Jodhpur RIFF 2022 is back after Covid break: Here’s what to look forward to

Jodhpur RIFF, the world-famous folk music festival, is back after a two-year forced hiatus owing to the pandemic. This year, the festival will be held from 6-10 October at the city’s Mehrangarh Fort. A genre-independent festival, Jodhpur RIFF is committed to promoting traditional folk music and arts. The event is timed accordingly so that it coincides with Sharad Poornima — the brightest full moon of the year in North India. While Maharaja Gaj Singh II of Marwar-Jodhpur is the chief patron of Jodhpur RIFF, Mick Jagger, front man of the rock band The Rolling Stones, is the international patron of the festival. The Festival Director and Producer of Jodhpur RIFF is Divya Bhatia.

Jodhpur RIFF endeavours to preserve the traditional music of Rajasthan by training musicians, helping them collaborate with international artists, providing them with the exposure and the platform to help them thrive. “Jaipur Virasat Foundation was set up in 2002. They started a festival called the Jaipur Heritage International Festival. They were looking for someone to run it and someone who had known of my work with the Prithvi Theatre Festival recommended my name. That’s how I got involved with Jaipur and Rajasthan,” reveals Divya Bhatia who was closely associated with the Prithvi Theatre Festival for about a decade. Bhatia also played an important role in the early days of the Jaipur Literature Festival. He has also served as the Artistic Director of Aadyam and the Jaipur Virasat Foundation.

Bhatia spent his early years in Europe and Canada on student scholarships during which he performed as part of a jazz band for Welsh coalminers during their strike against the Margaret Thatcher government. He has picked coffee in Nicaragua and has also been a trainer in a canoe camp in northern Canada. On returning to India, Bhatia joined Naseeruddin Shah’s theatre group, Motley. A rather reluctant actor, Bhatia has also acted in films such as Talvar, Badlapur, Delhi Belly, and Ship of Theseus. Under Bhatia, Jodhpur RIFF has earned a reputation all around the globe for its spectacular concerts and events featuring performances by master musicians from local Rajasthan communities and incredible collaborations.

Since the onset of the pandemic, Bhatia and team at Jodhpur RIFF took the lead in supporting Rajasthani musicians with food, medicine and even financial aid during the pandemic. The Mehrangarh Museum Trust facilitated this. “We ran a relief programme where we were able to support folk musicians and their families and this could also include musicians who are not associated with Jodhpur RIFF. We ended supporting artists across 60 odd villages in Rajasthan with food, medical, and with financial aid. We started in June 2020 and it continued till about April 2021,” recounts Bhatia.

He further explains, “We have lived in a world where we used to plan each and everything well in advance to a point that we even announced the dates to the next edition of the festival a year in advance. One of the key things that we were conscious of was that there were no festivals happening for a very long period owing to the pandemic. And we kept on having these windows when we thought we would be able to make a comeback only to be followed by another round of lockdown. Now, this created a strange uncertainty in the field of live performing arts. So what this taught us was that if we living in the urban areas could face this kind of uncertainty and unpredictability then the folk artists are bound to be more severely affected by it.”

Along with providing aid to the musicians, Bhatia and team also raised money for projects in order to explore and experiment with new ideas. “One of those projects has culminated in a band called SAZ, which basically comprises three young Langa musicians, Sadiq, Asin, and Zakir. They decided to come together as band. Their songs have been recorded and they have also written new songs which we will be putting up soon. They are also doing live performances as SAZ in India as well as abroad. This is a sort of a pilot project and its success has given us confidence to keep exploring such new ideas,” reveals Bhatia.

Every year at the Jodhpur RIFF during the resplendent early morning musical sessions, eloquently termed as the RIFF Dawns, the spiritual connect between man and music seems to attain a new dimension. The soulful chants of mantras seamlessly blend with the enchanting hymns of the morning ragas performed by legendary musicians to create a magical symphony. It serves as a perfect overture to the enrapturing view of the skyline at the break of the dawn. Jaswant Thada, the cenotaph built in 1899 in memory of Maharaja Jaswant Singh II of Jodhpur, is the home to these entrancing sessions that take place out in the open on every morning during the festival. The RIFF Dawn sessions this year will include Shabad and Nirguni Bhajans, ‘Kabir Vani’ in Madhya Pradesh’s Malwi Folk style, ‘A Khasi Dawn’ with traditional music from Meghalaya, and music from Rajasthan’s Meghwal community.

While the duo of Sawan and Kachara Khan will be bringing Sufi poetry in Manganiyar musical traditions in an interactive session, Tel Aviv-born singer-songwriter Riff Cohen will enthrall the audiences with a unique blend of French Pop, Avant-Garde, traditional North African music and Classic Rock while singing in French, English and Hebrew. This year, Jodhpur RIFF is also presenting independent musicians for the first time as part of Indie Afternoon with Bawari Basanti and Harpreet Singh. Dan Coutts’ film Heading West on Scotland’s famous acid croft band Shooglenifty and featuring Rajasthani musicians, the fort and Jodhpur RIFF will also be screened as part of the festival. This will mark the film’s Asia premiere. As part of Living Legends, Padma Shri Lakha Khan and Padma Shri Anwar Khan Baiya grace the stage of Jodhpur RIFF this year. The festival will come to an end with a session by Prahlad Tipaniya as part of RIFF Dawns.

Over the last decade and a half, the Jodhpur RIFF has presented over 800 Rajasthani musicians including the likes of Kutle Khan, Chugge Khan, Nathulal Solanki and Bhanvari Devi. “Many of our musicians have gone on to perform at some of the world’s biggest platforms. The folk artists mostly come from the economically weak sections of society and often they don’t get the respect they deserve. But when these folk artists collaborate with international artists at the festival there is a great sense of mutual respect and admiration. It is something that every artist strives for. The festival was primarily created to celebrate roots music everywhere and help folk musicians find work in India but today they get invited to perform the world over,” rejoices Bhatia.

The author is an Indian critic and journalist who has been covering cinema, art and culture for over 10 years.