Into its ninth year, the IHC Lok Sangeet Sammelan, the annual folk music festival of the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, continues its efforts to promote and showcase our rich heritage of folk music. This year’s edition kick-started on 12 August with a rich musical programme at the Stein Auditorium, India Habitat Centre.
This year, the iconic and multi-faceted Shubha Mudgal curated the two-day festival. A formidable repository of knowledge in her field; Shubha Mudgal chose the occasion to invite mainstream attention on rare music anthologies and recordings to encourage the use of archival resources to widen the scope of performance repertoire available for music students and music lovers.
The performance saw seesenior disciples of Shubha Mudgal performing compositions from Pt. Radhavallabh Chaturvedi’s compilation of songs, Oonchi Atariya Rang Bhari, who dedicated his life to the preservation and promotion of the rich folk music traditions of Uttar Pradesh. And the evening performance on the second day saw vocalist Indrani Mukherjee bring in her unique andaaz seasonal song forms like chaiti, kajri, hori etc, sourced from 78 RPM recordings from the collection of Dr. Suresh Chandvankar. She was accompanied by Vinay Mishra on harmonium, Vinod Lele on tabla, and Bharat Bhushan Goswami on sarangi.
Shubha Mudgal also recognised the potential of using technology to the artist’s advantage.She along with husband Aneesh Pradhan has set up a unique and path breaking forum that works for artists. Their record label Underscore Records and website has created an interactive and supportive space that promotes fresh talent, works for artist’s rights, helps newcomers in understanding contracts and standardising agreements, as well as does advocacy for anti-piracy.
Vidyun M. Singh, Director Programmes IHC, noted that Shubha Mudgal’s relentless pursuit, sometimes, of obscure and little known trails yield the most satisfying results, and hoped that this edition of IHC Lok Sangeet will be a path breaking effort towards developing a holistic archival ecosystem in the field of music.