MUMBAI: The countdown to BACARDÍ NH7 Weekender- India’s happiest music festival has begun! 

The Meghalaya edition is around the corner, with the lineup being released last month. True to its promise that there’s more to be announced, the happiest music festival has added Marty Friedman, TesseracT and Sarathy Korwar to the lineup. Previously announced artists include Karnivool, Intervals, Shubha Mudgal and Raja Kumari, as well as exceptional talent from the North-east like Soulmate: North East Blues Special, Imphal Talkies and Khazi Bloodz. The new additions make this a diverse lineup to look forward to on 1 and 2 November at Wenfield, The Festive Hills, Thadlaskein. 

Conceptualized by OML, the festival will travel to Pune from 29 November -1 December 2019, after the Meghalaya edition on November 1-2, 2019, where it will celebrate a glorious decade of bringing the best musical talent to music lovers.

Since its inception in 2010, BACARDÍ NH7 Weekender has emerged as one of the biggest and most awaited music festivals in India. Over the last decade, it has featured over 600 artists from India and around the world across genres.

Season and Under 21 tickets for the Meghalaya edition are available at https://insider.in/bacardi-nh7-weekender-meghalaya-2019-110119/event

Details about the new artists announced:

Marty Friedman

Marty’s first major impact in music was in the game-changing guitar duo Cacophony, which he founded with equally enigmatic and now legendary guitarist, Jason Becker.

He then spent 10 years as lead guitarist in the genre-defining thrash metal icon Megadeth. His tenure in the band considered the “golden era” by many, was indisputably the most successful era in the band’s history, by any criteria.

As much as he loved Megadeth, its music and its fans, Marty`s overwhelming love of Japanese music and the Japanese language, found him leaving the band and moving to Tokyo. It is there where his career took off in very unexpected ways. Along with releasing his ever-evolving solo albums, he also writes and performs with the top artists in Japanese music, racking up countless chart hits. His 14th solo album, “ONE BAD M.F. Live!!” is an all-out celebration of Marty’s music in its rawest form. With that album, the combination of his otherworldly experiences culminate into an avalanche of emotion, in his immediately recognizable style.

Sarathy Korwar

Born in the US, Sarathy Korwar grew up in Ahmedabad and Chennai in India. He began playing tabla aged ten but was also drawn to the American music that he heard on the radio and leaking through the doorway of his local jazz music shop. He trained in tabla and translated his skills to the western drum kit, focusing on the adaptation of Indian classical rhythmic material to non-Indian percussion instruments. Korwar has since established himself as one of the most original and compelling voices in the UK jazz scene, leading the UPAJ Collective-a loose band of South Asian jazz and Indian classical musicians brought together through a love of collaboration and improvisation who set up a residency at the Jazz Café in London. Korwar has collaborated with the likes of Shabaka Hutchings, clarinettist Arun Ghosh and producer Hieroglyphic Being,as well as groups Penya and Ill Considered. He has toured with Kamasi Washington, Yussef Kamaal and Moses Boyd. Korwar released his second studio album, More Arriving, in July 2019 - a leap forward from his previous releases, incorporating rappers from Mumbai and New Delhi, spoken word and his own Indian classical and jazz performances.

TesseracT

The UK-based progressive metal pioneers, who were instrumental in paving a new wave of exciting and heavy sounds the world over, are returning to India. The quintet has arguably become one of the UK’s biggest metal propositions. From performing to sold-out crowds at landmark festivals to making history as the first band to play on top of an igloo village in the Arctic Circle –it seems no place is off-limits for the five members. Their fourth album - Sonder - was announced in 2018 and from the bending grooves of opener Luminary to The Arrow’s concluding reversed samples, clocking in at 37 minutes in total, here is a band that never sounded so honest and direct. Dan Tompkins, the band’s lead vocalist, is familiar with the festival, having collaborated with Keshav Dhar for his progressive metal and dent side-project Sky harbor on stage in Pune and Delhi at previous editions. However, this does mark the first time that TesseracT will be performing at BACARDÍ NH7 Weekender. Armed with a new album and a new sound, this promises to be a new journey for the band and the festival as it enters its 5th year in Meghalaya. 

Complete Meghalaya line up (1 November to 2 November 2019)

The tenth edition of the concert will be held in Pune from 29 Nov 29 – 1 Dec 2019 soon after the concert in Meghalaya from 1-2 November 2019.