In one of Udaipur World Music Festival’s more surreal moments, South African band Hot Water’s lead singer screams at the audience to “Go down, go down. Security, you too, down !” He keeps at it until everybody is on their knees, perplexed.
On a nimble foot, he jumps on to a loudspeaker, strips off his coat, opens a guitar case and puts his hand inside it. The next moment, he showers the audience with lollipops. It’s raining candies, hundreds of them, being fired like rounds from a machine gun.
Most bands rely on their music to spark joy; Hot Water goes one literal step further, and adds bubbles, along with lollipops, for good measure.
This is in stark difference to the meditative ambience set earlier that day by Sangeet Natak Akademi recipient Shashank Subramanyam and his soothing ragas on the flute.
And this wholesome musical journey around the world is the essential idea behind the recently concluded three-day festival, spread across three popular venues in the city.
Meet the team
Seher founder and festival director Sanjeev Bhargava shifts his chair out of the shadows, into the sunlight pouring in from across Lake Pichola at Amet Haveli, before facing us. “Music festivals have been mushrooming across India, but most of them are being done by businesses that want to make money.”
Rooted in history (Clockwise from left ) The City Palace on Pichola lake; performances by La Dame Blanche and Albaluna
Tickets to the Udaipur World Music Festival on the other hand, are free. “Good music should be available to everyone. That is genuinely our raisin d’etre ,” he says. Sanjeev was trained in Hindustani vocal by Pandit Vinay Chandra Maudgalya.
He later dabbled in theatre, and also distributed films such as Masoom, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro , and Ardh Satya . Backing the Arts, especially those that have not yet found a foothold in the mainstream, is what drives him.
- “I want Udaipur World Music Festival to be a complete experience for my audience,” says Sanjeev. Ambrai Ghat, the backdrop for the morning venue, is then designed to lull musicians into tranquillity, with its yellow-and-white gotakiyas (diwan sofas) facing the artists and the lake guarded by the Sisarma valley. “The artistes are also selected accordingly, so that the music and the ambience support each other in this journey,” he says.
- In the afternoon, the venue shifts to the iconic Fateh Sagar Pal, an artificial lake constructed in the late 17th Century, home to the Udaipur Solar Observatory. The shades have mutated from meditative yellows to languid blues: the stage as well as the seats have a touch of teal. “Afternoons and early evenings are generally romantic, so the music should also have a free flow to it.”
- The nights, of course, are for dancing, and so the venue has to be a stadium — in this case, Gandhi Ground, to accommodate more people without a security hassle.
When cultures meet
Given his rich experience in holding festivals — since the 2000s, he has been organising festivals including Ananya, Bhakti Utsav, and the Delhi Jazz Festival — he was approached by the Rajasthan Government to think of a thematic festival in a city other than Jaipur.
He visualised one which anybody in the city, country, world could come and go to as they pleased. “I wanted this festival to bring a positive vibe across the city. Mid-February should belong to Udaipur,” he says.
In its fourth edition now, the festival sees a floating footfall of around 40,000 people, as opposed to the 25,000 in the first edition, claims Sanjeev.
With the success of Udaipur festival, Sanjeev is also planning to start, this October, Jaipur Jazz and Blues festival, in collaboration with the one in Vancouver. But now, already, he is curating the artistes he wants to invite for the fifth edition of the Udaipur festival: “It’s a round-the-year job!”, and curating the setlist is hardly the issue; getting sponsors for the event that costs up to ₹4 crore, is.
In a scene representative of the spirit of the festival, Swiss jazz band Yves Theiler Trio, along with Luca Sisera and Lukas Mantel, performed with Chennai’s ‘ kanjira man’ Shree Sundarkumar. The quintessential free improvisation resulted in the jazz piano finding its voice structured by beats of the jackfruit-skinned Indian drum.
“You know, Rajasthan Tourism had this tagline, ‘Jaane Kya Ho Jaaye’. When you have 150 artistes from all across the globe participating, and more importantly, interacting with each other off stage, who knows what magic it brings about,” says Sanjeev.
“In the previous editions, we have had Brazilian bands using Rajasthani folk instruments on stage, and Moroccan singers go on tour with local sarangi musicians they meet here.”
For curating the artiste list, he prefers going around the world, watching musicians perform live. While musical exchange is one part of the festival, the other is to give space to artistes who are pushing the norms in the form and content of their music.
Music, the key
Cuban hip hop band La Dame Blanche perhaps best represents this, when lead singer Yaite Ramos Rodriguez struts on stage, an unlit cigar pressed between her lips. She flips the notion of hip hop and rap being a traditionally masculine space.
In between her raps, she swings her flute like a baseball bat, and proceeds to play intricate classical music — she was trained as one before she went to France and discovered her love for hip hop.
“I sing about the daily chores women do, about what you see on streets every day, like washing clothes, sweeping streets,” she says.
Another striking feature of the festival, is the importance given to traditional instruments. When Portuguese band Albaluna takes the stage, frontman Ruben Monteiro does it with the swagger of an electric guitarist — complete with long headbang-worthy hair. But in his hands is the hurdy-gurdy, a wheel fiddle with a hand-crank.
Rooted in history Performance by Albaluna
On the Indian front were traditional Manganiyar singers, welcoming visitors at the airport and the railway station, in an embodiment of Padharo Mhaare Des . “We also brought in the element of street concerts, like the one Voice of LaaPoLaa did,” he says. Music, he reminds us, doesn’t belong just to the elite.
