men are basically told that their existence will get the requisite validation only if there's a woman in the picture.

It’s beyond ridiculous that the form of music, which started off as revolutionary and a metaphoric middle finger to the establishment, was appropriated that night in Delhi by the moneyed. A group of raucous men can be a nuisance I understand but what threat does a single man pose? Live music places should at least relax their rules when someone as rarefied as RP Boo is hitting the deck. Impose an entry fee on single men but blanket ban means missing the woods for the trees.

I have been to best of places in New York and Denver recently and not a single person at the entrance cared who I was as long as I had a valid ID. When I mentioned this practice to my American friends, they found it unfathomable. It saddens me to no end that I feel less discriminated in Trumpland than in India where I’m a legal citizen. I don't mean to be flippant but there ought to be a hashtag like #AintNoCindrella for cultured Indian men who are shown the door for being by themselves during an evening out.

Last week, my editor Bhupesh Bhandari breathed his last. I'll be eternally grateful to him for giving me this space to wax eloquent about world culture on fortnightly basis. Not once in the past 30 months did he ever try to steer the voice of this column. Like Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”, I felt guided by him when I wasn't sure if I should write about an artsy but nebulous movie. He trusted the reader of this newspaper and her worldly sensibility and that’s what made me go ahead and write about cinema ranging from Greek New Wave to indie Telugu movies. This country needs more of such evolved editors who give alternative arts the space at a time of clickbait and listicle journalism. See you on the flip side, sir.  

jagannath.jamma@bsmail.in