Music from the Desert

Amarrass Records was set up in 2009 by Ashutosh Sharma who runs a travel agency, Ravneet Kler,a partner at the agency who is also a stage actor and director,Ankur Malhotra,a DJ who runs the Madison Music Review in Wisconsin,US,and writer Avirook Sen.

The Amarrass Society,a not-for-profit initiative of Amarrass Records,shares half of the net profits from the sale of albums with their artists. The society looks at creating avenues for educating and teaching music to underprivileged children so that they can keep their music legacy alive and earn their livelihood. What the society essentially does is search for talent,then looks at archiving and recording of folk music and contacting folk instrument makers to participate in it.

Their website also has few samples of artists and their music and artists can be booked for events on the website too. Also on the site are handcrafted instruments that the musicians use–proceeds from the sale of these go to the artists.

“Through Amarrass,we wanted to promote the folk musicians and give them studio spaces,release their CDs and creating awareness about their heritage in the process,” says Sen.

Amarrass Records’ first release called The Manganiyar Seduction came last year. “Manganiyars are a community of Muslim court musicians hailing from villages around Jaisalmer,Jodhpur and Barmer. Their music is a synthesis of folk music,Sufi music and Indian classical music,” says Kler.

The Manganiyar Seduction,an audio-visual spectacle by the Amarrass Society,was performed in Delhi on November 27 last year at Purana Qila. The show also featured traditional Manganiyar instruments like sarangi and algoza (a double flute). The composition has been released as an album,on CD for Rs 500 and on long-playing vinyl record (LP) for Rs 2,500 by Amarrass Records.

On the response the show received,Kler says: “About 4,000 people had come for the show and towards the end,the audience was on their feet. On the day of the show itself, about 200-300 audio CDs were sold.”

Another project that Amarrass has been working on is field recordings for which the founders travelled across Rajasthan to listen to and record the musicians playing traditional music in their own environment. These recordings capture their music in its purest form,done as they are in settings where musicians are most comfortable and free. Called Meetha Bol,it will be released this month in two volumes. Amarrass is also planning to hold an event on November 26 and 27 this year that’ll give audience a taste of desert music for about 10 hours.

Though Amarrass’s focus at present may be on Rajasthan,they’ll be looking at other Indian states soon and are also looking closely at the music scene around the world as they believe in music without borders.