Sound of Pride: How Indian Queer Musicians are Reshaping the Underground Music Scene

In India, to be a queer musician is to exist in layered contradiction. The act of creating art—often dismissed as a luxury in a country still catching up on queer rights—becomes a political gesture, a form of survival, and, for many, a way to find community. While mainstream music platforms remain largely inaccessible or disinterested, India’s underground queer music scene is quietly erupting. These are not just songs; they are testimonials, sonic protests, and healing rituals.

Artists like Adityuh, Keichyna, and Lady Fingers are at the helm of this shift. Working across genres and geographies, they offer radically honest explorations of anxiety, exile, selfhood, and joy. Their sounds may vary, but their stories converge on themes of erasure, resistance, and a stubborn refusal to edit their truth. In conversation with them, what emerges is not just a portrait of artistic struggle—but a chorus of pride that resists invisibility.

The Landscape: Music as Resistance, Not Industry

For queer musicians in India, visibility is still a gamble. The decision to be open—about one’s identity, pronouns, politics, or pain—can affect bookings, collaborations, and even basic safety. “Absolutely. I mean there are more negatives unfortunately than there are positives,” says Adityuh, a queer indie artist based in Delhi, “The only positive that I can think of is that you have the set community that you know you want to reach out to, but obviously the cons outweigh the pros here by a lot.”

The industry isn’t neutral. It’s often explicitly alienating. “It would be so much easier for me to work with other people if I was a cishet man,” Adityuh reflects. “I don’t know how many people would love to write a song with me called Gay Awakening. I mean I understand where they’re coming from. They probably don’t want to face repercussions of something they just don’t have any business with. That’s not a privilege that actual queer people can afford.”

Keichyna, a rapper and experimental artist based in Delhi, shares the same scepticism of the mainstream. “India is this country which is like, we all know it’s like messed and it’s fucked,” they say. “People can be progressive, but we guys are not class conscious. We are so tone-deaf.”

Queer musicianship, then, is not about breaking into an industry—it’s about creating a scene in the cracks of one that ignores you. “As a marginalised person, even if you make a song about a boat, it is still resistance,” Keichyna says. “You don’t get to separate your art from politics.”

Creating Space: Healing, Horror, and the Queer Audience

Despite the structural barriers, India’s underground queer artists are not creating in a vacuum. They’re finding refuge—and resonance—within their communities. “The first time I ever performed was in a queer space,” says Adityuh. “I just knew that people there would accept me right away no matter what exactly the art was. I knew that this is a community that I can rely upon to at least not judge me on the one thing that others will—being queer.”

The need for safety isn’t just about identity—it shapes the entire creative process. “I recently started working with a vocal coach, but I’m pretty sure he’s a straight man and… there have obviously been moments where I do not necessarily share every single song that I want to sing in front of him because it’s just such an awkward moment,” they explain. “It obviously is not as comfortable as it potentially could have been with someone who has had queer experiences.”

Shrutika, who performs as LadyFingers, also sees her music as emotional documentation. “My music is a way for me to journal the internal struggles I experience every day,” she shares. “All my work so far has been gender neutral, but as I find more visibility and support from my queer community, I feel more confident to be bolder and even more honest in my storytelling.”

In her track LessToLove, she captures the queer ache of dating fatigue. “It’s an R & B-inspired, smooth pop song you can dance-cry to,” she says. “It captures a conversation we’ve all had with our friends about how hard it is to find love in a world of right swipes and fast-fading connections—leaving behind less to love in each of us."

Keichyna, too, treats sound as a repository for rage and grief. “I’m full of rage. I may seem chill, but I’m always angry,” they declare. “My album is jazz-funk but also noise-rock, industrial, and hip-hop. It’s supposed to be anti-music but also music, queer people are slightly better musicians because it’s not just about technicalities—it’s about how weird and out of the box you can think.”

Their upcoming album is a “queer requiem” rooted in intersectional loss—of home, of identity, of innocence. “I wanted it to cover how I feel, like this is Pride Month—we are supposed to celebrate of course—but as a queer person I feel this sense of pessimism… like the pain and trauma that I cannot always act like yeah come on, I’m on top of this.”

Reclaiming Narrative: Queerness as Sonic Autobiography

At the heart of it all lies the act of telling stories that would otherwise go untold. Whether it’s Shrutika singing about heartbreak or Keichyna mixing screams into distortion, these artists are not waiting for permission. “My songs are an extension of the poems that I write,” says Adityuh, who first taught themselves to make music via YouTube at fifteen. “I don’t ever really try to refine it. I think the piece in itself ends up losing a lot of its true essence. A lot of times I’ve tried AI to help me write. That does not work.”

Making music is not just an outlet—it’s a refusal. “Everything I write is from a lens that I have something to say, it’s a community,” says Keichyna. “Not just LGBTQIA2S+—it’s also all other marginalised peoples: the Dalits, the indigenous people, immigrants.”

The journey to that honesty isn’t always linear. “I’ve had so many old songs that I’ve just not released because I was just so sceptical of like, ‘Oh is it even any good?’ or like, ‘Do I really even want to?’” says Adityuh. “Am I even still that person?”

Even the decision to dream out loud becomes an act of power. “At the risk of sounding ridiculous or over-aspirational, my goal for the next two years is to write and choreograph an original musical that… begins to represent the true experience of living as a privileged queer woman in India,” Shrutika says. “Privileged because it’s true—I’ve had the benefit of a good education, open-minded friends, liberal and respectful lovers, and a family that… if nothing else, no longer gets in my way.”

Across the board, the hope is that their work does more than just entertain—it liberates. “Every queer artist in India today has the chance to heal members of their audience just by choosing to make art,” Shrutika says. “Because that act in itself is courageous.”