Sumitra, Daya Ram, and the dream of Dharohar

One of the major projects of the JVF recently has been the band Dharohar, a group composed of musicians from all over Rajasthan and one from the UK, Jason Singh. The band's members span all India's socio-economic strata; The band combines musical themes and traditions from across Rajasthan, but most notably it also seeks to harmonize and find shared ground between musicians who, before Dharohar, were separated by caste and geographic region. With funds from the British Council and the Annenberg foundation, Dharohar has toured all over India and hopes to break into the European festival circuit.

Last week I took a trip with John about three hours west of Jaipur to visit Sumitra and Daya Ram, two of the band's ten members. John pays regular visits to musicians in Rajasthan to find out more about their townships and the circumstances which surround (and consequently affect) their art. John isn't particularly involved with Dharohar, but he came along to interview Sumitra and Daya Ram for a film currently being made by documentary filmmaker Elizabeth McKay.

Sumitra's town, Jaitaran, was our first visit.



(to see more photos from the trip, visit the flickr set)

Panin

We arrived in Panin at around 11:30, and there was already a huge crowd in front of Jumma's house. Elizabeth and Elio, two filmmakers who are making a film about Dharohar's members, had stayed the night and the entire village was awake with feverish attention.

Jumma exudes a happy reserve which is immediately noticeable. High and round cheeks enforce this impression; his posture and comport combine to affect a kind of happy unselfconsciousness in those who surround him:


Jumma (middle) with John (right)

We went to the town mosque, which was surrounded by a chalky square. Behind the mosque, the town youth was playing cricket. I couldn't help but join in. They played with a bat which was little more than a two by four with a whittled-down handle.


Som joined in. He and I are very competitive and we immediately saw it as a chance to prove our athletic prowess.



The crowd seemed to follow people from our party around in accordance with some kind of unwritten rule which determined the relative interest of a person and the fraction of the party they composed. When Som, Jason and I left the shade of the mango tree to bowl, we were followed by almost the entire crowd. When Jason left, a small part of the crowd followed him back to the tree.


After John talked with some prominent village members, we went to Jumma's house.

The Village of Pinan & Siliserh Lake

Yesterday I went to the village of Pinan, near Alwar with John, Jason, Georgie, Som, and Joe. We were visiting Jumma, a member of the band Dharohar who is now very dear friends with Jason.

Some background: Jason is a beat-boxer from the UK working with the Jaipur Virasat Foundation to raise local and international awareness of traditional Rajasthani musicians. (I am currently working for JVF to redesign their website). For the past few years Jason and another UK artist, Bex Mather, have been traveling back and forth from the UK to Jaipur to perform with Dharohar at festivals across India. They are planning on a summer tour of Europe.

Djouma lives in the village of Pinan, near Alwar. Since most of this blog's readership is from the United States or the UK, a map might be useful:

On the way, we stopped at a Baoli (the name of which now escapes me, as do the names of so many people and places I encounter here). Baoli are commonly called 'step-wells'. They are highly-wrought pits with ascending and descending sets of stairs. Baoli were fashioned to trap the inundation of water that came with the monsoon season, and to save it for drinking and irrigation in the dry months. It's quite an extraordinary experience seeing one; imagine a mayan step-pyramid inverted into the earth: