JINJ (ARMENIA)

French-born vocalist and instrumentalist Sevana Tchakerian (ex-member of Parisian alt-folk group Collectif Medz Bazaar) and Armenian-born guitarist and producer Gor Tadevosyan comprise JINJ, a boundary-pushing band that is a pioneer of the new Armo-Beat genre, intertwining Armenian folk music with hip-hop and electronic sounds, and sung in French, Armenian and English. 

This unique collaboration offers Sevana an avenue to combine incisive, hard-hitting lyrics with the melancholic, otherworldly tones traditional to her Armenian heritage. Her buoyant, boundless energy is tempered by Gor, who grounds JINJ’s sound in a brooding undercurrent inherent to his upbringing in Vanadzor, the post-industrial creative capital of the Caucasus. Against the backdrop of a devastating war, the duo began making music together as an emotional release from the pain of death and destruction.

The word JINJ means serene in Armenian, and it underscores the resilience that Sevana and Gor saw radiating from their community in the face of impending cultural erasure. The band’s compositions exude a hunger to build something new, to reconstruct a future for Armenia that is honest and able, dipped in fragments of the past while looking forward. Indeed, JINJ’s music is nothing less than a rhythmic manifestation of the diversity of the Armenian landscape and culture: from majestic green mountains to the pulsing beat of the city, from liturgical chants to underground rap, in an unconventional mixture of 808s (booming bass drum sounds) and shepherd's flutes.