Coming straight from the heart

By Ravi Teja Sharma - Business Standard - New Delhi, India
Sunday, April 1, 2007

The seventh Jahan-e-Khusrau, and the spin-offs it has spawned across the country, prove that Sufi music is here to stay.

This was an evening when ruhaniat transcended Quli Khan’s tomb at Jamali Kamali, near Qutab Minar in Mehrauli. Amir Khusrau’s world came alive in the silence of the moonlit night as strains of Sufi music caressed and cajoled the soul like a woman in love — rekindling the love between the atma and the parmatma. This was a call for total surrender.

This is the seventh year that Jahan-e-Khusrau has come to revive the magic that is so ingrained in our tradition. A tradition that binds not only the two cultures of India and Pakistan, but also the world. “Yeh to ruh ka rishta hai…,” says Abida Parveen, one of the best known Sufi singers today, adding, “Log ruhaniat haasil karne aate hain.” (“This is a meeting of souls. People come here to attain ecstasy.”) And so the language does not matter.

She recalls her concerts in Norway or Denmark, where the crowd was predominantly local, and though they didn’t understand the language, tears could be seen streaming out of their eyes. Sufi music, says Parveen, is in the soul.

Agrees Muzaffar Ali, to whom goes the credit of conceiving and organising this festival, a Sufi is like a woman in love with a feminine quality of total surrender. Very aptly then, the theme of the festival this year is the “Voice of the Woman”.

So be it the dargahs of Sufi saints at Ajmer, Hazrat Nizammuddin and Haji Ali or the select few festivals or the new remixed model to better suit Bollywood, Sufi kalaams are nothing short of a rage.

“People are getting more and more attracted to Sufism. There has been a sudden attraction to it, and, as we can see in such shows, people are trying to understand the concept,” says Dr Meeta Pandit, whose main forte is classical music. Her performance on day one at Jahan-e-Khusrau 2007, where she put together classical music and the kalam, was spellbinding.

And if the quest for spirituality is pulling the natives back into Sufism’s folds, the West too is not spared of its magic. Take, for instance, Wendy Jehlen, a dancer from Boston, who has been moving back and forth from India for 12 years now — all in the quest for divinity.

According to Jehlen, who opened the show this year, Ranchi is where she was first invited to sing. “People’s minds are now more open toward Sufi music,” she says. She has been exposed to Sufi music since her childhood and believes that “the performer is an intermediary between this and the other world”.

However, though Sufi music is getting popular, it cannot be dismissed as “popular” music, judging solely by the way Bollywood is integrating it into its fold. Agreed, we have singers like Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Kailash Kher and Daler Mehndi, who have all adapted it to reach a wider audience and have even introduced it to Bollywood, but there is a catch there.

Muzaffar Ali feels that “pure music makes its way to the heart, everything else gets rejected”. If Bollywood singers copy Sufi music only for commercial reasons and it does not come from within their hearts, it will get rejected.
I don’t know if anyone has noticed this but there is a separate section in the country’s Music World and Planet M outlets for Sufi music. That kind of space can’t just be for nothing.

There are many, though, who remain confused about Sufism and Sufi music and this is exactly why many feel more such events should be organised in more cities across India. “More people will be interested. This music needs to be brought to broader audiences,” says Jehlen.

Taking a cue, Mumbai already has a bi-annual event in Ruhaniyat, a festival of mystic and Sufi music. In the last five years, the festival has spread to three other cities — Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad.

While you won’t see Abida Parveen there, neither would you find any of the other well-known names of the Sufi world, you won’t be disappointed. This festival brings over qawaals from Gulbarga, Ajmer Sharif, Hyderabad and Kashmir for a different kind of experience.