Music has been around for as long as humanity itself has existed. From folk singers playing at village gatherings to classical maestros performing in grand concert halls, music has always found its way to the people who needed it most. In today’s digital age, what has drastically changed is the method of travel. Today, a musician from a small town can connect with a listener in a faraway city with a single post. Instagram, in particular, has become one of the biggest stages for indie artists, where raw talent is scouted, genres blend and an entirely new generation of musicians comes quietly and unassuming to change the sound of India.
These eight artists, ranging from classical to folk and indie, currently stand out as some of the most authentic and captivating presences on Indian Instagram.
Tanmay Maheshwari (@tanmay.music)
Tanmay Maheshwari is a singer and songwriter who would sum up his life in a single line, “Art is all I know and all I have. “That’s a rare form of dedication and it reflects in every track he releases. His singles “Chal Chalein” and “Kafiraana” are available on all the major streaming services, while a collaborative album with Unerase Poetry, which includes his original track “Fikar”, shows he can navigate the worlds of music and spoken word with ease.
Tanmay has been on stage since he was sixteen and that experience comes through in his work. He doesn’t just write songs, he writes moments. His Instagram is an extension of that idea, a place where art isn’t a commodity to be sold but a conversation to be had. With almost 6,600 followers and growing, he wants people to participate in his work, not just consume it.
Ishaan Nigam (@ishaannigam.music)
Ishaan Nigam has a story to tell. Growing up in the small town of Bahraich, Uttar Pradesh, he was shaped by the legends Mohd Rafi, Manna Dey and Lata Mangeshkar, performing publicly from the age of ten. He went on to earn a bachelor’s in computer engineering, but it was his calling that won — leading him to pursue a master’s in Indian classical vocals and a coveted seat at KMMC, the AR Rahman Music College in Chennai.
Since then, Ishaan has released sixteen singles of his own. His track “Woh Raaz Ho” received an incredible seven million streams on Wynk Music, while “O Raahi” exceeded 100,000 streams on Spotify. His reach extends beyond music streaming — he has been featured in the films and web series “Inspector Rishi”, “Lost & Found in Singapore” and “FIR”, as well as on the prestigious Coke Studio Bharat, where he sang “Geejaga Hakki”.
Based in Mumbai, Ishaan is a singer-songwriter, composer and vocal producer — the next generation of Indian independent artist: classically trained, genre agnostic and entirely self-made.
Tannishtha Puri (@tannishthapuri)
Tannishtha Puri is a young musician who has a quiet intensity that she brings to everything she does. She was a contestant on The Voice Kids (Season 2) and Indian Idol. She was noticed by the industry at a very young age, meeting the likes of Papon and Himesh Reshammiya. In 2016, she released her first two albums, the collaborative Ya Rabba, made with Maithili Thakur, featuring the songs “Shaitaniya” and “Taufeeq” as well as a solo album, Saawre.
Tannishtha is compelling because she is willing to go beyond. Her music is at the intersection of devotion, emotion and melody, grounded in the Indian classical tradition but speaking in a voice that is her own. Instagram is not her portfolio, but rather a diary of her musical life, where she shares her process, her performances and her personality with a community that has accompanied her because of the honesty she brings to her craft.
Yuvraj Chugh (@yuvrajchughmusic)
Yuvraj Chugh is the kind of musician who treats the medium with the same economy, care and love for feeling that a poet treats the language. On Apple Music and SoundCloud, his catalogue of original tracks includes “Do Sheher” and “Piya Pardesi” (ft. Nayab Midha and Ajasra), which showcase a songwriter who takes texture and story seriously. In his Instagram bio, he notes that he likes to take one-minute originals from audience suggestions, which requires discipline and a commitment to his audience. Yuvraj’s music is conversational, it doesn’t shout at you but rather invites you in. He is part of a generation of Indian indie artists building an audience one authentic song at a time, using available tools not as a way of showing off but reaching out.
Dhruv Bedi (@dhruv_bedi)
Dhruv Bedi is a bridge to something older and deeper in Indian music. A third-generation artist in his family, Dhruv is a sitarist trained under his father, the renowned sitar and surbahar player Sh. Jagdeep Singh Bedi and continues his tutelage under Padma Bhushan awardee Pt Budhaditya Mukherjee, following in the tradition of Guru-Shishya Parampara.
His achievements are impressive. These include the Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar from the Sangeet Natak Academy, ‘A’ Grade Artist from All India Radio and Doordarshan and India Today among their ‘Next 100’ achievers. He is empanelled with both ICCR and SPIC MACAY and has appeared in major festivals in the USA, the UK, Switzerland, Sweden, South Korea and a lot more. His reels on Instagram invite audiences into the meditative realm of Hindustani classical music, one of India’s greatest riches and a young master who keeps it glowing for future generations.
Ashmita Sawhney (@ashmita_sawhney)
Ashmita Sawhney is a 20-year-old musician from Delhi. Her online presence shows a young woman warming into her gift in real time and doing so with impressive and honest nakedness. “I am everything I want to be” is a quietly powerful declaration, the kind of confidence that doesn’t need to announce itself, it simply is. She is twenty, she is singing covers, originals and classics and she is doing it with a feeling that defies her age.
What is worth looking at is this honesty. It is not a character. It is about a young woman who loves music, is studying it and is brave enough to show us the process rather than just the end product. In a world of manufactured looks, this is a bit of a breath of fresh air.
Swaranshi (@swaraa_music)
Swaranshi ( @swaraa_music ) infuses her work with meditative beauty. Her idea is to understand her work on its most emotional and spiritual levels. She is the perfect person to talk to about this because her very name is an echo of the Sanskrit word swara, meaning ‘the notes which form the sacred grammar of Indian classical music’. Swaranshi’s Instagram account is a rich archive of their performances, reflections and other explorations, with 428 posts and 19,000 followers.
The idea of listening to music as a presence rather than sound resonates with me. In Swaranshi’s words, it is the kind of presence that can make “time stand still”. And this idea is reflected in both Swaranshi’s Instagram account and in a larger artistic persona. Swaranshi is an artist who understands that the space around a note is just as important as the note itself and that signals to Swaranshi’s followers that the audience is hungry for exactly that.
Harpreet (@harpreetmusic)
There’s only a handful of artists working in India today who occupy quite the unique space that Harpreet does. A singer-songwriter, guitarist, music producer and performer, Harpreet has been described by fewas creating “an act of poetic subversion”, music that builds a bridge between the written word and sound. He is trained in Hindustani classical music at Gandharva Mahavidyalaya in New Delhi and plays both guitar and flute. He also sings original compositions in Hindi as well as Punjabi, Bengali, Assamese, Rajasthani and Haryanvi.
Harpreet is perhaps best known for setting the poetry of Kabir and Bulleh Shah to music, bringing these towering humanist voices to contemporary audiences through melody, guitar and percussion. He has also composed for the works of Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Pash and Nirala. His performances have graced festivals in Egypt, Ireland, Varanasi, Pushkar and beyond, earning praise from The Hindu, India Today and the BBC. With 19,000 Instagram followers and a global touring record, Harpreet is proof that music rooted in the deepest traditions can also find the widest reach.
A New Stage for Indian Music
What these eight all have in common is neither genre nor geography, but a devotion to honesty in their art. They’re crafting something worthwhile in the noisy landscape of social media, not by chasing algorithms, but by staying true to their music. From Dhruv Bedi’s sitar that brings centuries of tradition into a thirty-second reel, to Ishaan Nigam’s indie crooning across seven million streams, to Harpreet’s guitar-laced Kabir that reaches people who may never have opened a poetry anthology, Instagram is doing something pretty amazing: giving India’s most passionate musicians a stage as big as the world.
