On October 24, the tenth edition of the Bollywood Music Project kicked off at 2:00 PM with 16 acts from the music industry lined up to perform across two stages at the Jio World Garden in Mumbai. However, production troubles closed the festival on a sour note.
Delayed soundchecks, overrunning headliners, slashed slots and failing mics led second-to-last performer Shilpa Rao getting on-stage an hour late, being cut off midway, and interrupted by Kutle Khan’s set on the second stage. The mishap with Rao became the focus of backlash amid wider complaints of mismanagement and disregard for both performers and audience.
Billboard India speaks to eyewitnesses and insiders to break down what went wrong.
Scheduling And Technical Failures
The first stage ran eight 30 – 45-minute sets, with second-stage acts slotted into the nine 15-minute gaps between the main stage acts. The headliner – Himesh Reshammiya – was to do an hour-and-a-half long set.
“When I arrived [by 6:40 PM], Palash Sen was still performing,” filmmaker Sulagna Chatterjee tells Billboard India. Euphoria’s 20-minute overrun cut another second-stage slot performance to about eight minutes. Anu Malik and Hariharan also exceeded their allotted times, further reducing the gaps.
Rao took the stage at about 8:29 PM – more than an hour later than her scheduled time. Her microphone failed during the opening song, and the mic was cut again after a few minutes, and the stage went dark. Sound from the second stage began as Kutle Khan started performing.
“I thought they were doing a mash-up,” Chatterjee says. Khan stopped after his first song and Rao returned to thank the audience which was chanting her name. The music from Khan’s stage resumed before Rao had finished speaking. Himesh Reshammiya, scheduled for 8:30 PM, came on at 9:16 PM and performed past the 10 PM closing time as the final act for the night.
The two stages were positioned close together, allowing sound to echo between them. An anonymous source who performed at the edition tells Billboard India, “The sound did spill over from one stage to another. But it would have been less of a problem if the time slots were respected.”
“If you’ve worked with an artist or in the music business, you know this is not the way. Set times were reduced and [artists] were still expected to carry on as normal,” they add. The trouble started a day prior during soundcheck itself, when artists on the second stage were not given a chance to do their checks correctly. “[It] actually showed the next day because the second stage had issues with the sound.”
Multi-act festivals depend on timing. Every set, changeover and soundcheck feeds the next, so a delay anywhere is passed to every act after it. With the curfew fixed, sets were cut rather than the evening extended.
What happened after the night ended?
Rao addressed the evening on Instagram, writing that “a little piece of my heart broke tonight.” In a condemning statement on October 25, the All Indian Cine Workers Association (AICWA) said on X, “To treat an artist of her stature this way, on the stage of an anniversary edition, is a direct insult to her dignity and to the honour she has earned.” They also offered Rao its support if she wants to take legal action.
Kutle Khan’s manager, Sharad Sharma, rejected what he called a “fake narrative,” and instead blamed the spillover on Himesh Reshammiya’s soundcheck.
BMP apologised in an Instagram statement late Saturday night, attributing the early end to her set to “compounding delays,” including extended sets from earlier performers, and to strict local authority guidelines and venue curfew regulations. The statement names only Rao.
Pre-sale tickets for the festival began at Rs 1500, while general tickets for one person cost Rs 3,000.
