Jitwam

Jitwam emerged in the mid-2010s as a versatile musician who merges funk, jazz, R&B, electronic textures, and psychedelia across an expansive discography. Born in India, raised in Australia, and now dividing his time between New York and London, the singer-producer has channeled decades of international exposure into recordings such as the 2017 album Selftitled, the 2019 follow-up Honeycomb, and Third, which arrived in 2023 with a shift toward more direct songwriting paired with his ongoing experimental impulses.

His wide-ranging tastes took root early through the creation of eclectic mixtapes that routinely bewildered his more conventional friends. Alongside music from the South Asian diaspora, he absorbed hip-hop, rock, funk, punk, dance music, and any other sounds that appealed to him. While based in Australia he began committing to tape the hybrid he heard internally, producing a singular fusion of electronics and live instrumentation crowned by his own airy vocals over murky psychedelic dance tracks. The 2013 debut EP TJD001 marked the launch of the Jazz Diaries label, which he co-founded and which has since supported kindred artists including Only Rays and Horatio Luna in addition to his own catalog. The single “Whereyougonnago?” from 2017 and the ensuing full-length Selftitled crystallized the jazz-leaning, occasionally psychedelic direction heard again on the 2018 Purple EP and on Honeycomb in 2019.

By then Jitwam’s life alternated between New York and London, a peripatetic pattern audible in the shifting character of his productions. Indian melodies, hip-hop beats, and Latin jazz rhythms all served as raw material, voiced in his characteristically smooth, soulful register. The tropical house-inflected “Sun After Rain,” recorded with French producer Folamour, underscored his dancefloor affinities, while the grittier disco atmosphere of 2022’s “Brooklyn Ballers” supplied one of the key tracks on Third, his third album, released later that year.