Festivals are not interchangeable. Each has its own hour, its own energy and its own tolerance for length, and a gathering planned without regard to that tends to feel slightly off even when everything is technically right.
Here is how the year tends to run.
Ram Navami
Daytime, and usually more restrained than the festivals that follow. Gatherings are often at home or at a small mandir, and the mood is devotional rather than celebratory.
Shorter sets suit it, forty-five minutes to an hour. Seating is usually indoors, and because it is daylight, lighting matters less than at any other point in the year. Put the effort into seating and flowers instead.
Janmashtami
The one that runs late, and the only major evening where that is the point.
Gatherings build toward midnight, which changes everything about planning. Energy needs to be managed rather than spent, because a room that peaks at nine has nothing left at eleven. The most successful Janmashtami evenings we have played are the ones that hold something back, sitting at a warm, sustained level for a long stretch and only lifting properly in the last hour.
Practical consequences: plan for people arriving in waves, keep food available throughout rather than at one sitting, and be realistic about children. Lighting should be genuinely dim by the later part of the evening.
Ganpati
Ten days, which means the question is not what to plan but which evening.
Visarjan days and the first day are chaotic and loud. The quieter middle evenings are where a baithak actually works. Societies that schedule music on day one, competing with arrivals and decoration, usually find the room never settles.
These are also the most likely to be outdoors, on a podium or in a courtyard, which means open air, spread-out seating and a real need for warm light in a space normally lit by security floods.
Navratri
Nine evenings, and the fullest calendar of the year. The dominant sound is garba and dandiya, which is a different musical tradition and a different kind of evening entirely.
A seated devotional gathering during Navratri works best on the quieter nights, or earlier in the evening before the dancing begins. Trying to hold a baithak alongside a garba night rarely succeeds, not because the music competes but because the room cannot be in two modes at once.
Diwali
Quieter than people expect, musically.
Diwali gatherings are usually family-scale, indoors, and layered with other activity: puja, food, visiting, fireworks outside. A shorter, gentler set fits better than a long one, and the lighting is already handled, because the whole house is full of diyas.
This is the point in the year where the smallest line-ups work best. A room lit entirely by oil lamps with two or three musicians in the corner is hard to improve on.
Holi
Loud, daytime, and almost never a seated gathering. If devotional music features at all it tends to be at the edges, either early in the morning before the colour begins or in the evening once everyone has washed and calmed down. The evening version can be lovely and is widely overlooked.
the off-season
Between festivals there is a long stretch where most gatherings are personal rather than calendrical: a griha pravesh, a satsang for a family occasion, a milestone birthday, a housewarming.
These are often the best evenings of the year to host. Nobody is competing for the date, the room is not exhausted from a week of programming, and you can choose an hour that suits the gathering rather than the calendar.
If you have been meaning to hold one and keep waiting for the right festival, consider not waiting.