In general, Jananta Juri makes music loosely in the world of jazz, but her latest single ‘Protibimbo’ (meaning ‘Reflection’ and released in March) is a dance-able and funky pop song sprinkled liberally with blues-rock musicianship. We’ll get into the actual track soon, but the first thing to highlight is that one listen to any of Jananta’s music will tell you that she is very much an artist that ‘does her own thing’. Much like so many musicians from her state, it’s obvious that she’s making precisely whatever she wants to, trends or popularity of genre be damned. And that’s great to see, especially today.

Here you will find three minutes of classic funk rhythm guitar, bangin’ bass playing (at points, it’s slap and fill city), drums that live more in the rock lane, and groovy percussion; on top of which sit Jananta’s vocals (in Assamese, of course), which are pop-forward and utilise a bunch of layering to be, well, quite radio-friendly. Either way, by the time the song is done, every melodic instrument used in this arrangement gets its own few bars to do a quick solo. We usually expect this kind of thing from much longer songs… a good way to think about it is that we get three or four lead parts in very quick succession. That’s an interesting way to structure a tune that is otherwise focused on its chorus; Jananta knows it’s catchy and uses it to full effect.

As is normal with such genres, you need a clean mix, ably supplied by Siddharth Barooa (if you go and look up all the work he has done with his Lucid Recess Studios, you will find a comical amount of great music), and good songwriting. All this is very much present on ‘Protibimbo’, and even if this sound or this kind of bubbly, outwardly entertaining kind of music isn’t your speed, you can’t deny solid work when you hear it.