All strings attached

It will be your loss if you miss the fourth edition of the immensely popular South Asian Bands Festival, which apart from known names like Kailasa, East India Company and Indus Creed will mark the debut of Mrigya, Mawj, 4TH Element and Mekaal Hasan Band

South Asian Bands Festival (SABF) is hot property because it's the only annual rock gala where rock acts from all across South Asia are featured. In just four editions, SABF has reached a stature which several festivals fail to achieve in decades.



"In the first edition, our concept had no credibility so obviously everyone had their own genuine apprehensions. Four editions down the line, we have so many applications from the bands that we're spoilt for choice. You can call it clever curation but we're in a position to serve what we want, and exactly the way we want to," says Sanjeev Bhargava, founder Seher and creative director of SABF about the growing stature of the festival.u00a0 For more dope on the show, continue reading.

On the rocks
The music festival will feature 15 popular rock bands from across nine nations of the sub-continent. "Being the creative director, I shouldn't be picking favourites but two bands that'll surely rock the festival are Mekaal Hasan Band (Pakistan) and Band Bangla," points out Bhargava. For the show, the Pakistani band -- which specialises in Sufi rock -- will divert from its usual style and sing compositions of legendary Indian writer and poet Amrita Pritam.

However, the band has been instructed to sing only those compositions that were written around Partition. They'll also sing songs of Kabir. In 1948, when Amrita was 28, she left Lahore and moved to New Delhi. The same year, when she was pregnant, she wrote a piece on the pain of Partition -- Ajj akhaan Waris Shah nu.

"The works of Amrita during the tragic period of Partition are really loaded with emotion so we wanted Mekaal to include it. What makes Band Bengal interesting is their taste in traditional singing and Baul songs. I also wanted to rope in Zeb Haniya of Peshawar but couldn't," says Bhargava. Zeb Haniya is a female duo who started performing on experimental basis in colleges but soon garnered accolades from national and international critics for their primarily Urdu creations.

What matters is
About the composition of the bands, Bhargava says: "At no point of time we've thought of featuring just the bands that are popular. Everyday there'll be two shows that'll fall into the 'must attend' category.

However, there'll also be artists who are lesser known but highly skilled. So if we have Kailasa performing on the final day, we'll see the performance of Nepathya, which is from Nepal," concludes the man behind the show which like the last two years will be organised at Purana Qila.