Tribute to Women in Music – WHAM 2026
WHAM was not just a celebration; it was an act of recognition and honouring women pioneers and elevating the stories and creators driving India’s music culture. We aimed to centre their stories, expand how we understood musical heritage and invited audiences to engage with music through the lens of gender and lived experiences.
– Preema John, Museum Director,
Indian Music Experience Museum
WHAM 2026 – a landmark festival dedicated to the narratives of women in Indian music. Featuring 19 programmes and 75 artists, the festival captivated over 5,000 attendees, challenging patriarchal archives to centre "forgotten heroines" of melody.
Ensuring this momentum fuels an empowering future, the museum also announced an inaugural Research Grant for 2026–27. This initiative (part of WHAM) seeds original scholarship to reframe musical history through gender and memory, translating research into future exhibitions to secure long-term gender parity.
FEATURING
A Few Thoughts
Last few months have been tumultuous to the world order. As if the ongoing four-year Russia-Ukraine war is not enough, Israel and the United States have waged a war on Iran, resulting in destabilizing the world to a greater degree. The West Asia war has created havoc in the middle eastern countries, apart from several countries who depend on petroleum oil, particularly India. Our leaders have to intensify the efforts to reduce dependence on imported oil by increasing green power generation and by successfully identifying more sites for oil exploration. The on-again, off-again war has made many economies very volatile and has resulted in huge uncertainty for businesses and industries, apart from pushing up cost of living to the citizens across the world. As non-layers in this ongoing mindless war, we Indians can only hope and pray for normalcy to return soon.