Building on the international acclaim garnered by Coke Studio Bharat Season 1, featuring tracks like Khalasi, Holi Re Rasiya and Korimol, the eagerly awaited Season 2 is scheduled for launch on February 9, 2024. Breaking away from its traditional studio setting, this season pioneers visual storytelling, expanding its narrative reach. With a focus on Gen Z and their emotional spectrum, the season delves into themes of happiness, sadness, and fast-paced lives, promising an immersive journey through soul-stirring songs that resonate as the quintessential soundtrack to our lives. And the face behind it all is the award-winning musician and sought-after songwriter Ankur Tewari, who serves as the creative architect.
Speaking exclusively with News18 Showsha, Ankur Tewari shared the roadmap of the upcoming season, calling it ‘Gen-Z’ first approach. He shared, “We spoke to a lot of different kinds of people from different cities, understood the stories that they are connecting with. Our intention is to create the soundtrack of their lives. And that can only happen if they see their story in the story that we are narrating. Trying to understand what they are going through, whether it is something like adulting, environment, mental health etc and how we can tell a story that connects with these aspects. We did that in the last season and we’ll be doing that again in the new season.”
Elaborating further on the driving force behind Coke Studio Bharat Season 2, Ankur Tewari shared some names from the exciting lineup of artists, “There is DJ Mojito, Kamla Devi, Komorebi, Diljit Dosanjh etc. It’s like a set of musicians you might have heard in your indie playlist or mainstream playlist. The idea with Coke Studio is to collapse the walls and make people meet who otherwise wouldn’t have met. And once you make those people meet, then the listeners who are also part of our family also kind of collapse walls around themselves. It could be someone in the interior Haryana listening to it and there could be someone in New York listening to it. That’s the idea.”
Coke Studio Bharat 2 is touted to be a fusion of established and emerging talents like Neha Kakkar, Digvijay Singh, Shreya Ghoshal, Kanishk Seth, Cyli Khare, MC Square, Mohito, Komorebi, Diljit Dosanjh, The Quick Style, Ikky, Raf Sappera and many more. Through the songs, Ankur Tewari wants to start a ‘horizontal’ conversation and not ‘vertical’. He told us,
“What we want to do is to contextualise folk in today’s time and also adjust it according to today’s time. That music and those words were written for that generation and it has to apply for today’s time. If I as a young listener is listening to that music, and it’s folk, it should automatically make me go like ‘oh this is my story’. Folk 2.0 is what we are about.”
When asked how he selects the artists together for a particular song, Ankur promptly replies that the ‘process’ always begins with the story, “We write the story, we write the themes and then we cast artists almost like a movie. We’d see who would be the perfect person to tell that story. You’ll find these stories anywhere. It could be an incident in your life, it could be at the back of a truck, in the form of a graffiti ‘Ghar Kab Aaoge’ that signifies longing, immigration around the country, around the world. It could connect to anything.
Then we decide who is the right person to take this story forward. And then we cast that singer, musician and the lyricist,” he exclaimed.
The first season of Coke Studio had dished out viral songs like ‘Khalasi’ and ‘Korimol’. Responding to the question about whether there is an emphasis on creating ‘viral’ tracks for the masses, Ankur Tewari said, “I don’t think we are creating something to go viral. If it gets viral, we are very happy with it. But we don’t create anything with that construct. I feel it’s very simple. There are a gazillion people making content at the moment and there is nothing against them. But we really want to create art in the clutter of content and that thing happens when you don’t make a product and when you support an honest story.”
Ankur Tewari also opened up about the comparison people make between Coke Studio Bharat and its South Asian contemporaries like Coke Studio Pakistan & Coke Studio Bangladesh, “I love comparisons because it helps us up our game. We are all friends. We talk to each other, Xulfi, Arnob and I. We are constantly in touch and constantly exchanging ideas. Xulfi sends me recommendations of musicians he has found from India.If I find somebody interesting in Pakistan or Bangladesh, I send it to them. It’s a healthy competition and it helps all of us. And if a big song comes out of Bangladesh or Pakistan, then we up our game and try to give one back. Together the sub-continent shines,” the singer-songwriter shared.
Ankur Tewari shared that he was both ‘nervous & excited’ to come on board as the curator for Coke Studio Bharat, “I was very, very nervous because it’s a big legacy and people have done phenomenal music under the banner. it was exciting because we could do exciting stuff. We had a bunch of internal meetings, we set up a think tank so that I could get interesting advice. All the teams came together. And at the same time, we did some meetings with Coke Studio Pakistan, Bangladesh to understand what they are doing. It felt like a big family coming together and trying to make some interesting music that can connect hearts,” he concluded.
Coke Studio Bharat Season 2 is scheduled for launch on February 9, 2024.
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