Fireflies Ashram is located around 20 km’s outside the city limits of Bangalore on Kanakapura road. The place has been designed for various ecological and social initiatives. But probably is best known for its annual Fireflies music festival that it hosts under the majestic Pipal tree every year. This Saturday I attended the Fireflies festival for the first time. Though it had been taking place for last 4 years. I am told that every year the festival has a theme and this year the theme was Adivasis or ‘Tribals’. The format followed is similar to Vasantha Habba, i.e a dusk to dawn event that starts around 6:00 PM and goes on till 6:00 AM, just around the time when morning sun shines on.
Fireflies Dusk To Dawn Music Festival
If I have, to sum up, the festival in few words, it would be that it is not every day that you get to hear such diverse and deep music. There are musicians who create music, who have devoted themselves to music. Who is keeping a lot of traditional music alive? And others who are a lot of new age experimental music. It’s the music that can keep you wide awake through the night. And makes you resonate with nature that is spread wide around you in the space.
Repertoire
Look at the repertoire that we got to hear at this year’s festival that happened this Saturday. The beginning was done with Nadaswaram. You could see some magical fingers playing the Shehnai. There was Padmanabha’s Veena recital that left the audience asking for more. There was Puje Kunita the folk dance of Karnataka that got the audience dancing to the traditional folk with Dhol. And there was Australian Jazz completely enthralling the space. There was Portuguese guitar group that had interesting compositions on Adivasis and their development programs. There were fusion groups who left you in complete awe.
Kabir Songs – My favorite
My most favorite performance was by Shabnam Virmani and Dipta Bhog, who sang the songs of Kabir in traditional Malwa style. Shabnam was enchanting and was equally well supported by Dipta. She explained the verses of Kabir in simple English before she sang each piece. And then both of them sang with such ease. I was amazed at the way they were able to bring every emotion in their voice. The simplicity of their folk singing actually made a huge connect with the audience. Even those who did not understand the language. Somewhere saying that we are all simply human beings at the core. And somewhere along the line, we have complicated ourselves.
I am not sure if their songs are available on the market. My google search did not yield anything. But if anyone knows where to source it, I would love to have it.
Bauls from Oikyotaan
My next favorites were Bauls from Oikyotaan, with lead singers Kartik Das Baul and Bony Chakraborty. Bauls are supposed to be fakirs like Sufis. Hence the songs are about reaching out to that ultimate power. I particularly liked a song that was by Radha to Krishna, where she curses Krishna to be Radha in the next birth to understand what Radha went through for Krishna in his birth. All the performances were something you would keep listening to and not get tired. Then there were Qawwals from Nagpur, who performed the regular and popular Qawwalis. This is a tendency that I have seen in all the Qawwal’s who perform in Bangalore. Nevertheless, they were able to infuse energy in the huge crowd at 5:00 AM when people had been awake the whole night.
Music Festival
All in all, you would come back intoxicated from the festival. All your senses thank the organizers for putting the whole festival together. I am sure it must not be an easy task, especially in the beginning years of the festival. I want to point out a small irritant with an intent that organizers might want to look at avoiding it next year. There were small children selling cigarettes to the crowd, which can probably be avoided. Not to mention the fact that smokers around me were irritating enough. I had to keep reminding them that it is a public place and they are not supposed to smoke. Maybe a smoking / non-smoking area would help both the categories.
Nonetheless, congratulations to all those who organized performed and participated. I am already looking forward to the next festival.
Sounds fascinating! In a time when media headlines are awash with regionalism and separateness, this sounds like the perfect antidote.
When I was a child, a regular fixture in my life was the Tansen Samaroh. It is worth experiencing once at least (if not many times, although I do not know what it looks like now).
thanks for the post Anuradha… i wanted to attend this program and had to drop out the last minute… but thanks to your blog now i feel much content! just that i missed out on listening to some great music 🙁
maybe next year i’ll get to go…
regards,
Hi Anuradha…
It was a pleasure to meet you in Barcamp Bangalore. In hindsight it actually rocked isnt it? 🙂
Would love to see a blog post coming up on ICamp Bangalore. And yeah would love to see some of your pics too…
Soham
sohamdas at gmail dot com
Shefaly, It is sad to see that no media covered the event, no mention in the newspapers next day or anywhere.
Its my wish to attend Tansen Samaroh some day…need to keep track of when it happens.
Hi Anuradha,
I have worked with Shabnam earlier. We were part of the music group “Sunaad” which is into promoting Hindusthani classical music. She is not only superb in singing. She is extremely good in narrations and story telling !!! Let me check with her whether she has some recorded songs, specifically the ones she has sung in Fireflies
Ramesh,
If you can connect me to him, I would be really thankful. Yes, I agree with you she is very good at story telling. By any chance is she based out of Bangalore?
-Anu