SWAR & GARBA YATRA - A Soulful Journey of Community Music

About this event

Community music and performance draw out the South Asian festive spirit. While regional traditions set the tone for specific festivals such as Navratri, Diwali, and Holi, these acquire deeper meanings and connect to the social fabric of everyday ordinary lives that go beyond the political and territorial identities of South Asians. In the British diasporic context, Garba as the folk dance of Gujarat remains the critical site for festive celebration as well as a portal for social cohesion uniting the dispersed diaspora as those of Ugandan Asians. Many who experienced the trauma of the exodus found a cultural refuge in Garba that is symbolic of the journey of time -- the cycle of time revolving from birth to life to death and rebirth. Hence Garba's social appeal is rooted in weddings, feasts, and community events that celebrate 'garbha' the womb as the source of fertility, women's empowerment and more universally the vitality of cyclic life and its infinite possibilities against all odds. Garba is also the backbone of hope and the strength of communities who have survived the many journeys of migration.

This post-pandemic festival brings together such energies arising from both folk and classical and semi-classical traditions of Gujarat. The place is known for Gurjari, Todi, Saurath, Lalit and many genres that require fuller exposition. For the afternoon, we turn to the refreshing youthful renditions of both classical and blissful sugam Sangeet, Ghazals in Gujrati, represented by the versatile talent of Nirmal Joshi -- a disciple of Shri Chandravadan Engineer. Through his passion for Indian classical and semi-classical music, he will sample Gujarati music commemorating great works of stalwarts like Narsinh Mehta, Avinash Vyas and many others. He is accompanied on the Tabla by Puish Kumar Engineer – a senior disciple of Pandit Sanju Sahai and Shri Chandravadan Engineer.

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Organiser: by Sanjukta Ghosh (SOAS South Asia Institute) with the support of SACeP, National Heritage Lottery Fund and Subrang Arts.

SOAS South Asia Institute hosts the hybrid summer festival SOAS South Asian Heritage Month Festival on campus taking place on 15-16 July 2022.

The Festival is co-directed by Dr Sanjukta Ghosh (SSAI) and Farzana Qureshi (SOAS Library).

The festival is in partnership with South Asian Heritage Month, the well-known month-long celebration in the United Kingdom (similar in spirit to Black History Month) to celebrate the heritage of people with roots in the South Asian countries of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives.

The SOAS SAHM is in collaboration with Jasvir Singh OBE and Dr Binita Kane along with the wider team members.

Contact email: ssai@soas.ac.uk