An empty ancestral home—little more than a mud hut now—was transformed into a space of discovery and creative synthesis in February 2021. Each day, a different folk group from the Nimad region of Madhya Pradesh would show up with their musical gear. These artists, carrying with them the folk stories and songs of their ancestors, had been invited to this space by Bharat Chandore and Jayesh Malani, two musicians trained primarily in Western disciplines who had arrived from Barwani and Mumbai respectively. They would chit-chat and exchange notes on their divergent musical traditions over endless cups of tea. They’d jam together and collaborate on songs to record. Now, three years later, the group is releasing a new eight-song record called Nimad, which materialized during this period.  Most of Nimad was recorded at Chandore’s ancestral house, deep inside rural Madhya Pradesh, in a village by the Narmada River bank called Chichli,…

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