Our popular Funoon Salon series has hosted big and small musical collaborations between artists from across South Asia and the UK in a host of partnering venues. Through these events, we create more inclusive arts narratives and spaces, bring together diverse audiences, and build cross-geographical/cross-genre collaborations. At every event we experience the arts helping us to connect more deeply with ourselves, and each other.
In a candle-lit night of reverence and remembrance, we hosted traditional qawwali by the Saami Brothers, sons of the legendary khayal singer Ustad Naseeruddin Saami at the beautiful St Ethelburga’s Church in East London. Fresh from their performance at WOMAD, the Saami Brothers performed to a full house amongst the historic vaults and arches of St Ethelburga’s. Empress Market, a London food market feature provided Karachi style bun kebabs and nimbu pani.
In one of the most wildly freeing nights we’ve ever attended at the Southbank Centre’s Alchemy Festival, we platformed Khumariyaan, a Pashtun instrumental band for their UK debut. It turned into a rave attended by over 1200 people from all over the world and set Pashtun music – and the band! – on the world stage.
In his first ever outing in the UK, Coke Studio’s favourite Ali Hamza (one half of popular rock band Noori) collaborated with singer-songwriter Bilal Khan and vocalist Natasha Khan in an intimate musical conversation in a Bloomsbury Square. Darjeeling Express’s Asma Khan generously provided masala chai and chaat while the diverse audience. It was informal, it was fun, and even though it was a couple of hundred people in attendance, it felt like one big family singalong.
For the Bloomsbury Festival, we put together one of our riskiest collaborations to date. We brought together Sindh-based Sounds of Kolachi that does an earthy blend of Sufi rock and folk music, together with London-basedidentical twin Sikh duo the Grewal Twins who specialise in delicate Kirtan. A band of Birmingham-based British Asian instrumentalists joined the party, and we all had a wild time.
In a soulful night of remembrance and connection, we platformed one of our favourite qawwals – the Najmuddin Saifuddin qawwals from Pakistan – at one of London’s finest (and always booked out) restaurants Darjeeling Express in Kingly Court to celebrate its iconic Chef’s Table episode. We sat on the floor, ate Asma’s iconic chaat, listened to the soulful strains of Allah Hu. In Soho, no less.
It’s been an honour, and we’re so grateful so many of you have been there to journey through this – as artists, as collaborators, as partners, and as audiences and volunteers – with us. May the good times continue.
