Immerse in the power of oneness at Kabir Festival in Byculla's museum

Shruti Veena Vishwanath

Today, the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum will host its annual Kabir festival titled Avagha Rang Ek (Many Colours are One) led by singer Shruthi Veena Vishwanath, tabla player Shruteendra Katagade and sarangi player Yuji Nakagawa. Named after a composition by Soyrabai, a Dalit woman poet from Maharashtra, this immersive evening brings together poems and songs of nirguni, bhakti, vachana, baul and sufi poets, including Kabir, Soyrabai, Akka Mahadevi, Shah Hussein and Narayan Guru.

"Our curation is in Marathi, Kannada, Hindi, Bangla, and Gujarati, among other languages. The musicians are my oldest collaborators. We usually plan half the set to build an anchor and then let the flow take over with the energy of the audience," says Vishvanath, whose work strives to discover and bring forth voices that aren't known, especially those of women.

Shruteendra Katagade

"As an urban artiste, I have been travelling to many villages and towns across South Asia, and have met practitioners who have learnt these songs traditionally, and practically lived with them. I immerse myself in and borrow from these songs. This allows me to give it a perspective," shares the singer, who also leads an inclusive online community for song-learning called Music in the Machan.

Remarking on the fluid nature of the curation, Vishwanath says, "One cannot draw a border and say my song has to start here or end there. Where does Bulleh Shah come from? Kabir has travelled from India to Pakistan. It is the same with Buddhist thought - Bhutan to East Asia. We also have Buddhist text of Therīgāthā, the oldest anthology of women's literature in the world. Now it is recited mostly in Thailand. Where does one say it started or finished?"

Included in the repertoire, is a Kabir song: Haman hai ishk mastaana, haman ko hoshiyaaree kya? rahen aajaad ya jag se, haman duniya se yaaree kya? This translates to: I am bursting with love? Be free or free from the world, what is our friendship with this world?

Yuji Nakagawa performs on sarangi

The need of this hour, she adds, is to talk about shared humanity. "We are living in a time where we are focussed on our differences. The mystics urge us to look at our shared struggle and humanity. No human story can be divided by a boundary. As my teacher Padma Shri Prahlad Singh Tipaniya says, ‘Hum daayra banate hai.' Daayra is a stronger word than boundary. We need to come together and look at what we need as a world, as common people, and as a collective," she says.

Tasneem Zakaria Mehta, director of the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum, adds, "Unity in diversity is part of India's social fabric. Indian culture is rich in various forms of expression in art and culture. The museum as well as the Kabir Festival celebrates this principle."

On: Today, 5:30 pm (tea); 6 pm (performance)
At: Education Centre, Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum Plaza, Byculla East.