Type dapukhan.com in your search bar, and you find yourself staring at the wizened face of a man wearing a bright pink bandhani turban and holding a well-worn musical instrument, which, the accompanying text tells you, is a khamaicha — an older form of the sarangi. You learn also that 58-year-old Dapu Khan Mirasi, the man in the picture, has been playing the khamaicha at the queen’s palace in Jaisalmer Fort for the past 30 years.
Dapu Khan has three young men in his group — and together, they are the upholders of a 1,500-year-old musical legacy. Traditionally called the Mirasirs, they are a must at weddings (especially of those of royal lineage) and festivals. Although their music has been livening up celebrations for decades, it was only last year that Khan got a digital identity and copyright over his compositions, and, with that, a better shot at making a living out of his music.
Twenty-six-year-old Abhinav Agrawal has something to do with the change in Dapu Khan’s fortunes. This classical musician who is an architect by training, remembers a time when, as a child, he would listen keenly to folk songs heralding the rain or the ripening of mangoes. They would be sung by the women of the household in Bulandshahr in western Uttar Pradesh, where he grew up.
These Chheti tunes lingered in his mind, prodding him to build a music organisation “which will work for the preservation and propagation of Indian classical and folk music, and bring them to contemporary audiences.” He found partners in friends Satyam Sangwan and Shuchi Roy, and together they started Anahad Foundation, a non-profit with a sharp focus.
Khamaicha legend Dapu Khan and his group.
Currently, the three-member core team at Anahad is working furiously to sign up some 1,000 folk musicians from across the country and offer them a deal they cannot refuse: a website, a copyright to their own compositions, and an arrangement that will make them accessible to the world while they stay self-reliant. There have been several initiatives to popularise folk music over the last decade, but Anahad’s approach is distinct in its artist-friendliness.
Over cups of masala tea, the spirited, easygoing trio tells me what makes Anahad stand out in the crowd.
“Folk music is fading not just because tastes are changing, but also because it is not easily accessible and not produced in high quality,” says Agrawal. Also, new compositions are hard to come by. So the Anahad team set out to help folk artists market original compositions.
First, they brought musicians from villages to their studio in Delhi to record their music. The project sank. Not many musicians could afford to leave their work in the village and come to the city. So they decided to take the studio to the artists instead, assembling a soundcard audio interface that can record eight tracks at one go, an equal number of high-quality dynamic mics, headphones and a laptop.
But even the combined skills of the three — Sangwan is a computer engineer, Agrawal an architect and Roy a lawyer — were not enough to get the project off the ground. They felt they lacked enough expertise in music. Thus followed stints at Berklee College of Music: Agrawal returned with a Masters in Music Business, while Sangwan studied Music Production. Roy brought her training in intellectual property rights to the table.
Rekha Sapera, the only woman singer in Kootal Khan’s group.
A random Google search, “Folk music Rajasthan”, got them interested in the khamaicha, and all roads led to Dapu Khan in Jaisalmer. It took them a month to convince the musician to let them record his music. Khan was surprised that the Anahad team returned soon after the recording, a box in hand. In the box was a clutch of CDs containing high-quality recordings of his songs, and visiting cards for each member of the group.
This box was symbolic of Anahad’s primary effort: to give tangibility to elusive folk music. When Khan put the CDs on sale for ₹50 a piece at the spot where he plays everyday, they were sold out within the day. The website dapukhan.com followed.
This helped them bag a few shows, invitations to perform at weddings, and concerts in the U.S. and Germany. Enthused by the response, the team has, in the last 10 months, done 54 music videos, releasing one every other day on their Facebook page, on their website, and on YouTube.
Making use of the opportunities offered by college music fests, they are also venturing into Coke Studio like collaborations between college bands and folk musicians, like the one they pulled off at BITS Pilani’s Oasis festival in November 2017.
Last week, at ‘Anahad Samlaap’, they invited 150 artistes to Jawahar Niwas in Jaisalmer. Anahad is also looking at folk music and tribal art forms beyond Rajasthan, zeroing in on artists from Chattisgarh, Punjab, Nagaland, and South India.
Says Agrawal, “The plan is to get at least 1,000 musicians registered with a performance rights organisation by the end of the year so they can get start getting royalty by signing up on digital music platforms like Spotify and iTunes.”
The freelance writer is a lover of cakes, chai, bookshops and good yarns.
