New Delhi: The national capital will get to savour a new flavour of Sufi musical experience when a renowned Kerala-based vocalist will present a concert featuring a trail of soulful songs drawn from various traditions, thus interpreting the Sufi journey in a refreshingly unique way.
Shahabaz Aman hailing from Malappuram will present the ‘Malayalam Sufi Route’—as the 46-year-old musician calls his quest—in a 90-minute recital at India Habitat Centre on Wednesday.
Cultural think-tank LILA Foundation for Translocal Initiatives, in association with Serendipity Arts, is organising the event, in its quest to nurture a philosophical attitude towards living, and to bring reflection to the heart of the society at large.
Self-taught Shahabaz will be accompanied on the drums and the guitar besides typically the table and the harmonium at the Stein Auditorium programme.
“We want both the artiste and the audience to break out of their limits about being the performer and listener respectively,” pointed out Rizio Yohannan Raj of the 2012-founded LILA (Luminous Idea of Life Appreciation).
“Let’s discover and reveal how an artist without fluency in Hindi, Urdu or English will fare at a self-conducted cultural mission in a place like Delhi,” she said.
LILA has groomed a closely-knit community of creative and critical thinkers in the past two years through regular public interfaces featuring exponents from a range of subjects.
One of their platforms, Kaapi LILA (where the first Malayalam word means coffee), is a regular monthly forum for “meaningful conversations on art thinking and practice in these times,” Yohannan said.
Shahabaz was this Sunday’s Kaapi LILA guest for a select audience at a Chattarpur venue, she added.
Shahabaz Aman will lead his listeners down memory lane to meet his things, pictures and people: the 1980s cassettes and players from Sony and Thompson; Anmol Ghadi and Andaaz; Talat, Manna Dey, Shamshad Beegum; the harmonium, tabla and shahi baaja; Nusrat, Rumi, Rabia, Darwish and Malabar’s own Iccha Mastan.
Shahabaz’s albums show the same philosophical strain that illumines his book, curiously titled, Om Allah!
His own practice of Sufi music does not stay within the frame of Islamic conventions, but becomes an intense, rather rebellious effort, seeking beauty across boundaries.
His journey to Delhi presents a remarkable Malayalam Sufi Route, where dream at once mixes with the here-and-now, and the then-and-there.
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