Starting out in 2008, Faridkot has been a regular act on Delhi stages and beyond. Riding early on the wave of sufi music influx that is still flowing in they have carved out a cult following for themselves in the North. Faridkot’s music is a mixture of shifting blues guitars and harmonic love melodies blended around a thumping percussion and bass. Described in certain circles as Confused Pop.
Faridkot has recently released a new single titled 'Baithe baithe'. Q&A with the band.
An intriguing observation we made about Faridkot is that you refer to the genre of music you play as “Confused pop”. What constitutes Confused pop? Tell us a bit about the music you create.
We started calling ourselves “Confused Pop” just for fun because we were never really sure what genre of music we were. Essentially, we never really wrote one type of songs which was similar to how pop music has been. It’s always a reflection of a certain era . And we loved all the eras ! So we decided to embrace the “confusion” and started calling our music “Confused Pop”.
Performing for a live show or concert might not be a reality for quite sometime now given the current circumstances. With more than 500 shows under your belt, which of your performances do you find yourself revisiting frequently nowadays?
We usually don’t really watch our own concerts..haha. . Although, if we had to choose one recent really memorable concert, it would have to be headlining at Mood Indigo in Bombay last winter. The energy was great and it was lovely to have a crowd of almost 10-12k people singing along with you!
‘Baithe Baithe' mirrors the feeling of loneliness a lot of us have been experiencing during this lockdown. What was the inspiration behind the song?
The inspiration was pretty much the feeling of being in a lockdown. The effect that the quarantine is having on people. Where we’re disconnecting and reconnecting with different parts of ourselves. Learning new things.
Understanding the importance of social relationships and how small things can make our day so much better, or worse. Although, all this is in hindsight..haha .. It started with just a couple of us chilling with a guitar and IP wrote the lyrics and they just flowed out. So it was kind of born out of absolute ennui !
'Phir hogi subah' is a resonating sentiment in the song as well as in all of our minds, with the lockdown coming to an end a new dawn is just around the corner. What are your aspirations for this new ‘subah’?
The new “Subah” should be able to integrate all the important things we learned over the course of this very unique , challenging situation that we had to engage with these past few months. It should make us realise how fragile some of our crucial systems like healthcare are.
We saw that when the world was brought to a crushing halt from a simple but extremely persistent and highly infectious virus, the teachers, the doctors, the protective forces, the artists, the newsroom were the ones who managed to get us through these tough times. And all these pillars of society need to be strengthened and given sufficient support.
This period has also shown us that humanity, love, compassion and understanding are the most important parts of being a human. And we need to dial all of those up if we have to continue and thrive as a species.
SRIKIRAN K, SREEDEVI MANOHAR