Faheem Abdullah Announces 'The Unbecoming Tour', His First Run Of Shows Across India
After 'Saiyaara' topped global streaming charts, Srinagar singer-songwriter Faheem Abdullah plays six cities in November and December with a stripped-back set.
Faheem Abdullah built his audience almost entirely on recordings, and now the Srinagar singer-songwriter is taking those songs on the road. The Unbecoming Tour, his first national tour, opens in New Delhi on 20 November and closes in Mumbai on 27 December.
Team Innovation is producing and promoting the six-city run, with Kolkata, Pune, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad in between. Tickets are on thumpN only. General sale opened on 5 September. Every date falls on a Friday or a Sunday, starting with Friday 20 November in Delhi and Sunday 22 November in Kolkata, then a two-week gap before Pune.
Small rooms, by design
Nobody is selling these as spectacle. The shows are built around acoustic arrangements, stories between songs and the quiet pull of his writing.
"I think this new chapter is about stripping away the formal identity of being an artist and unlearning everything the industry expects of me," Abdullah said in a statement. He said he wanted the concerts "to feel like a sanctuary".
The songs come from indie folk, contemporary rock and the ghazal, written mostly in Urdu and Kashmiri, and the acoustic recordings that first found him listeners have home all over them.
From 'Ishq' to 'Saiyaara'
The early following came through "Ishq", from the album Lost;Found, and "Hoor", which he sang on Coke Studio Bharat. Film songs followed, "Chand Mera Dil" first and then "Saiyaara".
Daily game
Today's Guess
Four songs. Clues unlock as you guess.
Get Tracklist
Weekly playlists and our best stories. Free.
"Saiyaara" changed the scale. It went to No. 1 on Spotify's Global Top 50 and into the top 10 of the Billboard Global 200, the first Hindi-language song to climb that high on that chart. An artist who had never toured nationally had listeners everywhere.
Team Innovation founder Mohit Bijlani described Abdullah as an artist "commanding a fiercely loyal community" and said the tour showed independent music had become "a commercially viable headline act".
Studio to stage
Streaming breakouts don't always carry over to a stage, where there is no studio to lean on. Abdullah's first outing keeps the production light and the arrangements acoustic, close to the recordings people first heard.
Dates
- New Delhi, 20 November
- Kolkata, 22 November
- Pune, 4 December
- Ahmedabad, 6 December
- Hyderabad, 18 December
- Mumbai, 27 December
(Source: Team Innovation press release, Team Innovation tour page)
