With a host of cultural festivals happening in the city now, Delhi has a lot to offer its people in terms of entertainment the whole year round. Keeping up the tempo is Banyan Tree, bringing to the city its annual Sufi music festival Ruhaniyat this weekend. The two-day festival, ending this Sunday at The Ashok hotel's amphitheatre, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year and its fifth consecutive outing in Delhi.
Mahesh Babu, the brain behind the festival, calls it a one-of-a-kind cultural event, which travels to seven cities beginning in Mumbai. Babu started the festival in Mumbai in 2001. It now covers Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune, besides Delhi and Mumbai. This year, says Babu in a press note, “It features carriers of rare traditions from different parts of India as well as Egypt and Indonesia.”
With Sufi music being its core, the festival features artistes following various traditions of Sufiana songs and ballads. This year, it has brought to Delhi Parvathy Baul from West Bengal for a baul performance, Kachra Khan and Group from Rajasthan for mystic songs, Ashrupreet Kaur of Punjab for shabad and Sayeed Sabri and Farid Sabri and Group from Jaipur for a Sufi quawwali session, besides Tannoura, a group of whirling dervishes from Egypt. The artistes will repeat their performance for the audience on Sunday evening.
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In the Mumbai event, held between November 20 and 21, besides some of the artistes who will be performing in Delhi, Ade Suparman with Yusdiana from Indonesia enthralled the audience with some Sudanese mystic songs.
Ipsita Bandyopadhyay from Banyan Tree says, “After Delhi, the festival will travel to Kolkata for a day (December 4) and then to Bengaluru (December 25), Hyderabad (end December), Pune (February 6) and then to Chennai (February 13).”
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