Live music often has a way of becoming background entertainment in this day and age. At bars and restaurants, conversations carry on over performances, people drift in and out, and the musicians share the room with everything else competing for attention. Ginger's Sessions, an independent music initiative based in Delhi NCR, began with a question about what a live music experience could look like when the audience was primarily there to listen.

For Agneya Singh, the idea came from his own experience as a musician. He had noticed that much of the live music people encountered was performed in bars and restaurants, where the music had to share an audience's attention with the rest of the evening. He wanted to create a space where musicians could express themselves and be heard. Ginger's grew out of that thought, founded alongside two of his closest friends, drummer Kushdeep Singh and guitarist Chaitanya Nanda.

The three first met as musicians, each working towards becoming better at their craft. Somewhere along the way, the idea of building a space like Ginger's took shape. Agneya describes it as a shared effort, with all three friends putting considerable time and love into the project. Their friendship continues to be a big part of how they work together, and he credits each of them as essential to keeping Ginger's going.

Jazz became the natural starting point for the sessions, given Agneya's own relationship with Delhi's music scene. He describes jazz as a cornerstone for musicians in the city, with its influence extending well beyond those who perform the genre themselves. From singer-songwriters to musicians working across other styles, many have drawn inspiration from Delhi's jazz community. Agneya's own musical journey has been shaped by the musicians and sounds he encountered in the city. “I am just taking forward the tradition in a way,” he says, describing Ginger's as his contribution to a musical culture that has influenced him.

The sessions bring together musicians from Delhi and beyond, with programming that makes room for jazz as well as original music. Organising each show involves considerable time and effort from the team, who approach the line-up with an interest in showcasing the musicians and their work. For them, hosting these performances is also an opportunity to become part of the journeys of artists they admire. The programme gives musicians a platform to share their work, while bringing listeners into contact with performers they may not have encountered otherwise.

There's another aspect to Ginger's that gives the project a life beyond its live events. Every session is recorded and uploaded to YouTube, creating an archive of the performances and musicians who have been part of it. Agneya describes this as an effort to preserve the music and document a moment in time. Live performances are tied to the people in the room and the particular evening on which they take place; recording them allows those moments to be revisited. It also gives the wider music community a record of its own activity, with each session adding another performance to the collection.

For Agneya, the experience of attending a Ginger's session comes down to listening. He hopes people come willing to sit with themselves and the music, giving the performance their attention. “There's something magical about a completely silent room, with nothing but music filling the space,” he says. He hopes to bring students, musicians and listeners together through that shared experience, with everyone in the room giving the performers their time.

That sense of community also runs through the way the three friends approach the project. Having started out as musicians themselves, Agneya, Kushdeep and Chaitanya understand the work that goes into performing and building a musical practice. Their friendship gives Ginger's a shared foundation, while their different roles and contributions help keep the sessions running. Agneya speaks with evident affection about creating something with his closest friends, and about the amount of time the three spend working on it together.

For independent music scenes, spaces like these can play an important role in keeping the community connected. They give musicians opportunities to perform, collaborate and introduce their work to new audiences, while giving listeners a way into a scene they might not otherwise know how to access. The recordings add another layer to this, creating an archive that can be revisited by future musicians and listeners. In a city with as much musical activity as Delhi, having platforms that bring these different parts of the community together can help keep the scene moving.

Delhi has no shortage of musicians making interesting work, and Ginger's offers one way of bringing some of them into the same room. Its sessions give performers an audience, listeners an opportunity to discover new music, and the city's music community a growing record of its own activity. Through the performances and the recordings that follow, the project continues to build on the musical tradition that first inspired it. For anyone curious about the people making music in and around Delhi, Ginger's is a good place to start listening.

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