With Valentine’s Day coming up this weekend, restaurants and resorts in and around the city are coming up with various packages to lure couples. From romantic dinners, thrilling adventure activities to a spa weekend, these packages can be tailor made to bring alive any mushy dream.
For music lovers who want to plan a weekend getaway however, there is something special too.
The romantic city of Udaipur, often called the Venice of the East, is playing host to the first edition of the World Music Festival. Conceptualised and produced by SEHER, the event scheduled for February 13 and 14, will be spread across the city and cut across several genres of music.
It will bring together more than 100 global artists and ensembles from over 12 countries including Spain, Ghana, Venezuela, Italy, France and India. The festival also marks the celebrations of 60 years of the diplomatic relations between Spain and India.
Day One will feature one of the most popular Fado singers from Portugal, Carminho, who will perform for the first time in India. French composer Mathias Duplessy will collaborate with Rajasthani vocalist Mukhtiyar Ali from the semi-nomadic community of Mirasi from the Thar desert. There will be Flamenco, being represented by Tamara and Fernando. Dobet Gnahoré, a Grammy award winner from the Ivory Coast, will present African beat music. The day will end with a performance by The Raghu Dixit Project.
Day Two will see a fusion of Sufi and gospel music with Sonam Kalra and The Sufi Gospel Project. It will be followed by jazz fusion between Indian and Italian bands and more African music from Morocco and Ghana. There will also be a band from Venezuela. The festival will conclude with Indian rock fusion band Papon and the East Indian Company.
Festival director Sanjeev Bhargava said: “A festival of this scale featuring such diverse music from so many different continents and regions coming together in one of the best tourist destinations of India will make Udaipur a culturally vibrant destination — an annual event where international and domestic travellers can mark the dates on their yearly travel calendar.”
Each of the two venues will showcase a different genre of music and is being designed to enhance the inherent beauty of the historic architecture and ambiance of Udaipur. In tune with how certain moods and music are associated with different times of the day, the festival will start with romantic treat during the laid back sunny afternoons, and will end with high energy youthful concerts in the evenings.
With this festival, SEHER aims to establish an annual signature event in Rajasthan while establishing Udaipur as a major destination for world music in South Asia, that caters to audiences cutting across barriers of age and walks of life. The festival will use the city’s lakes as a backdrop to the events.
The festival will take place at Fatehsagar Paal and Railway Training Institute Ground on February 13 and 14.There will be two session everyday from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.
