Musafir is a band from Rajasthan (and France!) who just performed with A.R. Rahman in Hollywood, California last week. This week (Wednesday), they’re coming to the prestigious Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, to headline a show with local DJs Darshana and Chetana Borah in a supporting role.

According to the product review at Amazon, Musafir originally formed with the idea of reconnecting European Gypsy (Roma) music with the South Asian folk music it derived from hundreds of years ago. (There is very strong linguistic evidence that the primary language spoken by the Roma, Romany, has specifically Indic roots. According to Wikipedia, Punjabi is the strongest influence.)

But in recent years, Musafir appears to have moved away from the “Gypsy” theme, and now they seem to perform a potpourri of traditional Rajasthani folk styles (with a little filmi music thrown in for good measure). From what I’ve heard it isn’t clear that Musafir is necessarily “authentic,” but whatever they are, they have been doing a good job in recent years entertaining music festival crowds in the U.S. and Canada, judging from notices here, here, and here (that last link has a couple of MP3s available).

Unfortunately, none of Musafir’s music appears to be available via ITunes, though you can listen to songs for free at Rhapsody, as well as here and here. (The song available at the Kimmel Center website actually comes from the unrelated Hindi film Musafir; a bizarre mistake.)A little more on the musical interests of the band Musafir:

Langa music is learned orally in a master-apprentice relationship. The apprentice begins by accompanying the master and eventually learns a large corpus of songs. The vocal repertoire includes women’s songs of the life cycle and the seasons (which men sing too), songs in praise of their patrons, devotional songs composed by nineteenth century Sufi poets, and film songs. Themes such as love and heroism predominate, and water and cattle, the source of life in the desert, appear frequently in the lyrics. Langas are known for their improvisations and their instrumental and vocal ornamentation. Men and women often perform together.

Manghaniyars, like Langas, are sedentary Muslims whose home extends over the border into Pakistan, but their patrons are mostly Hindu Rajputs (a high caste) and Hindu Charans (a caste of poets, bards, and historians). In Rajasthan, Hindus and Muslims often worship in the same temples and share spiritual themes. The Manghaniyar repertoire is vast, including songs celebrating secular and sacred love and devotional songs to the Hindu deity Krishna. The Saperas (from the word Sap, snake) are a sub-group of the migrant community of Kalbeliyas, who travel with mules and dogs. They have their own music but do perform professionally with Langas. Their dances, often performed by women, are featured in Musafir. They specialize in curing snake bites and in snake charming.

Langas play the sarangi, a vertically held bowed stringed instrument. Carved out of a solid block of teak wood, it consists of a resonator covered with a goat skin, a hollow finger board, and a peg holder. There are usually three melody strings and a drone string, plus sympathetic strings, but the number of strings and size of the instrument varies. The satara and alogoza are double flutes with two pipes, one for drone and one for melody. The performer uses circular breathing, producing an unbroken airflow. Langas and Manganhars also play surnai (double-reed pipe), murali (double clarinet with a wind chamber), manjira (small cymbals), and gunguru ( bells, usually tied to the dancer’s feet). (link)

I liked it better without the snake-charming, but much of the other material here, on Langas and Manghaniyars, was new to me.

I know there are at least some Sepia Mutiny readers in the Philadelphia area. If any of you are going to the concert and would like to meet up for coffee before the show in the vicinity of the Kimmel Center, do write in.