Press Release
- Top classical musicians to start your Festival days include Padmini Rao and DevashishDey
- Music influenced by Sufi qawwal to hip-hop brings top bands including Bombay Bassment, Kabir Café, Raghu Dixit,Beth Orton & Sam AmidonAga Khan All Stars and Inna Modja to evening music stage
- Evening Music passes available at http://music.jaipurliteraturefestival.org/ and on ground at Diggi Palace Hotel and Clarks Amer (400/- per day OR Rs.1200 for all 4 days)
Jaipur, 16 January: As a whirlwind of literary figures prepare to descend on the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival, an eclectic mix of music artists are set to perform morning and night at the five-day literary extravaganza. The music performances will take place at two locations, the Front Lawns at Diggi Palace in the morning and the Music Stage at Hotel Clarks Amer in the evening, as part of the world’s largest free literature festival this month, January 19-23, 2017.
MUSIC STAGE at HOTEL CLARKS AMER, 19:00 – 22:00, 19-22 January 2017 (Tickets Rs.400/- per day OR Rs.1200 for all 4 days – available from the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival website andDiggi Palace or Clarks Amer during the festival, FREE with Delegate Registration)
Kick-starting the evening music programme with a fantastic night of boundary breaking music, Rajasthan Josh and Neeraj Arya’sKabir Café take to the stage of Clarks Amer on the first evening of ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival 2017.
Rajasthan Josh is a world music band which combines the various folk traditions of the north-western region of India, ranging from traditional bhajans to popular folk songs and mystic Sufi Rajasthani music, interspersed with captivating folk dances.
Neeraj Arya, the voice of Kabir in the contemporary scene, has been relentlessly researching and performing Kabir poetry across the country for the last six years. His rendezvous with Kabir began with the film Had Anhad by ShabnamVirmani. Influenced by folk Kabir artistes like PrahladTipanya and Mir Mukhtiyar Ali, Neeraj applied his own musical sensibilities and pioneered a genre called Kabir Rock.
As night falls on Friday evening (Jan 20th) the terrific line up of Bombay Bassment and Inna Modja are set to wow the crowds.
Award winning Bombay Bassment combines the sounds of hip-hop, reggae, funk, and drum & bass. The band released their self-titled debut album in 2014 and has won multiple awards. They’ve played some of the best music festivals in the world including Glastonbury Festival and Bacardi NH7 Weekender, and have shared the stage with Snoop Dogg, The Wailers and Will & The People among others.
Inna Modja will transport you to the heart of Mali. Singer of hits including ‘Mister H’, ‘French Cancan’ and ‘La Fille du Lido’, Modja learned her singer-songwriter craft from her elders creating a sound based in Motown soul, Sahel desert Blues, Mandinka guitars and Kora meets hip-hop.
Saturday night (Jan 21st) sees Soulmate and Beth Orton & Sam Amidontake the stage at Clarks Amer.
Inspired by the roots and groove sounds of the Blues, Blues-rock, soul, rock ‘n’ roll, funk and R&B, Soulmate was formed when Rudy Wallang and Tipriti Kharbangar decided to form a band dedicated to spreading awareness about the Blues genre.
Beth Orton is a singer and songwriter who has released six trailblazing albums, including the BRIT Award-winning Central Reservation, and 2012’s ‘Sugaring Season’, which Vogue described as ‘a beautiful and timely album, filled with melancholy’.Sam Amidon is a singer/banjoist/fiddler/guitarist originally from Brattleboro, Vermont. He has released five acclaimed albums of radically reimagined folksongs on the Bedroom Community and Nonesuch labels, most recently 2014’s Lily-O.
Closing the Clarks Amer Music Stage on Sunday evening (Jan 22nd) will be the world-class line up of Lisa Hannigan, Aga Khan Music Initiative Ensembl and The Raghu Dixit Project.
Lisa Hannigan’s haunting voice has featured on soundtracks for TV series Fargo and Oscar-winning Gravity and she has collaborated with artists as diverse as Ray LaMontagne, Richard Hawley and Herbie Hancock. Her new album At Swim is her most bewitching yet.
Aga Khan Music Initiative, a programme of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, is an inter-regional music and arts education programme to preserve, transmit and develop musical heritage in contemporary forms. The Aga Khan Music Initiative Ensemble brings together the Initiative’s leading artists and AKTC’s collaborators of the past fifteen years. These master musicians are not only brilliant performers, but also pioneering composers, arrangers, improvisers, teachers, and mentors. They bring all of these talents and abilities to bear on their work with the Aga Khan Music Initiative, drawing inspiration from the past to create new music, and playing an active role in the Music Initiative’s education programme. Homayoun Sakhi on the Afghan rubab, Wu Man on the pipa, Saxophonist and composer Basel Rajoub, Salar Nader on tabla, Andrea Piccioni on single-headed frame drums, and qanun player FerasCharestan. The Ensemble will perform a newly created repertoire of compositions, improvisations and contemporary arrangements inspired by tradition.
Bringing Clarks to a close are one of India’s biggest cultural and musical exports, The Raghu Dixit Project. Their infectious, happy music transcends age, genre and language. From playing to over 100,000 people in Karnataka, to Glastonbury and even playing for the Queen of England, Dixit has done it all! Have a great time to their earthy, rooted, vibrant yet simple fun.
HERITAGE EVENTS at AMBER FORT and HAWA MAHAL
Music also features in the Heritage Evenings presented in partnership with Rajasthan Tourism. Bringing together arts and culture with built heritage, two mesmerising Heritage Evenings at the magnificent Amber Fort and the spectacular Hawa Mahal run parallel to the Festival on the evenings of January 20th and 21st.
Rhythm and Rhyme will be an evening of poetry readings held at Amber Fort, Jaipur on Friday, 20th January at 7.30 PM. Bringing together voices from two sides of the globe, the session will witness readings by celebrated American poet Anne Waldman and the renowned Bollywood lyricist Swanand Kirkire. This will be followed by Sarod Recital by Padma Vibhushan Ustad Amjad Ali Khan at the Amber Fort.
Mujre Se Multiplex Tak, will take the audience on a journey through the magical realm of entertainment at Hawa Mahal on Saturday, 21st January at 7:30 PM.Coursing through the ever changing world of cultural entertainment, the session will explore how the audiences at entertainment venues have evolved over the years. Writer and musician Vidya Shah will reflect on these changes through song while actor Luke Kenny punctuates them with poignant poetry and quirky banter.
ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival Music Programme Day-by-Day
Tickets available on the Jaipur Literature Festival website &also available for pick up at Diggi Palace at the Registration Desk from January 15th onwards and at Clarks Amer from 10 AM onwards on the Festival days (19th – 22nd January)
Thursday 19 January, 2017
Gates open 6:30, 7.00 – 10:00 – Hotel Clarks Amer
Rajasthan Josh and Kabir Café (Ticketed at Rs.400/- per day OR Rs.1200 for all 4 days. FREE with Delegate Registration)
Friday 20 January, 2017
Gates open 6:30, 7.00 –10: 00 – Hotel Clarks Amer
Bombay Bassment and Inna Modja (Ticketed at Rs.400/- per day OR Rs.1200 for all 4 days. FREE with Delegate Registration)
Saturday 21 January, 2017
Gates open 6:30, 7.00 – 10: 00 – Hotel Clarks Amer
Soulmate and Beth Orton & Sam Amidon (Ticketed at Rs.400/- per day OR Rs.1200 for all 4 days. FREE with Delegate Registration)
Sunday 22 January, 2017
Gates open 6:30, 7.00 –10: 00 – Hotel Clarks Amer
Lisa Hannigan, Aga Khan All Stars, Raghu Dixit (Ticketed at Rs.400/- per day OR Rs.1200 for all 4 days. FREE with Delegate Registration)
~~ ENDS ~~
NOTES TO MEDIA PERSONS
Information on Registration for the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival can be found here:
http://jaipurliteraturefestival.org/registration/
For media enquiries on the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival, please contact Edelman India:
Nitisha.Prabhakar@edelman.com / Amrita.Sarna@edelman.com
For Jaipur media coordination on the Jaipur Literature Festival, please contact Spark PR:
Jagdeep Singh (M: 09829065787) (Email id: info@sparkpr.in)
Kamal Kant (M: 09571836810) (Email id: info@sparkpr.in)
About the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival 2017
Described as the ‘greatest literary show on Earth’, the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival is the world’s largest free event of its kind.
The past decade has seen the Festival host 1300 speakers and welcome nearly 1.2 million book lovers.
Celebrating writers from across the globe, past speakers have ranged from Nobel Laureates and Man Booker Prize winners to debut writers including Amish Tripathi, Chimamanda NgoziAdichie, Eleanor Catton, Hanif Kureishi, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Ian McEwan, J.M. Coetzee, Mohammed Hanif, Oprah Winfrey, OrhanPamuk, Pico Iyer, Salman Rushdie, Stephen Fry, Thomas Piketty, Vikram Seth and Wole Soyinka along with renowned Indian language writers such as Girish Karnad, Gulzar, Javed Akhtar, M.T. Vasudevan Nair, Uday Prakash as well as the late Mahasweta Devi and U.R. Ananthamurthy.
Writers and Festival Directors NamitaGokhale and William Dalrymple invite speakers to take part in the five-day programme set against the backdrop of Rajasthan’s stunning cultural heritage and the Diggi Palace in the state capital Jaipur.
Equity and democracy run through the Festival’s veins, placing some of the world’s greatest minds, humanitarians, historians, politicians, business leaders, sports people and entertainers from all walks of life together on stage. This free and egalitarian access to these renowned thinkers and writers is a powerful statement in a country where access to such individuals remains the privilege of a few. The ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival provides a potentially life-changing opportunity for audiences from Rajasthan, across India and the world to learn from and exchange ideas with contemporary literary stalwarts.
The ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival is a flagship event of Teamwork Arts, which produces over 25 highly acclaimed performing arts, visual arts and literary festivals across more than 40 cities globally, and is produced by Sanjoy K. Roy.
In 2014, ZEE JLF spread its wings beyond the borders of India with an annual event in May in London. In 2015, it headed across the pond to Boulder, Colorado where it hosts a similar event every September.
Website: www.jaipurliteraturefestival.org
About Teamwork Arts
For over 25 years, Teamwork Arts has taken India to the world and brought the world to India.
In countries such as Australia, Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Israel, Korea, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, UK and USA, Teamwork produces over 25 highly acclaimed performing arts, visual arts and literary festivals across more than 40 cities.
Teamwork Arts produces one of the world’s largest free literary gatherings, the annual ZEEJaipur Literature Festival, the Ishara International Puppet Festival in New Delhi, the annual Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards (META) and Festival, international festivals Shared History in South Africa, Eye on India in the United States of America, India by the Bay in Hong Kong, Confluence- Festival of India in Australia, and many more.
Website: www.teamworkarts.com