How birdsong, wind and rain made Jodhpur RIFF 2025 a roots music festival to remember

Once the stage crew had uprighted the mics and taken away the offending plastic, the musicians from Poland struck up foot-tapping number after foot-tapping number. The tinkling Santoor-like sound of Szemraj’s hammered dulcimer combined with Betley’s taut percussion drums and Cicha’s soaring vocals to songs gathered from minority communities in Poland.

Their subjects: a Lithuanian folk song about mothers-in-law; an East-Polish cheeky love song where a lover serenades their partner at the riverside; a Crimean song about the joy of performing; and a Polish poet dreaming of peace between nations after World War II.

Later, much after their concert and a simple dinner of dal-roti-sabzi and chai in small “cutting” glasses, the trio told Moneycontrol how Cicha had studied Polish literature and developed a keen interest in rural and traditional poetry from then on; how that had led her to research and gather songs from sound libraries and migrant communities; how she had received a grant to mine archives — online and offline — and how members of the Crimean minority had once opened up their home archives for her. How Szemraj understood the comparison between his dulcimer and the Santoor, and how he had heard Pt Shivkumar Sharma play on tapes that his grandmother got back from her travels through India. How Betley experiments with all kinds of percussive instruments — frame drums (the Indian dufli is a type of frame drum), handpan E La Sirena, tongue slit drums, wind gongs and even the ektara, which she bought on a trip to India — and prefers drums with synthetic skins stretched over them because they are not as affected by changes in humidity as animal skins.

Cicha and company were among a long list of musicians playing at Jodhpur RIFF on Day 3, after heavy rain on October 3 had forced the organizers to cancel that day’s evening programme. Rajasthan’s Lakha Khan Manganiyar, SAZ and Ghewar Khan had already taken the stage before Cicha on October 4. And Portugal’s Helder Moutinho and Ricardo Parreira performing Fado Soul and Chennai-based Jatayu with their Carnatic music inspired jazz rock were to follow.

Throughout Jodhpur RIFF 2025, from October 2-6, the elements — rain, sunshine, wind, birdsong; starry / cloudy / moonlit nights — were in play in the background. Naturally. Fittingly. Importantly. Like it would have been a different concert, and a different experience without these inputs from nature. Like the same concert anywhere else, or at any other time would have been different. Fixing it in its specificities and ephemerality. Like a site-specific art installation. Something that cannot be repeated exactly, in its entirety.

Regular attendees of the festival remarked how it hadn't poured like this during the festival ever before. How, ordinarily, October would have been a warm month with nary a breeze during the day, and the rare light desert chill late at night. The weather had already marked 2025 Jodhpur RIFF as different.

Dawn concerts at Jaswant Thada begin at 5.30am, just before the sun comes up.

Surround, sound

To be sure, Jodhpur RIFF, now in its 18th year, is not the first and certainly not the only Indian outdoor multi-day music festival. The Hornbill and Ziro festivals in the North-East; NH7 Weekender across Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Shillong; and Sunburn Festival Goa are just some contemporary examples of outdoor music fests across India in different genres. Also in Goa, the Serendipity Arts Festival has a large music component (Shubha Mudgal is among the curators of the music segments for 2025). But each place, each festival and each iteration has its specificities and peculiarities — its own flavour and fandom.

Festival patron HH Gaj Singh II of Marwar-Jodhpur recalled two such unplanned instances that have stayed with him from previous festivals over email. The first was when flautist Hariprasad Chaurasia — while playing with algoza artist Meherdin Khan Langa in the 2007 festival — "suddenly stopped when the Sharad Purnima moon appeared over the wall and lapsed into prayer; a memorable spiritual moment." (Each year, Jodhpur RIFF is timed to coincide with the brightest moon of the year on Sharad Purnima.) "Another was when Kathak and Flamenco merged into one. These are not the only moments when our musicians and performers have seamlessly blended with international artists with little or no rehearsals, but these moments were magical. The language of music and dance is universal," HH Gaj Singh II said in an email interaction.

HH Gaj Singh II of Marwar-Jodhpur. (Image credit: Neil Greentree/Mehrangarh)

Another point of difference is that while NH7 Weekender, Ziro, Lollapalooza India, Magnetic Fields (also held in Rajasthan) and Echoes of Earth in Bengaluru are multi-genre music festivals, and Sunburn Goa began as an electronic dance music festival, Jodhpur RIFF has a focus on roots music. 

Festival director Divya Bhatia explained: "Roots music is a concept, and is not a genre/ style of music. It emerged across cultures at a time when ‘world music’ began to be spoken of as a genre. It’s simply a broad umbrella to include music derived from, or heavily influenced by traditions going back generations, deeply connected to and/ or reflecting the lifestyles of entire communities. This concept is particularly of value in the Indian context as it gives credence to all our regional, folk, indigenous, tribal and festive music and also includes forms such as Rabindra Sangeet and much of Hindustani and Carnatic music... The programme at Jodhpur RIFF reflects music across regions, cultures and countries. And what brings them all together is a conscious inclusion of music styles such as folk, Celtic, jazz, sega, maloya, indigenous, shashmaqam, Bhutanese… roots music traditions from across the world: ‘musique du monde’ as the French would say it."

HH Gaj Singh II added: "I have grown up hearing Rajasthani folk artists, who represent the cultural soul of Rajasthan. So it gives me great satisfaction to see these legends of Rajasthan on global stages now. Jodhpur RIFF and the Mehrangarh Museum Trust have worked tirelessly over many years to bring the best roots musicians around the world to Jodhpur, have them collaborate with our homegrown wonders and provide Rajasthani folk artists the support and exposure they require to present their music to world audiences."

This iteration of Jodhpur RIFF featured collaborations of SAZ — brothers Sadiq, Asin and Zakir Khan — with Kathak dancer Tarini Tripathi, Saxontoast's Rhys Sebastian and Merlyn D'Souza (on keyboard), and between Killabeatmaker and Rajasthani folk artists.

If there was something missing from the festival programme this year, it was folk and roots music from other parts of the country. As it happened, one such group got a nod in a session where Santiniketan-trained Sonam Dorji confessed to being impressed by Baul singers and enjoying Rabindra Sangeet during a lecture-demonstration followed by a Q&A session.

From midnight soiree to birdsong in dawn concerts

Midnight of October 4/5, a different outdoor stage — Salimkot, a short walk from the Zenana Courtyard: The air was crisp now, after a spot of drizzling. The wind and light drizzle had cleared the sky of pollution and clouds momentarily, and the stars shone down brilliantly. Against the backdrop of the massive Mehrangarh Fort, three more performances would go on till about 3 am (among them was a jugalbandi between Medellin, Colombia, based Killabeatmaker and Rajasthani percussionists; see their practice video below) — wrapping up just a couple hours before the dawn concerts.

Two hours later, around 5.15 am, a line snaked out from the box office at Jaswant Thada. It was still dark out, and the air was the tiniest bit nippy. (Dawn concerts at Jodhpur RIFF used to be free; the organizers say they started charging a fee — now Rs 300 — when the crowds became too large to accommodate.)

Inside, on an open terrace-like space, the stage was set for play as the sun rose over Jodhpur. Musician Layla Tazhibayeva from central Asia sat on a small, raised platform in the dark. You could see her silhouette, fingers tuning her freshly repaired electric Kobyz, or Kazakh violin — a lip of leather holding the two horsehairs of the string instrument in place tore during commute, and Tazhibeyava was able to get it fixed from a local cobbler in Jodhpur! At 5.30 am, Tazhibayeva struck the first chords. The Kobyz sounds like the classical violin but deeper, more resonant. Once used by spiritual medics, its sound has a certain earthy, meditative quality.

(Throughout the roots music festival, there were many old instruments that contemporary Indian audiences would have had little chance of encountering. There was Tazhibeyava's performance on the Kobyz, of course. But there were also the dulcimer, several types of drums including Djembe drums from Africa, Alegre from Latin America, and Irish frame drums, Portuguese Fado guitar, and the Bhutanese drangyen lute. Indeed, Tazhibeyava's dawn concert was followed also by Finnish musician Emilia Lajunen on the keyed fiddle and five-string violin. One of at least two music PhDs presenting in Jodhpur RIFF this year, Lajunen has been researching women musicians in the sound archives of northern Europe. Coming back to the sheer range on instruments in play at this edition of Jodhpur RIFF, from India, there were the Kamaicha, Ravanhatta, Khartal, dhol, dholak, small nagada, bhapang, morchang and of course the Sindhi Sarangi which Lakha Khan Manganiyar and now the SAZ brothers have taken from India to the world.)

As Tazhibayeva played the transportive Kobyz, the microphone also picked up the whooshing of the wind. What might have been an annoyance for an amateur broadcaster and an absolute no-no in a studio recording, became part of the performance. As dawn broke behind the stage, birds joined in the song. By the time the next set of performers — headlined by Gulzoda Khudoynazarova, also from central Asia — took the stage, the birds were more active, like an additional — unpredictable — orchestra in the back. Eagles flew overhead, as smaller birds tweeted and tittered periodically all around. Sometimes the microphones gathered up the sounds, and gave the sense that they were all coming from the direction of the speakers — which in turn were arranged in corners around the venue.

Birdsong had come into play in the previous day's dawn concert, too, when Kheng Sonam Dorji — a known Bhutanese musician with a PhD in music from MS University Baroda and executive director of the Music of Bhutan Research Centre — had led his troupe as they performed the yak song, a song paying tribute to Yangchenma (as goddess Saraswati is called in Bhutan) and the medicinal Buddha chant that regained popularity in Bhutan during the COVID pandemic when people believed that the sound helped the nation keep its COVID death toll low. "Music is not just for (celebration and) dance. It can be a form of devotion, for attaining Nirvana. That's why we have chanting in Buddhism... (songs to) local deities," he explained on the sidelines of his lecture demonstration later that same day.

En route: Jodhpur

If the surroundings affected how audiences experienced the music at Jodhpur RIFF 2025, there was also a segment where an audio-led experience offered an alternative perspective on the city of Jodhpur and the act of looking itself. Called En route: Jodhpur, the experience was first designed in 2009, when it was mapped to a section of Melbourne. It has since travelled to festivals in Adelaide, Edinburgh, Chicago, London, and now Jodhpur, where artists mapped the route and immersed themselves in local sounds and music during a residency. The audio-walk is the end result of this residency.

Those who signed up for En route, had to undertake the walk alone. Starting from the fort, the walk guided them through parts of the city. This was not a sightseeing tour, though. All through the walk, the audio guide wove spoken words with local music to capture some of vibe of the city. There was a zoom in and zoom out quality to the narrative — a specificity that fixed the walk in those very lanes of Jodhpur and a generality that opened the walk up to introspections about life and one's approaches to it. A member of the team that designed the experience said "it's like a wrapping of place with sound... in order to hold your concentration".

For anyone who still needed confirmation of how music changes the way we move through a city, engage with it, see it, feel comfortable to stay with it in the present moment, here was a concentrated dose.