By Shama Nair
The Bacardi Nh7 Weekender is an annual two-day music festival featuring underground, upcoming, and local artists. Performances are split across five different stages, each curated by genre.
The recording was taken at the largest of the five stages, the Dewarists Stage, which features indie-rock artists and fusion bands. At the time I recorded, no artists were actually performing. This made the soundscape of this stage relatively similar to the soundscapes of other stages between performances. During this time of anticipation, impatience, and perhaps even boredom, there was far from nothing going on. Concert-goers took the opportunity to indulge in other activities, such as socializing, getting something to drink, or just hanging out and soaking in the festival atmosphere. A girl asks a friend for a smoke. A performance is under way at a neighboring stage, but people still crowd the Dewarist stage, waiting for one of the main acts of the day, the Bartenders.
Festivals like this one ostensibly introduce people to new kinds of music. As the unrelenting crowd in front of the Dewarist stage suggests, however, some people come with the intention of listening only to specific artists or types of music and may not be open to listening to something unfamiliar. This tendency appears to be reinforced by the division of stages according to genre.
Soundscapes of Pune City 