Jimmy Khan on his cameo in Ali Sethi’s ‘Chan Kithan’

Singer-songwriter Jimmy Khan, who currently counts Lahore as home and is the creator of songs like ‘Baarish’, ‘Hone Do’, ‘Pehla Pyar’ and ‘Aisay Kaisay’ is all set to make a smashing appearance this week with a new single (and music video) called ‘Madam’. The upcoming tune, produced by Zain Ahsan (Poor Rich Boy) is a significant change of pace for Jimmy and he maintains that it’s nothing like his past releases. Until ‘Madam’ arrives, you can look out for Jimmy Khan making a brief but memorable cameo in Ali Sethi’s recently released all-star music video of ‘Chan Kithan’ – a folk song from rural Punjab sung by Sethi and produced by longtime collaborator Saad Sultan. Though his appearance in the music video - that also stars Mira Sethi and Mikaal Zulfiqar prominently - is very brief, it does register if you look carefully.

Speaking about the experience, Jimmy told Instep: “Ali’s a good friend of mine. He’s somebody I really look up to in terms of his craft and this particular song. I sing (this song) at my live shows too; I have a very different version of it, of course. Ali’s completely changed the scale of it.  I’m very attached to this song in general and when Ali made me listen to his version, I was kind of surprised because I wasn’t expecting that this would become of this particular folk tune. He did a really good job with it and he called me one day and asked me to come and do this little thing in the music video for this [song]. I was like ‘sure’. We did it and we had a good time doing it; all of our friends were there and that’s pretty much it. I didn’t really think about it, there’s nothing to it. I was told I had to jump in the pool and I said ‘sure, I’d love to jump in the pool’. That’s what I do, I jump in pools.”