“Idhar Attack” – Understanding Dek Bass through the story of Bass Boss, DJ Khobir

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“Idhar Attack” – Understanding Dek Bass through the story of Bass Boss, DJ Khobir<br>by Anandit Sachdev

Purée Mag and Antariksh Records<br>Aug 17, 2025

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I haven’t experienced the ‘Dek Bass’ phenomenon in person. I’m not sure whether it’s a performance or a phenomenon either. This uncertainty resides in my subsequent use of the concept here. What I have experienced instead are the multifarious sites of encounter with the Dek Bass phenomenon. Encounters include algorithm-dictated digital experiences, dissonance and noise performances within and outside of white cube gallery spaces, online webinars with filmmaker Rana Ghose and others who have witnessed the phenomenon, and of course, most recently, Rana’s documentary Bass Boss, which follows Dek Bass through the lens of DJ Khobir. For me, all of these are simultaneously first-hand and second-hand experiences. Being a non-Bengali speaker doesn’t help me much either. This is the position from which I understand and write about Dek Bass. This position affords me an encounter with Dek Bass as part of the assemblages associated with it, ready for consumption, disconnected from experiencing its originating context of local contestation.<br>I first encountered Dek Bass on Instagram through the now extremely famous reel posted by the account @deba_shis_07. Having garnered 2.1 million likes and close to 26k comments along with international attention, the reel shows a playground full of bodies of men and machines. Leaning sound system towers made up of stacks of speaker cabinets and horns (locally known as chonga), mounted on three-wheelers, move around in a maidan, surrounded by a lush green landscape. The sound systems challenge each other by forming sonic enclosures around people in a bid to prove their ability to move air, create noise, and shock the senses. One Instagram user describes it as “Mad Max: Bengal Bash.”

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" title="Instagram post" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowFullScreen allow="encrypted-media" sandbox="allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-popups allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox" style="height:520px;width:100%;border:0px;display:block;background:transparent;" class="instagram-embed-frame">At the time I encountered this reel, I was already intrigued by the question of mobile sound systems. The Indian Express, Scroll, and many other platforms had written about the mobile sound system cultures and their associated use in Kanwad Yatra and political rallies as technologies used to propagate hate-fueled ideologies. Other authors had associated these with being a sonic manifestation of religious fundamentalist masculinities. Yet others have listed it as one of the sites where patriots and Hindutva popstars manifest. However, there has been a simultaneous use of Jamaican-style sound systems in dismantling the state propaganda and spreading the agenda of reason and unity through sound systems.<br>With dissonance between ideologies as the background, I argued that sound systems are not only devices mediating propaganda and intolerance, but they are simultaneously an essential tool in amplifying and liberating dance floors. This antithetical set of uses of the sound system technologies was highlighted in my paper titled “The Anatomy and Political Currency of Indian Sound Systems”. One of the fundamental shortcomings of this paper was to assume that Indian sound systems are a homogeneous category. My run-in with the Dek Bass phenomenon shattered this misconception of homogeneity soon after I wrote my paper.<br>The Dek Bass is centred around two simple technical components – the “Dek” which is the cassette tape “deck” where the sound is produced by the DJ/ operator, and the “Bass” which refers simply to the bass drops and frequencies amplified by...