Alum in Focus: Sijya Gupta

24 Mar Alum in Focus: Sijya Gupta

GMI alum are performers, producers, educators, entrepreneurs, and creatives who thrive on and off stage throughout the world. The Alum in Focus series brings their stories to you.

For some, the path of music is predestined and a gift they inherit from their families. For others, not so much. Meet our alum, Sijya Gupta, a graphic designer, visual artist and music producer based in New Delhi, India. Sijya’s journey of musical discovery and growth started to take shape well into her early youth. “I don’t come from a musically inclined family in any capacity. Growing up there wasn’t much music around, it was mostly just Bollywood… I started listening properly quite late. Around the time I was 18 was when I started to build my understanding and collection of music. I went to design school and I was introduced to some things I found interesting and took off in my own space. I am a listener and I have been a listener ever since then.” 

More often than not, in music communities we come across stories of musicians who discovered their love and passion for their instruments at a young age, and have stuck with it since. Sijya’s story refreshingly departs from this narrative and is a reminder that when and how your love for an artform grows and transforms into something more cannot be predetermined. “I wanted to work with music in school and tried learning instruments but my brain just wasn’t wired for that and I couldn’t get around to it for some reason. Because of that I had given up on working with music and thought I’ll just be a listener.”

Though Sijya had graciously embraced herself as an ardent music listener and no more, music seemed to lurk around her. “ After I started working with graphics, I found that I was working with a lot of musicians and working on a lot of album art and music videos. When I entered the community here in Delhi I met a bunch of women who were picking up production for the first time with no prior knowledge just out of interest and curiosity… There were workshops at the time specifically for women in electronic production that Wildcity had started. I happened to attend a bunch of them and I really enjoyed that.” 

 From being a music lover and listener, to learning music production, creating her first six track EP, and releasing her first single, Sijya’s path in music has not been without its challenges. “I had to get over a lot of my inhibitions and they were very overwhelming. At many points in college I thought that there is no way I can even think of making music because I can’t even play the keys properly. When I started, I used to feel quite insecure. But studying production was interesting because I already work with software anyway so I could understand how this works because I am good with software and I understand how it works and how I can use it. At GMI, we worked with Ableton which is super well designed and really easy to use.” 

A budding interest in music production and curiosity for sounds well and truly set her on a creation spree. “I was quite interested in what I was learning so I would go home everyday and I would make a lot of stuff. I wasn’t sure if it was anything worth listening to or if it would be embarrassing… I think it was about the process of going on making and sharing with teachers from GMI like Jay Pei and Aditya Balani, and friends. It was very helpful because they kept encouraging me to keep going and I think that helped the most. I still wouldn’t really call myself a musician but I love making it. It’s fun.”

Empowered by the encouragement of her community, the number of Sijya’s experimental loops continued to grow. “For a while I kept making these unfinished tracks and I have all of them numbered so I know exactly how many times I have tried to make a track. I have about 150 right now. I wasn’t just making a tune and turning into a track, I was making it and then incrementally making it bigger and more like a track so every other one was getting better as opposed to one becoming really good. When I had around one hundred, I thought I should think about putting this out now. I revisited some of the tunes that I thought were most promising from the hundred, selected about fifteen and decided to turn them into proper tracks. From then I started working on an EP and now I have an EP of about six tracks that I have been working to put out.” 

Sijya released her first single ‘Have to make my bed’ in December, 2021 as a part of a compilation created by boxout.fm’s resident radio hosts. “After I did the EP I made this song. I had sent the EP around to people I work with who happen to be musicians, and my colleagues from boxout.fm asked me if I wanted to do a track for the compilation. I already had it in the works in the hundred tracks. I started with the sound and a couple of notes, and I mumbled vocals on it and then I replaced them with things that made sense. It would be a lie to say that the song is about something specific because that’s not really how I have ever made anything. It came together and became a bunch of things-  whatever the listener associates with the thing I have put together.” 

In many ways, Sijya’s artistic sensibilities in the visual medium overlap with her sonic preferences. “I think it all kind of connects in some way. With visual art I am attracted to working with errors,working with noise, and making something pretty out of things that aren’t pretty at all. That kind of sensibility translates to sound as well.  It helps to be a visual artist for practical purposes because I am making all my artwork and music videos.  I am working on six music videos with friends for the EP and it is going to be a visual EP because I am as interested in the visuals as I am in the music.” 

With an EP slated to release later this year, Sijya has much to offer to the world of art and music. To tune in to her journey, you can follow her on Instagram, and Spotify.

Written and interviewed by Senjuti Maitra.