Meeting of Thar & Sahara musical legacies

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Delhi is one lucky place. Not because it is centrally-located but due to the cross-cultural activity and exposure the city gets through the world-class festivals held here. Be it Jazz-Yatra, theatre festivals and other dance festivals organised by the ICCR.

The debut of the Amarrass Desert Music Festival, to be held at the Siri Fort Auditorium in New Delhi, only broadens Delhi’s cultural horizons. It promises what the city has never witnessed at this scale before, not in the living memory.
The festival is the meeting of musical traditions of the Sahara and the Thar.
The two-day extravaganza will feature world-class musicians from India and Africa sharing their respective traditions with each other while live spontaneous fusion is also a possibility.
The show features two of Africa’s best-known musicians, Vieux Farka Toure, aka the Jimi Hendrix of the Desert, and Madou Sidike Diabate, a 71st generation kora player.
Sharing the stage are master musicians from Rajasthan, including Lakha Khan (sarangi maestro and Sangeet Natak Akademi award winner), and vocalists, percussionists, poets and storytellers from the Manganiyar community — representing over 400 years of music heritage from the Indian desert.
Ankur, the co-owner of Amarrass Records, says, “Delhi was chosen for the maiden show because of the encouragement we received during a show last year. That is when we realised that there is a great market in the city for music and events which featured music. Originally, we were involved in recording and archiving the Manganiyar community, which plays an exemplary form of folk music in India. In the process, the notion of holding a festival that showcases the music of the desert across the boundaries stuck. So the idea of bringing the two deserts together on a common platform was materialised.”
Not only that there is remote chance of the audience exploring these artistes on their own but also very little chance of them coming together at one stage in the same timeline.