Something quite remarkable happened in 2011 in the Indian indie pop scene. Parekh & Singh, the dynamic duo consisting of vocalist Nischay Parekh and percussionist Jivraj Singh, burst onto the pop scene, doing something no other homegrown act had been able to do until then. In fact, back in 2021 we published an article titled 'How Parekh & Singh Became India's Biggest Indie Export' to capture the magnetism and hold this duo had over their listeners, clad in their soft but vibrant suits and signature hairstyles.

More than five years since that interview, we spoke to Parekh again to talk about what sustaining in this precarious industry looks like, how his own voice has changed since the end of Parekh & Singh, and why he is choosing to crowdfund his upcoming India-wide solo shows, 'The Tiny Tour'.

There's a change he has noticed since being part of the industry and Nischay points to something more outward. He believes the gatekeepers of culture are operating much the same way they were when he started out, but he does see a significant change in the audience. "The internet exploded in India over the last thirteen years with the arrival of YouTube, Spotify, and other global platforms. Subcultures have become much deeper, and interest-based media has fundamentally reshaped how audiences organise themselves." This "interest-based media", as Parekh calls it, has carved up our cultural world. There are in-groups and out-groups now, and everyone wants to be part of what they deem "cool", with every single group finding its own niche interests.

Of course, this division has its pros and cons. On one hand, the specificity and curiosity to find the nichest and most extraordinary experiences has led to far more attention being paid to corners of media that weren't necessarily mainstream back then. On the other hand, this division has also bred a sense of performativity, and the exclusivity it initially tried to dispel has morphed into a kind of "cool" club that's based on participating in subcultures that now have new gatekeepers — garbed as internet Substack authors and so-called cultural commentators. According to Nischay, in our current economy, the biggest currency we have is taste.

Noticing this shift, Nischay poses an interesting question about this new generation of listeners: Who exactly is Gen Z? What are they listening to? More importantly, what are they listening for?

And that question has never been posed to me before. For me, personally, sometimes its nostalgia, sometimes it's this feeling of discovery and sometimes it is because the song is all over Instagram.

"I'd like to believe the answer is specificity," explains Nischay. And maybe he has a point.

When it comes to social media, Nischay has a pretty clear philosophy: it's a tool, not an identity. "Today, social media is simply one of those layers," he says. "More than that, it's an instrument. Like any instrument, it has to be practised. Sometimes you use it; sometimes you don't." That idea of the "layer" runs through everything he does. Parekh has never been the plaid-shirt-and-acoustic-guitar confessional type, preferring to put something between himself and the audience, whether a costume, a stage design or a certain demeanour. "I've always been a 'layer' person," he says. What has changed is the tone of the internet itself. "Things have become a little more real and a little more confessional," he says. "But even that is its own genre of performance."

Ask about the mood listeners have long attached to his name and he's candid about its limits. "It is limiting, for sure. But it's limiting precisely because it's not a conscious decision." He describes a palette of pastel emotions, nostalgia braided with melancholy, and loneliness sitting beside cosiness. "There aren't a lot of primary colours in my work. They're tertiary and secondary colours, more complex shades of feeling." He isn't looking for an exit, though. "There's still some battery left in the toy. I haven't received an operating-system upgrade yet, I'm still running the same OS."

So what, exactly, is the Nischay Parekh sound? Recently he bought a record player for the first time and spent weeks listening back through his own catalogue. Strip away the voice and lyrics, he realised, and the records could pass for the work of different bands. The drum sounds, guitar tones and mixers changed from album to album, and the recordings were made with whatever was on hand, sometimes with taxi noise bleeding into the vocal takes. What held it together was his voice and his former bandmate's inventive approach to rhythm. "I don't know if it was actually a sound as much as it was an emotion," he says. "More than a sonic identity, I think it was an intention." Drums have receded in the music he's making now, and the shows he's planning will be his first solo performances. He calls it the same river with a few new tributaries.

Those solo shows where he will be playing his original music as a solo artist, under the moniker 'TV Dinner', are where The Tiny Tour comes in. Rather than sit down with a promoter and pick the usual three cities, Parekh asked his listeners to tell him where they'd like him to play, down to the venue, via a form shared on Instagram. He expected a lukewarm response. Who, he wondered, wants to hand over yet another form of data on social media? Instead, entries are still arriving daily, close to 300 so far, many asking for two or three tickets. The usual cities topped the list, but the Northeast made itself heard loudly enough that promoters wrote to him offering to film and document the tour regardless of the numbers.

For Nischay, that says as much about how India books live music as it does about audience appetite. "The live music scene doesn't have to be limited to Thursday, Friday, or Saturday nights with a margarita blender running over the music," he says. He points to the boom in listening sessions, where a room of 40 people listening quietly is "worth so much more than 200 people passively half-listening in a club," and wishes India had something in the spirit of NPR, a low-pressure space that draws in people who never thought a gig was for them.

His TV Dinner show at G5A last November, a full house, taught him that audiences will meet an unfamiliar format halfway if artists let them in on the thinking behind it. "Growth only happens in new, sometimes uncomfortable situations," he says. "Hopefully that discomfort is on my end, and the experience stays familiar and comfortable for the audience."

Nischay admits, a little sheepishly, that he only began studying songwriting seriously about three years ago, after three albums. Reading more, and more widely, has shifted that balance. He once wrote from the music outward, but now the words carry "at least equal weight, if not more." Hence, his hot take: "Everyone talks about the genre of the moment being the 'singer-songwriter,' but I actually think it should be 'songwriter-singer.'"

Thirteen years after his iconic sunset slot at the NH7 Weekender, his advice to newcomers is refreshingly simple. "Develop the tools, and then use those tools to break the rules." When he started out, people told him the rules had to be followed to reach the next level. He thinks that comes from fear. "There are no real rules to this, there never have been." It's a fitting philosophy for someone who has spent over a decade putting ideas on the internet, some landing and some not. As Nischay puts it, "You always get another chance."

If you enjoyed reading this, here's more from Homegrown:

'Loops' Is What Happens When A Musician & A Visual Artist Combine Their Creative Practices 

Hulo Talks to Us About Chasing Music, Finding Community, & Building A Life Through Art

Sakré & Galat Admi Sing The Blues For A World That Paid Them No Mind