From being the first Indian folk singer to walk the Cannes red carpet, to being sought after by music mavericks like Amit Trivedi and Salim-Sulaiman, Mame Khan is arguably experiencing the kind of fame that few folk musicians have, in commercial music. Khan, who returned to the familiar Anti-Social stage, after a two-year hiatus, admits that the lockdown was a tough one to navigate.

“For Manganiyars like me, live performances are the main source of income. While I also have work [in other arenas], they only depend on this source. While we learnt a lot in the past two years, including the use of the digital medium, a lot of difficulty has been encountered,” says Khan, who belted out his all-time hits, Kaisariya balam, Nimbuda, and Chaudhary, and Bollywood songs like Bawaare, and the sufi offering, Duma dum, at yesterday’s performance.