October Jam featuring Kinari and Shehzor

In collaboration with Maraa, our long term cultural partner, we present to you a live concert featuring  Kinari and Shehzor as part of the October Jam 2023. 

October Jam is the annual arts festival organised by Maraa. Each year, the festival is organised around a binding theme, idea or provocation. The spirit behind the festival is to ensure a space for the arts, that is free from competing agendas of the market/state, and in particular to feature artists whose voices are systematically censored/suppressed. This year, the festival is called Lightning/ ಮಿಂಚು/बिजली and will feature artists from various geographies, social locations and in various languages, across comedy, music, theater, cinema and performance. 

In the past couple of years, Kinari has emerged as one of the foremost voices for the LGBTQ+ community in India's hip-hop scene. She celebrates her identity as a kinnar in her lyrics ("pretty avaz baby mai kinnar" on "PURRRRR") and also brings her firsthand experience in Portland's ballroom community to India (her debut EP Jimmy Vogue, released Nov 2021). She experiments with Sampling disco tracks, Riot grrrl, house music, clips from Paris Is Burning, and interviews with Indian trans activists consistently demonstrating a singularity of vision.

Her latest project, a collaborative LP (smart girls don't pass) with Delhi-based trans producer nasbandi, flips archival recordings of legendary house-mother Carmen Xtravaganza and features Delhi's iconic singer-songwriter Pho.

Shehzor is a rapper-poet, music producer, and translator from Hyderabad. After finishing a bachelor's degree in Literature in 2022, Shehzor chose to travel across Bangalore and Bombay, in cute dresses and catears, exploring hip hop subcultures, languages, and political organizations.
They produce electronic music, inspired by alternative artists like MF DOOM and Tyler the Creator and  rap in their native language dakhni.

Currently Shehzor is working on their debut album The Girl with Sideburns, which is scheduled to release in December. Written and produced over three months in 2023, the album deals with Shehzor's frustrations with gender, religion, family, Hyderabad, and the jagged images and voices of beauty that haunt them.

RSVP here.