The slowly rising moon pierced the inky darkness over the
vast expanse of the river Mandovi. Over yonder, were the two bridges where fast
moving flashes of light shone, vehicles criss-crossing them. As the night wore
on, the lights flashed slowly as traffic
dropped. From the 6th floor terrace of the Panjim hotel where they were put up,
an eclectic bunch of musicians, who’ve done some minor things in life like
picking up Grammy Awards, like ice cream from the next door store, saw Goa, the
way we seldom do. The casino boats were on one side with their feeder boats
ferrying gamblers. But on the other side towards the bridges, towards old Goa
and the islands, this could well be the Bosphorous in Turkey, the confluence of
Asia and Europe. This was confluence of music and musicians all right – also of
Asia and Europe and Goa for three days this week, became their Bosphorous.
Some played on their favorite instruments – the flute, the
cello, the slide guitar and other percussion instruments, others sang. On two
of three nights, of the Sur Jahan music festival in Goa, the master himself-
Ale Moller- came out to the hotel terrace after a riveting concert and jammed
till dawn broke. Moller, easily the finest and the final authority on Swedish
folk music, is a genius, bringing Swedish folk to the high tables of world
music. He remains to this day a wandering minstrel, playing many myriad
instruments, with the Nordic version/ fusion of mandolin and the Grecian
bouzouki, (a result of his strong Greek influence) his most consistent
companion, with extended bass strings. The accordion, flutes, whistles, cow
horn all go with him on stage. Some of them came to the hotel terrace
overlooking the Mandovi on Thursday and Friday nights as the master played with
other musicians- sitting or around in a circle on the terrace floor
The master Moller, has lived in the mountains in Sweden, where
cold and importantly dark winters, led to music being created to reflect the
times, such as his tribute to the sun. And then India happened in a way very
few knew. His older brother, also a musician travelled to India and heard Shehnai
maestro, Ustad Bismillah Khan performing. On an impulse he picked up many of
his long playing records and took them home. When his brother Ale heard them,
his life and his music changed. The Jazz trumpeter imbibed flute and flute like
instruments in his repertoire of music and that’s the way it has been. He in a
conversation with a friend on that terrace in a Panjim hotel revealed this.
Yours truly was unfortunately not within ear shot of this mesmerizing conversation.
Moller’s greatness is couched by his extreme simplicity. He
is indeed one of the best musicians on the planet today, and he doesn’t need to
flout his several Grammy awards to establish his credentials.
But he did tell us
later, chatting with us like a loving elder, how important it was to preserve
traditional music and go back to our roots. He, so very graciously acknowledged
the Indian greats of the various gharanas
of music, for doing this. And though he enhances the instruments he plays –
mandolin, the cow horn, among others, he is actually an influencer par
excellence. He does this by directing musicians to move back to their roots to
keep alive folk traditions.
And he attracts greats who feel the same, and whose string
instruments and pipes swear by their fingers. Three of them were also here for
the Goa edition of Sur Jahan (the world music festival held annually), playing
traditional folk (also called roots music).
Afro Norwegian Solo Cissokho with his Kora filled notes
(Kora is a traditional African string instrument), Ellika Frisell one of
Sweden’s most famous folk musicians and percussionist Rafael Sida with roots in
Afro-Cuban and Latin percussion traditions, were here too. Rafael moved to
Sweden from Mexico in the 1970s and is a big name in jazz and world music in
Sweden. And again, only because awards are a quick way to convey greatness in
limited space, we say this. The BBC World Music Award 2003, the Swedish Grammy
2005 and Swedish prize for best folk music independent 2003 are just a few
the ‘Elika –Solo- Rafael’ trio have picked up on their journey.
They played as a trio
in Goa, but it was obvious that they have shared music space with Ale Moller in
Sweden a lot. Their chemistry on stage, and surely off stage, on that Panjim
hotel terrace, with humble awestruck music lovers like yours truly, as they
jammed all night till the sun rose, brightening up the Mandovi, was their gift
to mankind.
They in turn met
other Indian greats too. For instance during a workshop – one of the highlights
of the Sur Jahan festival, which world music impresario Amitava Bhattacharya
and his institution bangalanatak.com bring to Kolkata and Goa – the intense
musical interaction between the Swedish greats and Bengal’s wandering baul guru Tarak Khyapa (literally
meaning in Bengali, Tarak the crazy), who lives in an ashram in rural Bengal
keeping the baul traditional alive,
kept us spellbound.
They are all soul soothers and lifters, masters of music and
servants of tradition. Each a fragment, a gem in a kaleidoscope of music, human
and humane, masters of the only language all humanity can understand- music.
