Sufi singer Indira Naik brought a touch of Sufiyana to Natarani amphitheatre on Friday, with a 90-minute concert that had Ahmedabad’s ever-enthusiastic audience swaying and clapping to her beats. Starting with Amir Khusrau classic Man Kunto Maula, she sang some of the most famous songs in the genre, including Mast Kalandar and Khwaja Mere Khwaja, which have been rendered even more popular by Bollywood.
Sufi music has gone Pop with a vengeance, with the emergence of numerous bands and YouTube videos promoted on platforms like Coke Studio. A Google search on Sufi bands today actually throws up event management sites which list the best bands on hire for weddings. And then there’s Bollywood, which seems to have appropriated every other number, including Man Kunto Maula, which was used in the 2014 film Gunday.
“The poetry is the essence of Sufi music,” says Indira. “The words have a lot of romance. You can put it in a pub or an Imambara and the meaning changes according to the context and place.”
At Natarani, Indira chose to sing crowd-pleasing songs by well-known Sufi poets, but she did include a few of her own compositions like Man Lago Mero Yaar Fakiri Main. “Composing a song requires a lot of effort, which is why the new Sufi singers tend to stick to old numbers. The most authentic songs are based on the poetry of Rumi and Bulleh Shah, but they are not Pop.”
One of the great things about Sufi music is that it lends itself to fusion and this was evident at the Natarani concert, where Indira was accompanied by an electric guitar, tabla and keyboard. The rock band set-up inspired the organisers to use the fog machine, which caused a temporary glitch in the performance when the singer choked on the smoke. But that problem was quickly solved and the concert went on to conclude with Indira’s rendition of the ghazal Humri Atariya Pe Aao.
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