MUMBAI: The Jack N Jones, Vero Moda and ONLY store conducted their monthly music jam session yesterday, 13 August in Bandra at one of the brand’s largest stores in the city. For this month’s jam session, Sameer Malhotra curated a collaboration that included folk singer Mame Khan, classical singer Sonu Kakkar and independent artiste Ankur Tiwari. The Danish clothing company Bestseller has three of its brands, Jack N Jones, ONLY and Vero Moda gaining tremendous popularity in the Indian market. Every month, the brand conducts a jam session calling music artistes from varying genres to jam together.
This month’s collaboration started merely days prior to the performance. Sources claim that the rehearsals would go on for 12 hours at a stretch, starting at 3pm and wrapping up at 4am. The jam session started with Arun Haridas Kamath aka Arun HK premiering the first single of his band, The Half Book Effect. The song, ‘Just Smile’ is not only the first single from the band, but also the first song the band ever jammed together to. The band aims to release the single next month. Six songs have been ideated so far, but they aspire to release a full length studio album instead of an extended play (EP). Also the band aims to go back to the old school of analog recording for the album.
After the opening act, Manganiyar Rajasthani, folk singer Mame Khan performed some of his original compositions which recite fables of Rajasthan. This was the first time Khan had collaborated with Ankur Tiwari and Sonu Kakkar. Khan most recently collaborated with contemporary musician Amit Trivedi on the second season of MTV India Coke Studio. In addition to touring, Khan is also working on his upcoming project, ‘Rajasthani Roots’ through which he aims to bring the Manganiyar Muslim folk belonging to Western Rajasthan in to the limelight.
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Joining Khan on stage was the full-throated Sufi singer Sonu Kakkar. In addition to performing her hit ‘Madari’ with Khan and Tiwari, Kakkar spoke about her upcoming projects. On 16 August, Kakkar will launch her new single ‘Urban Munda’, a Punjabi club song. Her brother, Tony Kakkar has composed the music for the song. This will be the second time Kakkar collaborates with her kin, having previously worked on ‘Saavan Aaya Hain’, from Vikram Bhatt’s upcoming film, ‘Creature’. Kakkr was later joined on stage by her sister Neha Kakkar as they performed the hit song ‘London Thumakda’ from the hit film ‘Queen’.
While the performance throughout the evening exuberated the rich vocals of Kakkar and Khan, it also had the crowd in cheers with its contemporary and fresh new take on Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s original compositions. The desire to one day have Indian independent music surpass the popularity of mainstream commercial music was unanimous.
