Desaj | Indigenously yours

Sangeet Natak Akademi’s annual folk festival starts on Saturday in Delhi

Guru Rewben Mashangva will present Hao hill music from Manipur.

“All music is folk music; I ain’t never heard no horse sing a song”. This observation of the American jazz legend Louis Armstrong’s extends to all folk art forms, or art forms of the common people which, as Cecil Sharp, the founding father of folklore revival in England in the early 20th century, observed, “is wholly free from the taint of manufacture, the canker of artificiality”. Folk art forms encapsulate cultural   ethos and idiosyncrasies of a race, a community, a nation. It is in order to recognize, acknowledge and celebrate the folk “performance art” forms of our country that the Union ministry of culture’s Sangeet Natak Akademi has institutionalized an annual festival, Desaj: Festival of Tribal and Folk Performing Arts of India, in the Capital.

Scheduled to start from Saturday, Desaj, which means indigenous or of the country, got its name from the Akademi’s folk event Desaj: Diverse Expressions of the Nation, for the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games. The Akademi has been organizing Desaj since 2012, under its fairly recent folk and tribal section, and in collaboration with the National Book Trust as a parallel event for the New Delhi World Book Fair. The idea was to revive the Akademi’s Lok Utsav of 1980s.

Zeroing in on the artistes is not easy. Sajitha Madathil, the deputy secretary of the Akademi’s folk and tribal arts section, says it was tough researching for tribal art forms. “It was difficult to find much data online, for instance, about the art forms of the Gond community of Andhra Pradesh,” she says, adding: “The newly formed folk and tribal wing was found to address this issue by conducting surveys, tracing and mapping the communities, documenting their art forms (written, audio, video and still photography) to develop a database and build an archive of artistes and art forms; and alongside provide a national platform for these artistes to perform.”

Desaj will be inaugurated on Saturday at 4.30pm by eminent Bharatanatyam dancer and Akademi’s chairperson Leela Samson, NBT chairman A. Sethumadhavan, and musician Sonam Tshering Lepcha.

At least six folk/tribal forms will be performed each day: Madhya Pradesh’s rai dance on Day 1 and swang dance-drama on Day 2; Langa and Manganiyar songs from Jodhpur on Day 1; Jharkhand’s baha and sarpha dance on Day 2; Bihar’s Hirni Birni Ki Katha and Hyderabad’s Gond tribal dance on Day 3; Mayurbhanj chhau on Days 3 and 4; Manipur’s dhol cholom on Day 4; and Chhattisgarhi folk songs on Day 3 by Nageen Tanvir, daughter of the late theatre veteran Habib Tanvir, founder of Bhopal’s Naya Theatre company.

Chavittunatakam, a dance-drama from Kerala.

Madathil says about 21 forms will be showcased from around 13 states, and especially mentions two Day 4 events: Patna’s Muharram Rathor’s ballad Alha, which will be performed for the first time outside of Bihar, and the finale event, the dance-drama chavittunatakam, which she says, “not many will have heard of, since people only know about Kathakali, Mohiniattam or kalaripayattu, but this folk dance-drama is popular among the Syrian Christians in Kerala and traces its roots to the state’s Portuguese settlements.”

Fakiri singer Nurul Islam Khan from Nadia, West Bengal.

Madathil gushes about Nurul Islam Khan, 45, and group from Nadia’s Gorbhanga village in West Bengal, who will be singing fakiri songs on Day 3. Like Bauls, fakirs are wandering minstrels, singing the same themes, segregated only by religion. They use instruments like dotara, dhol, khartal, ektara and harmonium to sing the songs of the 18th century baul mystic Lalon Fokir and darbari songs of Khwaja Baba. Khan, who performed at the Indian Council for Cultural Relations’ 4th International Sufi Festival in Delhi on Monday, says in Bengali: “Gaan hocche antar-er khorak; gaan-er bhaab, shur, taal, shobai bojhe, shobai sroddha diye amader gaan shone (Music is soul’s food. Everybody understands the emotions and tunes of songs, even if the language is alien; our songs are heard with reverence).”

Along with folk, the aim is also to provide a stage to contemporary tribal artistes. Like the 54-year-old Guru Rewben Mashangva from Choithar, Ukhrul district of Manipur, who will perform on Days 1 and 2. Mashangva has appeared with indie folk rock musician Raghu Dixit in season 1 of MTV’s The Dewarists and presented his style of Manipur’s hill music, Hao music, on the themes of peace and harmony. “I have devised a new sound, taking from the traditional Tangkhul Naga folk songs and composing with modern-style variations, using instruments like guitars, bamboo flutes, cowbells and shakers. I try to make music that’s interesting for youngsters,” says Mashangva who, later on 23 February, will be performing at the Sounds of Freedom concert at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.

The 86-year-old Tshering Lepcha and his group from Kalimpong, West Bengal, will present Sikkim’s Lepcha dance and music on Days 3 and 4. Tshering Lepcha, who was awarded the Padma Shri in 2007 and Rabindra Ratna Award in 2012, says his music incorporates 12 Lepcha ragas, has rivers, weather and nature for its themes and uses indigenous bamboo instruments: tungduk, tuntungtulit and nambryoktulit (a variant of mandolin).

Like most folk artistes, Lepcha is hopeful of festivals like these and speaks of preserving one’s culture (folk music in his context):“Sangeet toh hamari sanskriti hai, isko bachake rakhna hai. Yeh utsav anekta mein ekta ka roop hai, iss-se badi baat hamare liye aur nahin (Music is our culture, we must preserve it. This festival showcases unity in diversity and is a big thing for us).”

Desaj: Festival of Tribal and Folk Performing Arts of India will show from 4.30pm onwards, on 15-18 February, at Lal Chowk Theatre, Pragati Maidan, New Delhi. Entry through Gate No.2 on purchase of gate tickets.