Kaytranada’s India Debut, Presented by District By Zomato, Proved You Don’t Need Spectacle To Move A City

Kaytranada’s sound carries the quiet, unmistakable imprint of Montreal,the city that shaped him after his family moved there from Haiti when he was a baby. It’s a place where musical borders are porous, where hip-hop, house, funk, jazz and global rhythms bleed effortlessly into one another. That openness is deeply embedded in his music and, more tellingly, in the way his live sets unfold. Nothing feels boxed in. Genres brush past each other, collide briefly, then dissolve, held together by groove rather than rules.

That sensibility was forged less in classrooms and more through curiosity. As a teenager, Kaytranada taught himself production on FL Studio, spending countless hours pulling apart samples and rebuilding them until they matched his instincts. The result is a sound that feels intuitive rather than overworked,precise but loose, engineered yet human. Even at his most polished, there’s an underlying sense of play, of someone still discovering what happens when one rhythm leans into another.

Midway through the set, when Be Your Girl arrives,his own acknowledged live-set constant,the atmosphere inside the Dome shifts almost imperceptibly, then all at once. The scale collapses. What moments earlier felt like a vast venue suddenly behaves like a packed, sweat-soaked club. Bodies move closer, smiles widen, and the collective energy lifts. Kaytranada doesn’t rush the moment. He lets the track breathe, stretching it just enough for the crowd to settle into its pulse. He watches, smiles, adjusts. It’s clear he understands the room instinctively, trusting it as much as it trusts him.

That ease defines the performance. There’s no sense of spectacle being imposed from the stage, no need for dramatic peaks or forced drops. Instead, the set flows with a quiet confidence, built on the belief that groove, when handled right, is enough. And when it ends, it does so without ceremony,no fireworks, no speeches, no grand goodbye. Just one final track, a brief wave, and a crowd still swaying, reluctant to break the spell.

Kaytranada doesn’t introduce himself to Mumbai with declarations or hype. He does it the only way that matters,by moving the city in unison, dissolving the distance between artist and audience, and leaving behind the lingering sense that the night ended too soon.