It was a turning point in my life.” Thus began the journey of Mame Khan, the singer.īut like all Manganiyar children, he was singing almost since the time he was born. “After a month when I couldn’t go back to Brussels, my father told me that it was time for me to leave the dholak for good, and take up singing as a career instead. “Although I was singing since I was in school, it is much later that I started singing professionally,” he says, recollecting how he had left his dholak in Brussels after his first foreign tour hoping to go back in a few days, which never happened. Later we begin our formal training under a guru,” explains Khan, who trained under his father and started his music career as a dholak player. We learn by listening to our elders and start singing as part of a spontaneous process. Even the toys the kids play with are musical instruments. Although a Muslim community, these singers, like the Sufis, are more into spirituality and mysticism and often sing praises of Hindu deities as well. The songs, sung during weddings and other happy occasions, are often written in praise of their patrons, known as jajmans, and are passed on from one generation to another through oral tradition. Their robust melodies have been reverberating through the Thar Desert for centuries. Manganyar is a community of folk musicians who consider themselves descendants of the Rajputs.

That was Khan’s performance outside Jaisalmer. But first, it was a performance in front of the then Prime Minister of the country, Mr Rajiv Gandhi, at India Gate. Prof Kothari was instrumental in catapulting this little boy from Satto on to the world stage. In fact, my father, Ustad Rana Khan, who was a legendary Manganiyar singer, had done his first international show way back in 1984,” he says. Komal Kothari of Rajasthan Sangeet Natak Academy was working relentlessly to give the Manganiyar voices a platform, and he would organise and coordinate for various concerts both in India and abroad. “Ours is a village of singers and when I was growing up, most kids dreamt of getting a passport and doing concerts abroad. Hailing from a small nondescript village in Rajasthan, this Manganiyar singer always wanted to go global. We used to perform across Europe, we covered more than 30 cities, with our base in Brussels,” Mame Khan recalls. Way back in 1999, I was part of a music troupe that was on a six-month Europe tour. “My first foreign concert was in that part of the world. When he walked the red carpet of the 75th Cannes Film Festival Mame Khan became the first Indian folk artiste to do so.

Shankar mahadevan academy