Focus Group Radio’s African Music Exploration show. Photo: Courtesy of Focus Group Radio
Focus Group Radio’s African Music Exploration Turns Three This Week
Focus Group Radio: ‘Afro is an Umbrella Term that Flattens a Continent’s Depth Into a Gimmick’
In a dimly lit Lisbon club, Sharan Nichani waited for DJ Marfox to finish his set. Armed with phone clips of Indian dancefloors losing themselves to Marfox’s tracks, Nichani had traveled specifically to meet the Portuguese producer who’d revolutionized Kuduro and Batida sounds, both originating in Angola.
Marfox returned the kindness and took Nichani through his neighborhood and his studio in Lisbon. It’s the kind of groundwork that arguably makes Focus Group Radio (FGR) one of the few collectives in India that approaches African music with a refreshing reverence that is far from appropriation. Turning five this year, co-founder Vidyuth S. tells Rolling Stone India, “FGR was born out of this itch to build something around music discovery—chasing underrepresented, strange, sometimes challenging sounds.”
Now, their African Music Exploration (AME) series hits its three-year mark and DJ Marfox arrives in India for a tour, performing Aug. 30, 2025 in Pondicherry alongside Focus Group Radio’s go-to selector, Marc Morais. The Focus Group Soundsystem previously shared the decks on Aug. 22 in Bengaluru, where Marfox’s tour kicked off.
The African Music Exploration series launched in March 2022, two years into FGR’s evolution from online radio platform to full-fledged music discovery collective. It’s been a few years since Afro, Afrobeat, Afrobeats and African music have all been conveniently thrown together without a deeper understanding. Nichani says, “We consciously stay away from the word Afro because it has become this lazy catch-all. In the scene here, anything with a conga loop, a swung groove, or a chopped-up vocal sample was suddenly ‘Afro.’ That kind of umbrella term flattens a continent’s depth into a gimmick.”
Instead, AME spans five decades of African music history, weaving together Ethiopian jazz, Nigerian funk, Senegalese psychedelia, and Cameroonian makossa before sliding into contemporary club sounds like GQOM, Kuduro, Singeli, and dancehall. The curation and programming is a result of obsessive digging and what Vidyuth calls “listening with more care, really tracing the lines between different eras, regions, and movements.”
For nearly eighteen months after launching AME, it was just Nichani and Vidyuth playing marathon open-to-close sets across 15 cities in India, slowly shifting what Indian dancefloors expected from a night out. The approach was deliberate: rather than immediately booking international acts or local DJs who might dilute the vision, they built the foundation themselves. “We didn’t want to just jump on the Afro-house tag and call it a day,” Sharan says. “We wanted artists who could represent the culture with real depth, not just tick a box.”
To that end, they’ve brought over London-based DJ and presenter Tash LC (who later connected them with Ghanaian rapper Bryte) and Nigeria/U.K. artist Juba, while also enlisting Indian DJs like Daisho, Marc Morais, and Double T to share their commitment to the sound’s authenticity.
They’ve leaned heavily on artwork and visual presentation to communicate their vision, though even that battles against algorithms designed for instant gratification rather than patient exploration. Nichani says, “You can have the strongest poster in the world and still get buried by the algorithm gods. Getting the word out has meant battling a digital landscape that doesn’t reward depth or experimentation. So the hustle is two-sided: one part curating the gig with honesty, the other part figuring out how to smuggle that honesty into systems designed for quick consumption.”
The question of appropriation versus appreciation looms large when Indian artists engage with African sounds. Recently, a popular crew played a Bollywood edit as “Afro vibes”—exactly the kind of surface-level engagement FGR works against. “That’s just costume-wearing for cheap applause,” Vidyuth says. “We’re not here to gatekeep what a DJ can or cannot play—do whatever you want, push sounds in any direction. But if you’re selling a gig as ‘African music,’ then stay true to what you’re putting out there.”
As FGR expands beyond experimental gig series like Dans Punk with listening sessions exploring Japanese Shibuya Kei and American Exotica, plus museum collaborations tracing Bhojpuri-Trinidadian Chutney Soca, they’re testament that going to shows could just provide a more authentic sense of music discovery compared to an algorithm-driven playlist. Their upcoming FGR Curates series will spend a month diving into 1960s music from beyond the Western canon—another example of their commitment to musical archaeology over trend-chasing.
For those looking to build lasting IPs in India’s electronic scene, Sharan says it’s essential not to start something just for the sake of it. He says, “Not everyone needs their own party. An IP only works if the idea has real depth and novelty, something you can stretch and sustain over years, not just a few weekends.”
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