Zyakuni In My Backyard: Young Independent Artists Of New Delhi

Every few decades, a new genre blooms or emerges that breaks the mainstream notion of music, proving that music is too big to be confined to a particular definition and the boundaries of music are limitless. Since the pandemic, a genre that has caught the attention of music enthusiasts is Indie. Often misinterpreted as a bunch of songs with profound lyrics and soothing tonality, “Indie” isn’t a genre but the short form for “Independent”, any musician who produces music independently and isn’t affiliated with any commercial label is an indie musician.

Zyakuni In My Backyard (ZIMB) is a Delhi-based pop independent band. The peculiar band name was Shraddha Jennifer Singh and Anushka J Datta’s idea in 2016, when both were in high school, the name was an amalgamation of their Instagram usernames together (@zyakuni + @zombieinmybackyard).

While there’s no coherent meaning to the band name, its members hope that their listeners eventually associate a happy memory with their music.

The six-member band includes Shraddha and Anushka as vocalists, Noel Sakhi on the keys, Aradhya Khurana on the bass, Aman Masih as the drummer and Rahul Bhandari as the lead guitarist. All of them started their musical journey from a young age.

Alongside singing covers of pop classics, this young band is driven towards producing original music. Their debut EP going by the name “Zyakuni In My Backyard” came only a year ago but the first track “Parking Lot” has already garnered a noteworthy audience, whom they also jokingly call “Zuchhinis”! On being asked if they are satisfied with the audience’s reactions, they stated that there’s no problem with the audience right now as long as they like the music and respect their boundaries, because a lot of times, new artists are considered dispensable by the audience and some people can become aggressive, but gladly they haven’t experienced it yet.

This six-member band has now gained recognition in the Delhi music space by performing at places including Piano Man by playing their original music. With a loyal listener audience now, their future holds a lot of original content among which is June which comes out this June.