Salt Arts, the music and arts management and production company - that counts Karachi as home - is bringing an entire season of music this winter.
They have partnered with Pepsi for a tour of Faisalabad coming early this month. It will feature Xarb, Tamasha and I.F.R.A, three bands who made it to Pepsi Battle of the Bands 3 with Xarb making it to top two.
Scheduled to take place on November 3, 2018, at Faisalabad Arts Council, tickets can be bought via bookitnow.pk
As Salt Arts notes in its Instagram post, “Touched by the Chenab, the industrious city of Faisalabad, the centre of Pakistan, we’re coming to you this weekend.”
After announcing Salt Soiree 27 featuring music group Khumariyaan, about whom not enough can be said, Salt Arts has a lot more music in the pipeline.
While the Khumariyaan gig is still scheduled to take place on November 14 at Cotie Rotie in Karachi, Salt Arts have announced another show.
They are presenting - in some ways - listeners to not just diversity in artists they collaborate with but live shows that are designed keeping each artist in mind.
The season highlight is an international artist, singer-songwriter Layla Kardan.
As Salt Arts notes in its Instagram post about Layla’s music, “she describes her music style as Neo-soul, with Jazz lines and Middle Eastern influences.”
The Belgium-born artist, who is based in the UAE at present and has lived in LA and Sydney, says that she is a citizen of the world and proud of her Persian roots.
Featuring in the same show will be Karachi-based music producer Rudoh (Bilal Nasir Khan) who is the co-founder of Internet label, Forever South (FXS). Rudoh has released FXS material alongside co-founder Dynoman (Haamid Rahim) such as Hot Cues and FXS Compilations featuring other artists as well as his own material including Tales for Scrap and multiple singles; he is also an audio engineer. Most recently, he released a partial EP called Forward (Lost Trax) with artwork by Smax (Amman Mushtaq). If those credentials don’t impress you, remember that he was one of the forces behind Karachi Files, has represented Pakistan in Thailand and Berlin and is a member of music group Mole who appeared on Coke Studio in season four.
Rudoh also opened for Strings last year during a show presented by Salt Arts.
The Layla-Rudoh show is scheduled to take place on December 1, 2018. More details will be announced soon.
“It’s not about how popular an artist is,” said a member of the Salt Arts team to Instep. “One show, for example, lasted two hours but had five songs. How do you quantify that? We want the public to enjoy the music but also the narrative we are trying to create. It’s about an experience. The idea is to bring new acts.”
For Salt Arts, who seem to be on a roll, having had shows earlier this year with Mirage as well as the experimental ‘Open’ curated by Omran Shafique and Babar Sheikh, it is about contributing to the larger ecosystem of arts and music.
For live music fans and artists, there is nothing better, in the short and long run.