"It's meant to make you go crazy. The vibration, subwoofers and sound design is such that it literally moves you."

– DJ Mask Phantom

We were three hours south-west of Kolkata when the motorway started disappearing. Technicolor trucks and tuk-tuks filtered into a single dusty dirt road scattered with stray dogs, monkeys and cows. "You can't find this on Google," laughed Rahul Deb Sikdar, AKA DJ Mask Phantom who founded Name Rave, a DJ and music production school in Kolkata. Our car skipped and bounced down a narrow street lined with banana trees. For a brief moment, away from the cacophony of city traffic, our surroundings felt remarkably quiet.

Kolkata, West Bengal, is one of the loudest cities in the world. Like many Indian cities, Kolkata's cultural identity is heightened through an intense sensory experience, as if the city's master volume has been cranked up to clipping: the spluttering of tuk-tuk engines sound almost percussive, truck horns blare unrelentingly and calls to prayer bookend each hour of the day. The West Bengal Pollution Control Board estimates that at one city crossing, there are an average of 18,857 car honks in 24 hours; the equivalent of one every five seconds. Yet we were on a mission to find somewhere even louder.

West Bengal is a state known for its tigers, mangroves and, among Indians, tantric mysticism. What's less known to those outside of India, however, is that it's also home to a vibrant sound system culture: a colourful, explosive scene that, according to locals, has been developing and thriving in rural villages for at least 70 years. Several times a year, small businesses build ginormous, brightly-painted sound systems splashed out with flags, flower garlands and religious iconography. Local artists take turns playing bass-heavy tunes from their mammoth creations, competing to blast the loudest sound. Many tracks are known as "jhankaar beats," a DIY style of remixing that involves speeding up a traditional Bollywood or folk song, often with a 2/4 time signature and maximum bass distortion.

According to Roy Dipankar, a Kolkata-born filmmaker and researcher at Sonic Street Technologies, the origin of West Bengal sound system culture can be traced back to the loudspeakers used in religious events, political rallies and high-profile weddings. For as long as he can remember, loudspeakers have been used by "powerful people who have free licence to make noise on the streets," where booming sound served a practical or political purpose. "The bass is cranked up all the way so that it can be heard, the earth can shake and more houses can feel it," he said.

Sound system battles take this logic to a new extreme. "It's kind of a branding exercise," explained Sikdar. "Everybody wants the best sound, so they actually go in deep and make their own amplifiers [and] speakers." Winning the competition could mean more opportunities to play at weddings and religious events, so they "go full blast" to promote their business ventures.

What may have begun as a marketing strategy has given rise to electrifying new sub-genres of sound. While Kolkata nightclubs typically play genres like Bollywood, Bolly tech and EDM, Sikdar said, these rural parties tend towards more "stabby" sounds. "This music genre is not available or found anywhere else," he added. "It's completely different from the cities to the rural areas. It's a bubbling scene there." Sound battle music is distinguished by basslines that are amped-up so high, it practically obscures any other components in the music. Dipankar quipped that his friends who were into more conventional forms of electronic music would probably find it "pure blasphemy." He joked that "even our friend from West Bengal said, 'This is not music.'" In other words, "the sound of total chaos."

"The bass is cranked up all the way so that it can be heard, the earth can shake and more houses feel it."

— Roy Dipankar

It's unsurprising, then, that sound battle tracks totally warp when recorded on smartphones. In videos, a jumble of gnarled vocal samples are muffled out by the howling bassline, landing like a crashing aeroplane. This nihilistic urge to collapse music into undifferentiated noise has gained it a nickname among music heads outside of the villages: "endcore" (a term coined by writerKhroma Collective). "If the opposing party is putting up a wall of sound, then you [fight back with] something higher," Dipankar laughed. "It's about the grotesque power of the machine."

Sikdar agreed that the only way to fully grasp the head-splitting power of sound battles is to experience it in person. And so we crammed into the back of a seatbelt-scant taxi with Sikdar and a few of his DJ and sound operator mates and headed to Nandigram, a place that would make Kolkata's boisterous noise feel blissfully quiet. After four hours of driving, two big packs of Magic Masala crisps and six cups of chai, we finally saw it: a West Bengal sound system.

The rig was so gargantuan that in order to see it in its entirety, it was necessary to get out of the car and walk around the sprawling structure. One sound system was made up of three separate carts: a bike attached to a bus-sized apparatus of towering speakers, a stack of amplifiers and a hefty diesel generator, each connected by vein-like networks of rope and wires. The speakers at the front were bright blue and yellow, painted with three-eyed faces and adorned with a string of fresh cream flowers.

Sikdar explained that while DJs in the cities are considered artists, in rural areas they are known as operators; skilled builders and sound engineers who know how to project and sustain functional systems for the masses. There are also major demographic differences between the local electronic scenes. While Sikdar has many non-male students at his Rave DJ School (one of them, Anindita Naskar, AKA DJ Quinn, accompanied us on the trip), it's extremely rare to see women involved in the building or operating of sound systems in rural villages, where gender roles are often more traditional. "It's 90 percent boys," he admitted.

We walked down a road fringed with candy-coloured houses and palm trees, passing a group of three young men crowded around a blue wooden box loaded with 16 amplifiers. Pankaj Das, a 26-year-old who worked for MM Music (one of three competing vendors that day), revealed that they had built the majority of the sound system for Vishwakarma Puja, a celebration of the Hindu craftsman deity, Vishvakarma, in which people worship tools and machinery. Today was another Hindu festival, Ratha Yatra of Puri, a celebration of Lord Jagannath and two of his siblings. I asked Das whether he thought he'd win the competition. "I don't know," he said. "It's up to God."

Sound is integral to Hindu worship. Nearby Das' sound operator crew, a group of women wearing patterned saris had flocked to a tiny lime-green temple filled with rainbow-hued statues of Hindu gods. Inside, a man was jangling gold bells and lighting incense over marigold petals, while a woman standing outside blew into a conch shell. These multi-tonal instruments are frequently utilised during Hindu prayers, helping devotees focus their minds on spiritual worship, transcending social and linguistic barriers. Over the past century, technologies such as loudspeakers, radios and cassettes have amplified these traditional acoustic sounds in Indian cities, blasting sacred music into the texture of public life. "Religion is in our system, in our blood," said Sikdar. "It's at the heart of India, so everything that we do is influenced by it."

"It's about the grotesque power of the machine."

— Roy Dipankar

Around 7 PM, as the sun was beginning to set, we felt the first trembles in our chests. The bass was deep, dark and cavernous, drowning out the percussive rattle of drums and chanting vocal samples. The only occasional moments of respite were when operators animatedly blasted the name of their company: "MM MUSIC. POWER MUSIC. PALAI MUSIC." Sikdar said that the music being played was produced by artists who lived in nearby villages, who burn tracks onto CDs and distribute them to sound vendors for battles. "They're not on the grid like we are," he explained. "They don't have Instagram and YouTube or stuff like that."

Sayak Sakar, who runs a sound system in a nearby village, put a plastic water bottle on an upside-down barrel to demonstrate the sound box's sonic ferocity. A group of men were watching the bottle bounce around, drops of water sparkling amid flashes of red, blue and green light. Sakar's father was involved in sound system competitions 50 years ago. Every year, Sakar said, they are getting louder. Back then, systems could generate 80 watts. Now, the minimum is 2000 watts. "It's meant to make you go crazy," Sikdar enthused. "The vibration, subwoofers and sound design is such that it literally moves you."

By 8 PM, the sound system procession had begun. Operators drove their roaring machines down a narrow path surrounded by green paddy fields, while men clambered over the vehicles, pouring diesel into tanks. The sound systems were trailed by a ratha—a fluorescent flower-adorned chariot—blaring traditional Indian music as women danced around it, screaming and waving their hands. Eventually the sound systems parked and faced each other, taking turns to blast their most thunderous sounds. By this point, the BPM had increased to a feverish gabber-esque tempo. The bass roared in long, groaning bellows, so loud that it was felt much more than it was heard. "We don't have this much bass in Kolkata," shouted Naskar over the trembling bassline. "I feel like I'm having a heart attack!"

In India, as well as across the globe, sound is a divisive issue. National and state laws dictate how loud we can be, where we can be loud and when. Not everyone agrees with these decisions. According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, repeated exposure to sounds above 85 decibels (motor cycles, sirens, music played at maximum volumes through headphones) can cause notable hearing loss. But urban communities are frequently exposed to higher volumes of sound.

In 2017, Mimi Hearing Technologies created a World Hearing Index, revealing that Delhi had the highest average hearing loss in the world. Meanwhile, a study conducted by the Indian government's National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) found that noise levels in Mumbai were well over the legal limits, peaking around 95 decibels outside the central train station. That was topped by the industrial city Moradabad, which, in 2022, was declared the second noisiest city in the world with a recorded noise level of 114 decibels.

Across the nation, high noise levels have sparked political conflict. In Mumbai, organisers of Ganesh celebrations have frequently appealed to state authorities that silence zones should be abolished during holy nights like Ganpati, while environmental activists campaign that the unrelenting noise is in fact a health hazard. Meanwhile, in West Bengal, the acceptable volume of firecrackers during Diwali has become a source of debate. "In India, celebrations are equated with noise, and that association can't be banished or washed off so easily," Sujata Rao, an ear, nose and throat doctor in Mumbai told the National Observer.

"Everything is really extreme. In one hour, I want to experience everything."

— DJ Mask Phantom

Without a widespread network of cultural institutions like cinemas, theatres and museums, noisy public festivities provide liminal windows of leisure for people living in rural areas across India. In Nandigram, a celebration that might otherwise be elongated over a whole evening, is instead crammed into a two or three-hour session. "This is a socioeconomic thing, actually," said Sikdar, "because in cities people want to enjoy a party and listen to music. Over [here], people work hard so they only get time for, let's say, one hour of entertainment. Everything is really extreme. In one hour, I want to experience everything." If a session at Panorama Bar is akin to an eight-hour acid trip, then West Bengal's sound box battle hits like DMT.

Everything about Nandigram's sound system culture has resisted the atomisation of nine-to-five urban living: hundreds of people gathered on a Sunday night for a communal experience of sound that felt spiritual in its own right. Men thrashed their bodies between the palm trees and the sound boxes. Others climbed on top of their machines, tightening ropes to ensure that amplifiers didn't topple over. There's an untranslatable word in Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi: jugaad. In essence, it means winging it; coming together to find a solution to a problem through resourcefulness and crafty workarounds. Jugaad is integral to West Bengal's sound system culture, in which groups of eager artists and spectators work together to keep a precarious structure intact. But the DIY culture of jugaad can also be dangerous.

By the end of the night, young men were dangling off trees, using bamboo rods to push up power cables and branches so their sound boxes could pass, straddling between exposed wires and wet marshland. "People are putting their life at risk for sound," said Sikdar. He was right: in 2022, ten teenagers died from an electric shock in Changrabandha, another town in West Bengal, after torrential rain hit the exposed wire of their mobile sound system and electrocuted the vehicle.

West Bengal sound system culture has received little media attention outside of India. But in the past few years, videos of the competitions have begun popping up on Instagram and YouTube, amassing thousands of likes and views among music enthusiasts. "This phenomenon has reached Berlin. It's reached London," said Dipankar. "It's because of technology that it's reaching out far and wide." He theorised that the spread of these videos coincided with the popularisation of social media in rural India five to seven years ago. These days, he explained, everyone from housewives to rickshaw drivers have become vloggers. "You get to peep into the lives of these people when you might have never even thought of looking into it."

Just before 10 PM, we plodded back to our car through the muddy marshland, catching glimpses of swathes of iPhones glittering like fireflies in the darkness. Social media may have transcended global boundaries, projecting a party in a remote village in India onto screens around the world, but the visceral experience of West Bengal sound battles could never be replicated virtually. At its core, West Bengal sound system culture is present-tense music; the bodily experience is an integral ingredient.

I wondered what could happen to a music scene that's bursting to be more than itself. More big, more bold, more loud. But this rebellious, hyper-local movement requires precise cultural context and can't be flattened to be palatable, replicable or commercially appealing. "That was really insane," said Sikdar, as we hurled down the motorway in the darkness, our ears readjusting to the comparable tranquillity of Kolkata's roads. We must return to India soon, he told us. A town in Maharashtra was hosting an even bigger competition later this year. There'd be even more sound systems, even bigger machines. "This was a medium-sized competition," Sikdar smiled. "It's gonna get even louder."