iWorld
Warner Music India announces Maati Season 2 with eight tracks
Folk music IP returns across eight languages with contemporary and traditional artists
MUMBAI: The folk is back, and this time it is turning up the volume. Warner Music India is bringing back its folk music IP Maati for a second season, expanding the project to eight languages, eight tracks and a wider mix of contemporary and folk artists.
Launching on September 3, 2026, Maati Season 2 aims to take India’s regional musical traditions beyond recordings and into the landscapes and communities from which they originate. The new season combines traditional sounds with contemporary production and visual storytelling, making the people, places and cultural settings part of each musical story.
The season opens with “Jalwa-E-Jaanaan”, featuring music by Anurag Saikia, vocals by Jyoti Nooran and lyrics by Shakeel Azmi. Rooted in the Sufi philosophy of Wahdat al-Wujud, or the Unity of Being, the Qawwali explores the relationship between the Creator and the seeker, with the Divine presented as something found within human experience rather than at a distance.
The eight-track season spans Koshur/Hindi, Tamil, Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Telugu, Haryanvi, Urdu and Kannada, bringing together artists including Shubha Mudgal, Alif, Sudan, Orfo, Sublahshini, Keli Thee, Anurag Saikia, Jyoti Nooran, Kalpana Patowary, Mangli, Sanjith Hegde, MC Square and Satindar Sartaj, among others.
That broader canvas builds on Maati’s first season, which launched in October 2024 and reached more than 78 million digitally. Season 2 seeks to widen that audience while keeping regional traditions at the centre of the project.
For Nooran, the opening track offered an opportunity to explore a deeply rooted idea through music. Saikia, meanwhile, said the composition was designed to balance Azmi’s poetry and Nooran’s vocals while retaining the essence of Sufi music through a contemporary sound.
Warner Music India & SAARC Managing Director Jay Mehta said the aim was to bring India’s folk traditions to newer audiences while recognising the artists and communities behind them.
With eight languages, eight tracks and musical traditions stretching from Kashmir to Karnataka, Maati Season 2 is less a trip down memory lane than a remix of India’s cultural map without losing the original tune.
