A people singer’s journey to advertise the unifying ethos of mystic-poet Kabir  

Folks singer Prahlad Singh Tipanya rendered Kabir bhajans on the Auroville Language Lab throughout a latest tour of town.
| Photograph Credit score: Particular Association

Verse, when remodeled to the type of a hymn, positive factors appreciable energy to maneuver the thoughts and contact the soul, says Prahlad Singh Tipanya, people singer, who’s considered among the many foremost voices of fifteenth century mystic poet Kabir.

Tipanya, who was within the metropolis not too long ago to carry out a collection of bhajan periods/satsangs at completely different settings, is a legatee of a six centuries-old custom of the Malwa people singers of rendering Kabir’s couplets in “bhajan mandlis”.

A retired schoolteacher hailing from the village of Luniyakhedi, he’s lately 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 both unifying and universal,” Tipanya stated throughout an interplay after a satsang on the Aurodhan Artwork Gallery.

Throughout his go to to town, the artist, accompanied by his grandson Himanshu Tipanya on the dholak, rendered Kabir dohas (couplets) in a usually rustic song-and-story-telling model, 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 latest tour of town.
| Photograph Credit score:
Particular Association

The tour included periods 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 developed 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 side 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 truly symbolize an interior journey to reality and realisation.)

Kabir’s verse bears a reality 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 entire humanity, the advantage of guru-bhakti, the fallacy of fabric pursuit or the exhortation to look inward to hunt the true reality are recurring themes in these periods.

Tipanya is satisfied that as societies develop into more and more fissured alongside traces of caste and creed, Kabir’s preachings flip an increasing number of related. He additionally feels that the couplets will be interpreted to function a self-help software, a life code or a navigation information by way of a cloth world for everybody to emerge as higher people.

“The fervid appeal for total devotion, of selfless surrender, that defines Kabir’s poetry shines a light on the path to evolve into a better humanity”, he stated. Nevertheless, a very powerful first step to self-actualisation, as he emphasises, is to know the essence of the godliness that resides inside everybody.

As Mita Radhakrishnan of Auroville Language Laboratory, who hosted the session famous, there isn’t any “show” or “concert” 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 really have to know Hindi to appreciate (it) and be moved by the music and the message”.