The mountains of Chechnya and the glitter of Manhattan or
Brooklyn were a very far away blip in the Furtados music store in Panjim.
Gabriel Miram (A New Yorker with roots in Chechnya) and Jeff Mann dropped in to
check out the music store in Goa, a little place they had never heard of. This
store provided most of the backup musical instruments for a music festival
Gabriel and Jeff were here for.
At Furtados, they loved what they saw, a mix of the old and
the new, with music emanating even from each silent instrument. In one corner,
a group of curious kids looked at them as they caressed each instrument. Almost
on cue, Gabriel and Jeff did what their hearts always do, pick up an instrument
and play. The folks at Furtados loved what they saw. They opened their hearts
and their store – their home, to one of America’s best known musicians of
progressive fusion and jazz music marinated in Indian and Middle Eastern
styles.
As they played, the kids joined in – one took the piano and
the other went for the drums. It was just pure music that brought Manhattan to
the Mandovi. The setting was surreal. Two top American musicians were playing
with a group of children at Goa’s finest music store, completely impromptu. In
the evening, when Gabriel and Jeff joined John and other members of their band
– the ‘American Sufi Project’ – to play at the Kala Academy, a couple of these
kids turned up to watch their afternoon “band mates” from Furtados.
If the spirit of music, where the orient and the occident
and Africa meet, mingle and perform in
an effortless display, and musicians come together on stage and off stage, in
music stores and hotel terraces, at workshops in the morning or during impromptu
jam sessions of 9 teams across the world and India, it is at the Sufi Sutra
festival, which travels to Kolkata and then to Goa, two places on either flanks
of India, joined by its unbridled love for music.
But the songs and music which sprang forth like gushing
springs were not just on stage. It was in the sidelines, at the workshops held
each morning in different spaces at the Kala Academy that the men and women
behind the music and the instruments came alive. Two gypsies from the foothills
in Hungary, a songwriter, singer and one of Africa’s finest musicians from
Burkina Faso Mamaduo Diabate, who plays the Balafon, a wooden xylophone which
plays about 20 odd keys, singers from Portugal and Kolkata – Debalina Bhowmick
and team, our Elvis Lobo ( Goa’s Eric
Clapton) and our percussion patrao Carlos Gonsalves, demonstrated their craft
interacting with people from all over
Goa, who spoke about their songs, their instruments and their influences.
Gabriel Marin strummed his fretless double-neck guitar and
produced sounds of the veena, the sitar and yes even the tabla, from that
instrument. He shocked us all with his deep interest and knowledge of music,
musicians and music styles of central Asia- Persia and Iran- and his days as a
student under gurus like Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya, the pioneer of the
Indian slide guitar.
Late at night, back in their hotel, folks from Brooklyn,
Burkina Faso, Bengal and Budapest met over rounds of friendship drinking, some
with their instruments, some just danced moving slowly to rhythms from
instruments from a very different land.
Goa is blessed that this happens every year, blessed that
banglanatak dot com, a Kolkata based, UNESCO recognised group which promotes
art and music for better lives and livelihoods, extended their Sufi Sutra
annual project to Goa with the Art and Culture Department supporting it.
But every creative coming together has some riveting
moments, a freeze frame, and this year’s freeze frame was this. During the
final act when selected musicians and dancers from all countries performed together,
a plump Hungarian male dancer took to the air and landed next to a red haired
Scot who was playing her guitar. Next to the Hungarian was a chau dancer from
Bengal wearing a traditional mask who faced a bare-chested Brazilian acrobat
dancer, who moved to the beat of the Balafon from Burkina Faso.
The stage was on fire and the world was on stage, on Friday
night, each playing a part, the same part, of making us realise that there is
just one glue which can save this world from cracking up – music, music, music.
