Folks singer Prahlad Singh Tipanya rendered Kabir bhajans on the Auroville Language Lab throughout a current tour of the town.
| Picture Credit score: Particular Association
Verse, when reworked to the type of a hymn, positive factors appreciable energy to maneuver the thoughts and contact the soul, says Prahlad Singh Tipanya, folks singer, who’s considered among the many foremost voices of 15th century mystic poet Kabir.
Tipanya, who was within the metropolis lately to carry out a sequence of bhajan classes/satsangs at totally different settings, is a legatee of a six centuries-old custom of the Malwa folks singers of rendering Kabir’s couplets in “bhajan mandlis”.
A retired schoolteacher hailing from the village of Luniyakhedi, he’s today extra of an itinerant artist whose satsang journeys to popularise the Kabir repertoire have struck a chord in audiences throughout India, and overseas, spanning variations of age, language, gender and religion.
“The Kabir bani with its centuries-old origins transcends the bounds of time and the theological…. at its core the message is each unifying and common,” Tipanya stated throughout an interplay after a satsang on the Aurodhan Artwork Gallery.
Throughout his go to to the town, the artist, accompanied by his grandson Himanshu Tipanya on the dholak, rendered Kabir dohas (couplets) in a usually rustic song-and-story-telling type, including interpretations, and modern-day analogies relatable to the audiences.
Folks singer Prahlad Singh Tipanya rendered Kabir bhajans on the Auroville Language Lab throughout a current tour of the town.
| Picture Credit score:
Particular Association
The tour included classes at Aurodhan, Kariappa Home and the Auroville Language Laboratory and a go to to the pilgrim hub of Tiruvannamalai close to right here.
Tipanya, who’s the recipient of the Padma Shri (2011) and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (2007), has advanced a novel means of conveying the essence of Kabir’s “dohas” or couplets that mix deep non secular significance resonant with Sufi thought, with stringent social commentary. (Exemplifying this facet is a bhajan like, say, “Nirbhay Nirgun Gun Re”–that received amplified within the voice of Hindustani vocalist Pandit Kumar Gandharva–the place the descriptors of the exterior really signify an internal journey to fact and realisation.)
Kabir’s verse bears a fact far past what the phrases convey in a literal sense and Tipanya explains at size the higher-order import of the textual. The sant’s conceptualisation of Ram and Rahim as belonging to your complete humanity, the advantage of guru-bhakti, the fallacy of fabric pursuit or the exhortation to look inward to hunt the true fact are recurring themes in these classes.
Tipanya is satisfied that as societies turn into more and more fissured alongside traces of caste and creed, Kabir’s preachings flip increasingly related. He additionally feels that the couplets might be interpreted to function a self-help instrument, a life code or a navigation information by way of a cloth world for everybody to emerge as higher people.
“The fervid enchantment for complete devotion, of selfless give up, that defines Kabir’s poetry shines a lightweight on the trail to evolve into a greater humanity”, he stated. Nevertheless, a very powerful first step to self-actualisation, as he emphasises, is to grasp the essence of the godliness that resides inside everybody.
As Mita Radhakrishnan of Auroville Language Laboratory, who hosted the session famous, there isn’t a “present” or “live performance” facet to those encounters with Kabir; they’re immersive experiences of concord and togetherness within the presence of “sat,” the reality. “One even doesn’t actually must know Hindi to understand (it) and be moved by the music and the message”.