MUMBAI: The Jaipur Literature Festival 2014 is to closely be followed by one of the most anticipated art festivals, the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in Mumbai on 1-9 February 2014. The festival, in its sixteenth year, will light up the southern most areas of the city with all of its exhibitions, performances and workshops. The music section of the festival this year is curated by Arpana Gvalani and Shibani Kumar, co-founders of Mumbai based music event company, Strike a Chord, with help and guidance from festival director Brinda Miller.

The theme for this year's music section is Crescendo, a small piece of the larger theme of the festival, Momentum. "Considering the main theme of the festival is Momentum, we thought it would only be apt for us to go with 'Crescendo' for our theme as it symbolised the music section becoming bigger and intensifying, with a lot of new music styles and genres, thanks to some great artists we have on board," said Shibani Kumar. The team started working on the line-up in August 2013. Some of the artists confirmed very early on itself and they were done finalising with almost all the artistes by December.

The line-up over the nine days of the festival includes names like Table virtuoso Anuradha Pal, Mumbai based alternative band Spud in the Box, Delhi based progressive fusion band Rock Veda, Welsh singer-songwriter and harpist Georgia Ruth, Laura Cortese and the Dance Cards, YouTube starlet Shradhha Sharma, Amaan and Ayaan Ali Khan, Nikhil D'Souza and Farhan Akhtar Live. "We would not say the line-up is made of experimental artistes because all the artistes on it are already established in their genres of music. Of course, some of them are fairly new as compared to the rest but that is what makes this line-up unique. The audience gets a chance to experience melodies they are yet to discover and what they have already heard before," Shibani explained.

Speaking about the Gibson GuitArt for Good initiative, Shibani said, "Gibson approached us wanting to collaborate with the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival. We sat together discussing how we could have two big associations like Kala Ghoda Arts Festival and Gibson join hands. The idea for painting guitars and auctioning them for wonderful initiatives like MTV Act, MARD, Art For Akanksha, Prowl and Passages came about; the festival has so much beautiful art and artistes involved and Gibson being one of the leading makers of guitars."

When asked why Gibson was not collaborating with KGAF 2014 for music, Shibani clarified, "Well, since Gibson GuitArt is largely related to art it only made sense for it to be associated with Visual Arts. Hopefully in the future, we could have some collaboration with Gibson for the music section, too."

The music concerts will happen at Cross Maidan on the 2nd & 7th and Asiatic Library Steps on the 8th & 9th, respectively. Shibani confirmed that this is the final line-up and that there will be no more. The festival, upholding the tradition it has maintained for 16 years, will be open and free for all.