Jodhpur RIFF, Rajasthan's annual folk music festival, connects cultures

Jodhpur RIFF has returned to its permanent venue, Mehrangarh fort, after a three-year interlude imposed by Covid-19.

'Well, I am a young lad' is a centuries-old wistful traditional Welsh song about a young man who boasts of his immense wealth, but still can't find love. Unlike its protagonist, the song found acceptance and an ideal nesting place in the hills of Meghalaya in the middle of the 19th century. The song made the nearly 5,000-mile journey from Wales to India, thanks to missionaries more than musicians.

The song, whose original Welsh title reads 'Wel bachgen ifanc ydwyf', mesmerised a large gathering of music fans this weekend at the 13th edition of the Jodhpur RIFF (October 6-10) - Rajasthan's famous annual roots music festival - both its catchy tune and curious history grabbing their attention.

Jodhpur RIFF has returned to its permanent Mehrangarh fort venue after a three-year interlude imposed by Covid-19. The festival has assembled a vast array of folk music traditions from across the world to connect cultures paralysed by the pandemic.

Rajasthani folk musician Lakha Khan

Musicians from Meghalaya and Wales came together on the second day of the festival to perform songs composed by them during a cross-continental collaboration that began five years ago. "Welsh and Khasi musicians in Meghalaya are bringing an old traditional Welsh song altered by Christian missionaries from Wales into its original form," said Gareth Bonello, a Cardiff-based musician, before launching into 'Well, I am a young lad'.

Initially, the 21-year-old hero in the song talks up his fortune (sheep, cow and four ricks of peat). He then proceeds to lament his inability to find a partner. 'I am like the fisherman walking beside the lake/I see plenty of fish but can't catch a single one,' he sings in the song, which is now part of a new album, The Weaving of Voices, a collaboration between Bonello and Khasi musicians Mebanlamphang Lyngdoh, Amabel Susngi, Risingbor Kurkalang and Banshailnag Mukhim.

Fragile Music

The arrival of the song from Wales to the Khasi hills and its restoration to its original form by Bonello and the Meghalaya musicians echoes a fairy-tale-like journey. The traditional song was borrowed by Welsh Christians to become a hymn. When Welsh missionaries came to Meghalaya, beginning with the arrival of missionary Thomas Jones in 1841, they also brought the new hymn to the Northeast hills. The Christian missionaries went on to influence the society in the North-east hills for over a century.

Gareth Bonello (centre) with Meghalaya's Khasi musicians and Rajasthan's Langa musicians.

"The Welsh missionaries used music as a way of evangelising," says Bonello, whose doctoral research was about the cultural connections between Welsh and Khasi musicians. The missionaries swapped several old Welsh folk songs for hymns that were played in the church. "'Well, I am a young lad', which became the hymn 'Bryniau Cassia', exists in the Khasi hymn book to this day," explains Bonello.

Amabel Susngi, a young Khasi musician from the Jaintia hills of Meghalaya, was excited to be part of the new Khasi-Welsh musical performance at Jodhpur RIFF. "The roots music is everything," beams Susngi, whose parents were part of the church choir in their village. The 28-year-old singer, who recently swapped rock music for traditional Khasi music, is busy documenting old musical compositions of her pnar tribal community as part of her Ph.D work at the Martin Luther Christian University in Shillong, Meghalaya.

Bonello's collaboration with traditional Indian musicians also extends to the Langa community of folk musicians in Rajasthan, aided by Jodhpur RIFF's festival director Divya Bhatia. "I met Gareth Bonello at the World Music Expo (Womex) in Finland in 2019," says Bhatia, who was a member of the Womex jury that year. "We soon began talking about his work with Khasi musicians and I realised there was an interesting possibility of collaboration with folk musicians in Rajasthan," he adds.

Lockdown Fusion

After Bhatia returned from Finland, he set in motion the collaboration between Bonello and Asin Khan Langa, a young musician from Barmer district of Rajasthan. Then the pandemic hit the world. "Gareth Bonello and I started exchanging videos online during the lockdown," says Asin Khan Langa. Khan emailed videos of him playing the sarangi and Bonello returned videos of his cello sessions.

After two years of online exchanges, Khan and Bonello met for the first time on the opening day of Jodhpur RIFF earlier this week. "We had barely enough time for rehearsal," says Khan about their fusion music, which the two performed together at the festival on October 7. "Music has no language," explains Khan about working together without sharing a common language.

Held for the first time in 2007, Jodhpur RIFF this year has over 250 musicians from across the world and an attendance of fans at pre-pandemic numbers. "Folk music is a big cultural exploration of each other's stories and distinct styles," says Salil Lal Ahamed, a music enthusiast from Kochi, Kerala, who first came to the festival seven years ago. "The festival is about understanding the diversity in our world."

Among the prominent names in Rajasthani folk music performing at the festival this year are Lakha Khan, a 74-year-old master of the sindhi sarangi, and vocalist Anwar Khan Baiya, both recipients of the Padma Shri award this year. Also performing this year are musicians from Maharashtra, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana. Eight other countries - Mexico, Wales, Ireland, Netherlands, Mauritius, Israel, Brazil and Turkey - are represented in the 13th edition.

As tourists queued up for zipline sessions at the Mehrangarh fort along with rows of fans of folk music, the influence of international festivals like Jodhpur RIFF in preserving traditional forms even while promoting fusion experiments between different cultures was evident on the stage and outside. For example, known as the rock capital of the country, Shillong is today witnessing new interest in traditional music.

"Big bands like Soulmate, a blues band in Shillong, and Clansmen, another Shillong-based band, have started incorporating traditional music in their repertoire," says Khasi musician Mebanlamphang Lyngdoh, who teaches music at the Martin Luther Christian University, Shillong.