The fusion folks
In the bazaars, luxury hotels and under the majestic Mehrangarh fort, Rajasthani folk artistes and Western musicians come together in Jodhpur to create musical magic.
A beat boxer and morchang player are the most electrifying performers on the evening of October 12, the first day of the Rajasthan International Folk Festival (RIFF). The beat boxer, improvising the sounds of musical instruments using just his mouth, is Jason Singh, from Manchester in the UK. Tall and lanky, he is bespectacled, has short spiked hair, and is wearing a white t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Raies Khan, from Harbha in Jaisalmer, is playing the morchang, a wrought iron instrument, shaped like a horseshoe with a metal tongue in the middle. It's played by blowing and sucking air through this horseshoe, while plucking the metal tongue with the index finger. Raies, from the Manganiyar community of Rajasthani musicians, is shorter than Jason, visibly younger and has a moustache. He is wearing a long black traditional Rajasthani jacket, a white shalwaar and a multi-coloured turban.
At a point during this michael kors crossbody un-ticketed concert in front of the clock tower at Sardar Bazaar, Jodhpur's michael kors outlet bustling centre of small commerce, now lit up for the festival, cheers from the audience of hundreds comprising townsfolk and outsiders shift away from the stage, like a Mexican wave. They lead to a clearing at the other end of the bazaar where two foreigners are dancing spontaneously, and well, with freestyle moves, to Jason and Raies' music, a performance michael kors store in itself. In a festival known for forging collaborations between different artists, this is RIFF's first, though unintended, collaboration of 2011.
Spellbound
Dharohar on the other hand, the collective that Jason and Raies belong to, is the festival's oldest collaboration, that began with the first RIFF in 2007. For five days in October each year, beginning with the day of the year's brightest full moon, RIFF brings together prominent musicians and performing artists from around India and the world to Jodhpur so that they may perform on their own, as well as collaborate with the best folk artists from Rajasthan. This has been made possible by the Jaipur Virasat Foundation, founded in 2002, through many years of talent scouting, documenting thousands of Rajasthani folk performance groups, supporting rural performing arts festivals in Rajasthan, work-shopping the artists, all the while being cued in to the larger Indian and international music scene to be able to engage the best collaborators. Some collaborations forged during RIFF grow. Dharohar is one such. But for the Rajasthani folk performer, struggling to survive, they mean more: the marketability of their music to a modern audience, and an immediate earning through performances outside of RIFF and, sometimes, through CD sales. From playing for their sapping rural audiences, Dharohar's folk artists have gone on to play in cities across India and abroad, and further collaborated with the UK folk rock act Laura Marling And Mumford Sons at the ITunes Festival in London last year. These accomplishments create a new michael kors coupon interest for their music in Rajasthan itself.
What makes all this easier is the ambience that these artists collaborate in like the charged atmosphere at Sardar Bazaar on the festival's first day. Similarly, the 13th century Mehrangarh Fort at Jodhpur, in and around which the rest of RIFF plays out, provides intimate, almost magical, spaces, in its myriad passages, courtyards and rooms, for over 250 artists to constantly interact with one another. Where the drummer from the San Francisco folk band Rupa The April Fishes is trying to play the morchang of a Rajasthani folk artist he's just met. Or where a young musician asks the 108-year-old Nemi Baba the oldest living Rajasthani folk musician for his blessing just before the stalwart goes in for what he claims will be his last performance before an audience. Nemi discount michael kors Baba, from Bedham in Brij, renounced the life of a wrestler at age 55 to devote his life to god, in a hut, playing the algoza. He blesses the youngster with a mantra.
Collaborations take on various hues. Artists compete with one another, sportingly, for effect. Like Rupa Marya, of Rupa The April Fishes, a whirlwind of a performer, who says she is from this desert and is wearing a white top and brown boots and skirt, with a red and turquoise bandhej dupatta wrapped around her waist. Guitar in hand, she strums, sings, dances and screams protest music to the walls of a medieval fort and moon, both of whom seem to take it so well. As they take Queen Harish from Jaisalmer, dressed as a gorgeous Rajasthani woman, dancing with Rupa, whirling with grace, and a sword, balanced on her head, its blade set on fire.
Or artists could give way to one another, simply. Like Yuri Honing from Holland, one of the best saxophonists in Europe, in classic white shirt and black trousers and shoes, who stops in the middle of an awesome jazz rendition to do what a performer should never do turn his back on the audience. Honing watches, beaming, one with the audience, as Rajasthani singers Daya Ram and Sumitra take over.
Reaching out
Other places for collaboration are hotels that have opened its doors to RIFF. One such hotel is the Umaid Bhavan Palace, where the Australian Band Of Brothers and a group of Langa and Manganiyar musicians have just met. The Band of Brothers comprises Slava Grigoryan (one of Australia's best guitarists), his brother Leonard, also on the guitar, and Joseph Tawadros (one of the world's finest oud players; the oud is a traditional Egyptian string instrument) and his brother James on the req, an Egyptian tambourine.
The Tawadros are of Egyptian origin, hence their choice of instruments. On probing him about how their music fits in so seamlessly all Slava says is that been organic really
Still, they provide a model of sorts to Chanan Khan (Manganiyar) and Yasin Khan (Langa), leading musicians from their communities. And then, with portraits of an erstwhile Maharaja of Jodhpur and the Mehrangarh Fort looking on, underneath a huge crystal chandelier, on a rich, vast, red and gold carpet, this model reiterates itself. In the beginning the Australians are on chairs, for that's what they're used to, and the Langas and the Manganiyars are sitting on the carpet. A translator is the only way they can interact. But he has to leave to make a phone call. So James Tawadros, seated on the carpet by now, keeps playing his req to Qasim Khan's (Langa) dholak and Joseph, also on the floor, parries with Yasin on his sarangi and without words exchanged they settle on a composition, singing Amir Khusrau's Naina Lagai Ke to bring in the crescendo. And the translator returns, and realises all he has to convey from one side to the other is and good which they've understood anyhow.
Through books, one is 'lit' for life, says Nirmala Lakshman, Director, Kasturi and Sons Ltd., as she welcomes you to the 2013 iteration of The Hindu's literature festival. For those who want to know what to expect, this video offers a sample of the magical connect of words at Lit for Life, with excerpts from a film by Prasanna Ramaswamy, a Chennai-based theatre-person and filmmaker. Open to all, the fest kicks off in New Delhi on February 6 and then moves to Chennai (February 16 and 17).
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