I t is the texture of his voice that first piques your curiosity. Coarse but musically powerful and passionate, Bassu Khan, who hails from a community of Mirs from Pugal near Bikaner in Rajasthan, draws the listener towards him purely through his voice at first. Then, as he begins the lines of the song, the poetry, the wit and the words of the piece he sings, begin to tug at your heart. “ Jisne prem ras chaakha nahi, Imrat piya toh kya hua, Jisne ishq mein sar nahi diya, Jug mein jiya toh kya hua...,” he sings from 'Ali Dum Dum', a composition of Bulleh Shah, armed with an effortless sense of honesty.
However, as much as you may try, deconstructing the experience of listening to Bassu Khan and his troupe is futile, for it is difficult to know where the allure really lies—in the music or in the words. Isn’t that what they say about the mystics and their poetry? Doesn’t the magic lie at the juncture where the music meets the words?
The Mirs, who were in Bengaluru and Dharwad recently to perform as part of an initiative of the India Foundation for the Arts (IFA), are hereditary singers of the Sufiyana Kalam and belong to a tradition that is roughly five centuries old. Hailing from a small village in Rajasthan, their repertoire today comprises compositions from a diverse set of poetic and mystic traditions from across the subcontinent- Kabir, Gorakhnath, Meera, Achalram, Baba Sheikh Farid, Bulleh Shah, Hazrat Sultan, Khwaja Ghulam Farid, to name just a few.
“We have never learnt music formally. No Sufi mystic or Bhakti poet is left out in our repertoire. We grew up listening to songs our elders sang and that is how we learnt all of them,” says Abdul Jabbar, a core member of the troupe. “It is said our tradition harks back to the gatekeepers of Medina on whom the holy chaddar fell and blessed them with the title Mir-e-Alam. Alam refers to a literate person but in our community no one has formally learnt to read and write. Music and poetry is in our blood,” he explains.
In the burgeoning landscape of Sufi music programmes across the country, equipped with their robust voices, the Mirs could easily occupy a prime spot. But the journey they have undertaken from their community to the stage has been an arduous one, one that involved even cutting themselves off from their tradition. “We had abandoned our music for a long time in between. I used to be known for my talent in playing the dholak. But for 15 years I didn’t even touch the dholak. Each one of us had to find other jobs to survive as it was no longer feasible to sustain ourselves through music. Most of us took up jobs as drivers, some went back to the fields,” explains Jabbar. The reasons for this, he explained ranged from the gradual disappearance of traditional patrons of their music to cases of religious fundamentalism in the region.
The turning point came in 2010 when IFA, as part of its engagement with musician communities in Rajasthan, set up the ‘Baba Farid Mir Project’. The idea was to empower experts in three Mir villages in the Bikaner region to train youngsters in the Mir music heritage. Thereafter from October 2015 to December 2016, a team of artists and patrons undertook a tour across Bikaner to further strengthen the musical exchange and community interaction. “Today, with the help of IFA and small programmes in big cities, we are starting out again. Ironically, our tryst with bigger cities is now helping us being taken seriously back in our own villages. They say, ‘oh they are being invited to big cities. Surely, there must be something in them,” explains Bassu Khan.
“We get about Rs. 5000-7000 for each performance and with that we try to manage in a month. There is a need for a permanent system that nurtures our music,” says Jabbar.
While these may be the compulsions of this world, the goal of their music, say the Mirs, is beyond material concerns. “We do not claim anything about our music. All we are saying is that we come bearing a message of peace which we think has become increasingly relevant to our society today where there is rampant communal discord. Look all around you, everyone is fighting over religion and instruments of worship. If you just listen to the songs we embody in our bodies, you’ll realise that life is beyond these petty trifes,” explains Jabbar and launches into a beautiful poem about the ultimate manzil (goal): “Hadh tape soh auliya....”
Having ventured into big cities, what do they think of the assortment of music festivals that host them? “I’m not sure if all programmes are doing justice to Sufi music. Often the arrangements are grand but that is about it. Sufi does not care for such grandeur though. It only cares about the S rotha, the listener. Srotha Khuda ka roop hota hai. Our goal is to try to touch the heart of the listener. If he is transported into a state of ecstasy, then we have done our job well,” he explains.
“Which is why we don’t understand when organisers say we have to finish our performance in 30 minutes. How is any engagement possible in such tiny slots?” intervenes Bassu Khan.
What about Sufi in cinema? Hasn’t that helped artists? “ Kachda karte hain wahan (they make a mess of Sufi there). They break the bones of Sufi and join the hand to the leg and the leg to the neck. That’s not fair to the traditions,” says Jabbar.
For their own part, the Mirs are now engrossed in popularising Khwaja Ghulam Farid’s compositions. “Everyone is familiar with Bulleh Shah’s poetry. But not many people know about Ghulam Farid who wrote mainly in metaphors of nature. We are trying to sing more of his compositions,” says Jabbar.
And what role does language play? “Music of course does not have any language. If a listener is unable to understand the depth of the poetry, the music will compensate for it by conveying the same intensity in its language. That’s the beauty of these traditions.”
Marred by struggles, the Mirs have not had it easy. But a conversation with them is sufficient to convince one of their ability to fight for what they believe. “I imagine our life to be akin to a tree. Sometimes the tree falls sick and you have to nurture it with medicine. It is a struggle to recover but it is not impossible.” Perhaps, the magic lies not just in their music but in their thoughts and ideas too.
