Ruhaniyat in Bangalore brought some amazing offbeat performances
‘Ruhaniyat’, this year’s edition, was a soulful event that brought together an impressive ensemble of national and international artistes to create an enriching atmosphere of sufi mysticism and mellifluous music.
The music festival began with the sonorous renditions of Abhangs and Bharud by Avadhoot Gandhi and his team from Alandi in Maharashtra. Avadhoot Gandhi, an exponent of ‘Kirtans’ in the ‘varkarisampradaya’ traces his lineage to Sant Gyaneshwar himself. His enthralling rendition of the Abhanga by saint Gyaneshwar with hues and shades of raga Madhukauns was enlivened by energetic rhythmic accompaniment on the pakhawaj and tabla. After the abhang, Avadhoot Gandhi took up a spirited bharud by Sant Eknath where the saint describes the predicament of the individual through the metaphor of a young married woman harassed by her mother-in-law and sisters-in-law. In his commendable exposition of the bharud, Gandhi was able to successfully show how the ostensibly comic, theatrical form often works as a camouflage for the deeply symbolic spiritual content of the song. This was followed by an exuberant Gondhal, an invocation to goddess Tulaja Bhavani “Anadi Ambika Jagadambe” in raga Purya Dhanashri. The percussionists imparted a magical dimension to this splendid enunciation of the Gondhal.
Padmashree awardee Bhai Nirmal Singh Khalsa, an exponent of shabads at the Golden temple of Amritsar, was accompanied by Darshan Singh on the harmonium who also gave excellent vocal support to the lead singer and on the tabla by Kuljit Singh. His sublime renditions of Guru Nanak’s shabad “Koi bole Ram Ram koi Khuda” and Kabir Vani “Ek Noor te” were greatly applauded by the connoisseurs.
‘Shabad’ performance was followed by a spectacular Indo–African production hailed as the “strings of dunes” in which the Manganiyar singers of Rajasthan collaborated with the versatile and gifted vocalist/instrumentalist solo Cissokho from Senegal. The mesmerising collaboration was indeed an eloquent testimony to the syncretic and transcendental qualities of mystical music traditions. Hailing from a family of musicians playing the legendary African stringed instrument Kora, Solo Cissokho enchanted the listeners although he sang in a completely alien ‘Mandinka’ language and played an instrument which had 21-23 strings that had to be tuned meticulously. Solo’s songs of peace and improvisations on the ‘Kora’ elicited a thunderous applause from the audience proving that music is indubitably the language of the heart. The creative collaboration where the Manganiyar singer Gullu Khan’s soulful rendition of the Meera Bhajan “Kannuro Sujane Mare Prit”, in raga Mand merged with the alluring strains of musical improvisations by the internationally acclaimed Kora player Solo Cissokho was truly the piece de resistance of the ‘Ruhaniyat’ festival this year. The captivating repertoire comprising of artistes playing the ‘khamaicha’ , ‘kartal’ and ‘dholak’ added to its polychromatic splendor.
ParvathyBaul , an exponent of Baul music of West Bengal paid an eloquent musical tribute to her gurus Guru Sanatan Das Baul and Shoshanko Goshai . With evocative renditions alluding to the mystic wisdom of Lalan Fakir , the snare of ‘yoga maya’ and the longing for ‘brindavan’ , ParvathyBaul delineated an ethereal world of serenity and bliss as she danced to the beats of ‘duggi’ and the tunes of ‘ektara’.
The grand finale was the Qawwali concert by the illustrious Nizami brothers Ghulam Waris – Ghulam Sabir who are outstanding exponents of the Sikhandrabad Gharana. The brothers began their concert with the famous qawwali “Mere Bane kibaatna pooch”, a composition of Kamil Hyderabad. As their voices traversed the three octaves with tremendous ease, they also paused in between for a profound commentary on the spiritual significance of each Qawwali. This was followed by a moving rendition of “Mai to dewani khwajaji dewani” soaked in an intoxicating ‘bhava’ of devotional lyricism. During one of the interjections in their spirited execution of the qawwali “Aaj rang he ye ma rang he ri, mohe pir payo Nizamuddin Auliya” , the singers elucidated the secular ideologies embedded in the song and gave a scholarly disquisition on the commonalities underlying all human existence which remained indissoluble despite religious and sectarian differences.
