Rajkot singer Swara Oza coins “G-Pop” to take Gujarati music beyond Navratri
Rajkot: At 3, Swara Oza recorded a lullaby in a Rajkot studio. At 24, she’s credited with creating an entirely new genre: G-pop.
For decades, Gujarati music has centered around Navratri garba and film songs. Oza, working with her mother and composer Neema Oza, wanted music for every day of the year. G-pop fuses Gujarati lyrics with pop, R&B and techno — keeping the language but using Western pop structures.
Their first track, Temperature High, named the genre. Songs like Fireman, Dago and Ishq No Rang use synths, drum machines and hooks, with lyrics that never switch to Hindi or English.
With nearly 30 G-pop songs, Oza has performed at Mumbai’s NMACC and Ahmedabad’s Natarani. Her YouTube channel has over 152,000 subscribers, built largely through online clips.
Coming from a musical family — her father is a percussionist, grandmother plays harmonium — Oza also speaks openly about being bullied as a child and now designs her own outfits and posts unedited photos.
Once an experiment, G-pop is now being tried by other Gujarati artists. For Oza, who nearly quit music as a teen after discovering Justin Bieber and One Direction, it proves regional language and pop can go together year-round.
