(Don't) enjoy yourself – Banning taped music in Delhi restro-bars is just wicked

Remember how much we laughed at Bengaluru (when it was still Bangalore) for that absurd dancing ban? You could serve alcohol and play music, maybe even have a dance floor in your establishment. But hey, no one should enjoy themselves, yes? No dancing! All you youngsters making a mess everywhere with your jeans and enjoying and all!

So now it’s been settled; 900 pubs in the city can no longer play all those MP3s on their pen drives.

Anyway, there’s apparently a new directive passed in my beloved Delhi to make the city a better place. (For whom, I don’t know.) It says that places which serve alcohol – pubs, bars, “resto-bars” – can no longer play music. Wait, that sounds wrong. Actually, they can play music, but absolutely no recorded music. Live bands are allowed. Singer-songwriters singing about their fragile emotions – “hey girl / ya broke my heart / dented a hole / in my shivering soul, hey girl” – are very much allowed, encouraged even.

The reasons for this are a little confusing. Basically, residents in fancy, rich-people areas such as Defence Colony and Khan Market (and Rajouri Garden too) complained about the music from pubs being too loud. But only the recorded music. They didn’t mind the live music being played, because they got to experience a live gig without having to pay an entry fee.

So now it’s been settled; 900 pubs in the city can no longer play all those MP3s on their pen drives. (Before we go further, restaurants that don’t serve alcohol, only mocktails, are allowed to play recorded music and disrupt the sleep of rich people as much as they like.)

As per reports – and I say this trying my hardest to suppress a loud cackle – the people who make these sort of decisions believe that recorded music is loud and live music is, um, soft. Please allow me to introduce them to the wonders of… the volume knob! You go right and, lo, the loudiness of the song goes up. You turn the knob to the left and the volume (you guessed it) goes down. If you go all the way to the left, the music stops playing entirely. Wow, amazing.

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This affects the nightlife situation in Delhi quite a bit. First up, the sound. Pubs play music not because they want to or because it’s trendy or because they want to break any law or because they want to disturb the neighbours. They play it because they want the people inside to drink, dance, have a good time. And spend money. It’s basic business.

Without the clutch of something playing in the background, pubs will now be filled with awkward silences, as people would run out of conversation. I spend 50 per cent of my time inside pubs complaining to my friends about the terrible music. What will I do now? How much can I drink? How many plates of chicken tikka can I possibly order?

Without the clutch of something playing in the background, pubs will now be filled with awkward silences, as people would run out of conversation.

Except for a handful, no one will be dancing in the absence of a banger of a track bursting through the speaker (and those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music). So people will start getting drunk quicker. Every pub in the city will basically just sound the same: a group of drunk men either punching each other or loving each other. “Tu mera bhai hai.” “Nahi, TU mera bhai hai.” “Nahi TU MERA bhai hai.” “Nahi, tu mera BHAI hai.” And no one wants that.

For anyone thinking this could be a shot in the arm for the live music industry, which remains in a permanent state of tatters, I’m not so sure. The good bands, the ones worth watching, will be even further out of reach for audiences because pubs will be forced to spend a bomb to get some low-cost live musicians to play every single night.

Each night would be a rehashed version of some fellow with an acoustic guitar and a clever accessory singing “Purani Jeans”, then “Wonderwall”, then “It’s Been A While”, then that Bruno Mars song. Which would leave very little money for pubs to pay the actual artists performing their music the kind of money they deserve. (I don’t know what side DJs will fall on; that’s a neat little grey area.) 

There’s also the fact that a live performance isn’t exactly the same as an artist playing in the background while people eat and drink and complain about their jobs. The latter situation seems a little disrespectful, where the musician is a prop, a placeholder. I’m being alarmist, but what if we move toward a cultural shift where people start appreciating the arts even less? 

One thing this decision will absolutely not do is increase corruption. I can’t imagine a world where cops will show up at a pub which has a live musician performing. They will not ask the owners to shut it down. The owners will most certainly not be strong-armed into shelling out a little extra on the side to keep the gig going, so as to not upset the patrons there to watch the artist. This will undoubtedly not happen every evening.

Are we going to end up with pubs eventually going broke because they can’t take on the added costs and the reduced profits? Who knows. But it’s a good decision because we can’t have the young people of the city having fun; that’s unacceptable.

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