Ali Sethi & Nicolás Jaar Announce 'INTIHA' Album; Share First Track

Ali Sethi and Nicolás Jaar are pleased to announce the November 17 release of an album, Intiha, marking the first album-length collaboration between the two artists.

For centuries, ghazal poetry has been associated with misfits and madmen, silhouetted souls who speak in puns about the charms of forbidden love. From medieval Persia to modern-day India and Pakistan, poets have used the ghazal’s rhyming verses to express a playful, many-hued melancholy, now praising the charms of a veiled lover, now railing against the norms of an unjust society.

Sethi and Jaar’s “Muddat”’ the first single they are revealing off Intiha, is a song steeped in that mood of flamboyant resistance. Taking the opening lines of a canonical ghazal — written as the British were decimating India’s precolonial traditions, the elaborate rituals and etiquette of its courtesans and noblemen — the two musicians build a genre-bending trance that brilliantly evokes the loss of a cherished milieu: “It’s been long since my lover was a guest of mine,” sings Sethi in his native Urdu, drawing on classical ragas to improvise the phrase. “And my world was suffused with the glow of wine.”

Jaar’s goading hand-claps keep time for these husky vocalisations until they give way to a euphoric techno blaze, obliterating the temporal frame and delivering us into a dance both ancient and modern.

A feast for the senses that celebrates community and bridges cultural distances, “Muddat” is an anthem for the ages.

Following a tour of North America earlier this year that included sold-out shows in New York City, Los Angeles and Toronto, Ali is heading back on the road for a run of world-wide dates that kick off in Austin, TX with a set at Austin City Limits on October 8. Before heading to the UK and beyond he is also playing in Dallas, Houston and Atlanta. 

Looking to 2024 Sethi is confirmed for a show in Washington, DC at District of Raga on February 24. All shows are listed below with more to be confirmed and tickets are available here.  

Ali Sethi on tour - Ticket Link

10/8 - Austin City Limits - Austin, TX 

10/9 - House of Blues - Dallas, TX 

1010 - House of Blues - Houston, TX

10/12 - Variety Playhouse - Atlanta, GA

11/11 - Dubai Opera House - Dubai, UAE

11/14 - Saint Luke’s - Glasgow, UK

11/17 - Gorilla - Manchester, UK 

11/18 - O2 Institute - Birmingham, UK

11/19 - 02 Shepherds Bush Empire - London, UK

2/24 - District of Raga Washington, DC - Vienna, VA