Simon Broughton was in Goa last week, to attend the Sufi Sutra festival of World music, making a stop at the Kolkata leg before coming here. While he has an office in Shepherd’s Bush in London, Simon could be Bamako in one week, Dakar, the next, New York in the third and Goa in the fourth. In fact, he literally flew in straight to Goa from Bamako.
first long conversation with any Indian mainline publication, spoke how music can be the world’s finest activist. In the Presidential elections in Senegal for instance, people were fed up with the failed promises of the powerful. The answer to this was powerful rap music, speaking about the pain of the people. Songlines was on the spot to report it. In its latest issue, Broughton runs a story on how in Burkina Faso, a musical movement led by hip hop artist and activist, Smokey managed to get an autocrat President out of power. A group of rap and reggae artists in Burkina Faso had managed to stir an entire nation against its dictator President. What Smokey got in return, were bullets fired at his studio in Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou. And it was Songlines which featured him, not for his music, but how his music has become the most powerful voice of protest in his country. Broughton came to Goa to listen to music from Brazil, Burkina Faso, Scotland, Hungary, USA and so on, at the Sufi Sutra Festival; but as Broughton says, “World music offers much more than some simply beautiful tunes,” adding “I am more interested in the people, and their lives and the way their make their music,” while recounting how he went to a village in Bengal called Gourbhanga and met the fakirs who create such soulful music, which remained in the confines of their hearts and homes. “Music for social change works everywhere- in Mali, Burkina Faso, Gourbhanga and Goa. Music brings together people who would have never met peacefully in their lives,” he says, when this reporter reminds him of how musicians from Israel and Palestine jammed together during the World Music Expo in Budapest in October 2015, where this reporter and Broughton were present. In Goa, Broughton looked for one musical connect between the Goa of today and its Portuguese past, and the Fado obviously came to mind. He spent some time trying to locate and connect with Goa’s best known fadista, Sonia Sirsat – a Hindu girl from Ponda, whose voice resonates as powerfully in Goa, as it does in Lisbon. He didn’t quite manage to speak to her but would like to feature her in Songlines in the future. Goa was yet another pit stop for Broughton, but he did leave his mark and deepened his imprint as a musical force of good.
