Koi Sunta Hai - The Kabir Fest, Bangalore

The Kabir Festival was week long event, a festive yet grave immersion into the ideas of the 15th century mystic weaver poet Kabir, via a series of film screenings, live music concerts by folk, classical and Sufi singers from India and Pakistan, discussions, seminars, an exhibition and events in colleges, institutions of higher education, socio-cultural and religious communities in and around Bangalore.

Kabir Festival did a lot of publicity through our favorite newspaper The Hindu.  The festival was based on the theme of “Koi Sunta Hai”.  I listened to it.  The surprising thing about the festival was that it was totally free, compared to the growing number of shitty Bollywood movies releasing every week with sky high prices at multiplexes.  The fest had 2 major parts: films & folk concerts.  The film screenings were absolutely free while the live music concerts required free passes.

The first film I saw was “Kabira Khada Bazaar Mein”, a 94 minute documentary.  Caught hold of this film by leaving office early and going to Suchitra Film Society, which is quite near to our home. This film investigates the ironies and tensions between sacred and secular Kabir, interweaving the Kabir Panth with the secular appropriation of the same poet by the social activist group Eklavya. The story unfolds through the life of Prahlad Tipanya, a Dalit singer whose participation in the Panth and Eklavya begins to raise difficult questions for him about ritual and organized religion.

Woke up earlier than usual office timings & went to Sophia High School for the Saturday event.  First there was a movie screening of “Koi Sunta Hai”, the theme of the fest.  It was a 96 minute film describing journey with Pandit Kumar Gandharva & Kabir.  This film interweaves the oral folk traditions of Kabir in central India with the intensely personal narrative of the late classical singer Pandit Kumar Gandharva, keeping the spiritual ideas of Kabir as the central binding thread. Journeying between folk and classical, between rural and urban expressions of Kabir, the film finds moments of both continuity and rupture between these disparate worlds.

The second event was a musical conversation on nirgun songs.  There were 2 eminent persons for this event.  One was Vijay Sardeshmukh, a disciple of Kumar Gandharva. He is an accomplished harmonium-player who accompanied the maestros of different Gharanas, Vijay imbibed the nuances of music at an early age. The use of two perfectly tuned tanpuras enables him to produce the exact Shruti or note required by a particular Raga.  The second personality was Ashok Vajpeyi, a distinguished Hindi poet, critic, editor, and cultural administrator. He has been a senior civil servant in culture and the arts. He is the first VC of Mahatma Gandhi International Hindi University. He has won two prestigious national awards for poetry, namely the Sahitya Akademi Award and Dayavati Modi Kavi Shekhar Samman in 1994. His poems have been translated into many Indian and foreign languages. I enjoyed few initial nirgun songs but then slept during half of this event due to the classical touch of the songs.

Third event was a talk on “My personal & political Kabir” by Purushottam Aggrawal.  This guy is a graduate of JNU & consultant with UPSC.  He was really intense & critical in his talk.  Had given lewd answers to some of the questions posed to him after the talk.  A really plump guy with good humor. Also had a glimpse of Prahlad Tipanya is one of the most compelling folk voices of Kabir in India today who combines singing and exposition of Kabir in the Malwi folk style from Madhya Pradesh. He has toured the US, and in Feb 2008 was felicitated with the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award.

There was an exhibition too by Srishti students showcasing their design skills.  You can catch my photo blog on http://denim83.tumblr.com for the pictures of the displayed models.  Thats about it for the event, in short, the festival provided an opportunity for to experience the joy of Kabir in song, while engaging with the radically trans-formative power of his poetry. It generated moments of critical self-awareness and reflection on ideas of cultural identity and social divisions, death and impermanence, oral traditions and the nature of knowledge.

Envisioned by filmmaker Shabnam Virmani (see http://www.kabirproject.org/), the event is an outcome of her experiences consisting of a series of musical journeys in quest of the socio-political and spiritual legacy of Kabir in our contemporary worlds, as part of her Kabir project as artist-in-residence at Srishti. The Kabir Project has been supported by the Ford Foundation and resulted not only in the production of a series of films, music CDs and books, but also many relationships, workshops, events and social networks spun off by this 5-year journey.