Soulful sojourn

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Music binds the entire world. Despite the language and cultural barriers, music is a common language that we all understand. The packed halls at the 3rd International Sufi Festival, which was held at Kamani Auditorium recently, were enough to support this.

Celebrating Sufi music, international artists from six countries, including Pinana brothers from Spain, Mugam group from Azerbaijan, Otava Yo group from Russia, Ghazal Sufi Ensemble from Iran and Mechket group from Tunisia performed at the festival organised by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR).
The three-day international event also had performances by some hidden talents from India. The first day of the festival saw the performance by Sidi Goma group from Gujarat, followed by performance by bauls and fakirs from the Bengal Bihar Sufi Folk group. On the last day, famous Ghazal and Sufi singer, Indira Naik from Mumbai enthralled the audience with her soulful renditions.
Talking about the concept of Sufi music in different countries, Suresh Goel, director general, ICCR says that Sufi is not a patent of any one religion or a country. “Sufi is derived from Greek word Sofia, which means wisdom. Wisdom came before anything else, similarly, culture predates religion. Thus being a culture, Sufism does not belong to anyone. It is religion-neutral and gender-neutral. And this festival establishes the non-religious nature of Sufi tradition,” says Goel.
Supporting this line of thought, Alexey Belkin, the lead vocalist from Russian group Otava Yo says, “Russia is not an Islamic country and majority of people there are Christians. Still we know about Sufi music and there are some bands in Russia that play Sufi music. We are not one of them, but what we play — Russian folk music that is — is very similar to Sufi music. We could draw the parallels when we heard some original Sufi numbers sung by Indian artists.”
Talking about their performance on second day of the festival, Yulia Usova, the violinist and vocalist of Otava Yo says, “It was really interesting performing for Indian audience. We have been to many countries earlier and had performed at big festival. Generally, audience sits and listens. Since we play ‘danceable’ music, we want people to dance to our tunes. Here in India, people did just that. Our interactions and music made people get on to their toes. We loved the whole experience of playing here, and also the Bollywood melodies we heard.”