Jadavpur, Kolkata. 11 January 2015. Bhungar Khan and party.

Listen to a song from this session
Artist:
Bhungar Khan and party
Composer:
Unknown
Form:

Song region:
Rajasthan







Bhungur Khan and his team of Manganiyar singers from Barmer in Rajasthan had been invited to our 10th Baul Fakir Utsav in Jadavpur Shaktigarh in January 2015. For some years we had been inviting a team of bhakti/sufi singers from outside Bengal, to come and sing songs which would have some overlap with the songs of our bauls and fakirs in Bengal. Hence Prahlad Singh Tipaniya (http://www.kabirproject.org/profile/prahlad%20tipanya) came once with mainly his songs of Kabir; then there was ere the qawwals of Rampur, Mohammad Ahmed Warsi (https://soundcloud.com/irfan-zuberi/ustad-mohammed-ahmed-warsi-nasiri-qawwal). So, the Manganiyars came with Kabir, Mira and also songs from further West, such as Bulleh Shah.
They performed at the main festival on 10 January and then the next morning we met in the festival grounds and I suggested they could come to our house, to which they agreed and came along. So, in effect this became a recording session of The Travelling Archive. Sukanta recorded in our living room. These wonderful musicians sang something like five songs, quite getting into the mood of singing. Here they are singing a song of rain, love and longing, such as our bichchhed songs are.
Bhungar Khan is playing the khartal or castanet, Mehru Khan plays the harmonium and sings; Pappa Khan plays the dholak. Din Muhammad usually plays the kamayrcha, but here he had not brought his instrument, so he sat and listened.

Written in 2016

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From left to right: Din Muhammad, Pappa Khan, Bhungar Khan and Mehru Khan

 

Related links
https://saxonianfolkways.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/music-masters-from-the-desert/
https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Bards_Ballads_and_Boundaries.html?id=b30HAQAAMAAJ