48-year-old performing artist Guru Reuben and his eight-year-old son Saka travelled more than thousand kilometres to Jodhpur to address a global audience and perform in front of several music enthusiasts at the break of dawn on Day 3 of Jodhpur’s annual music festival — the Rajasthan International Folk Festival (RIFF). Bleary-eyed from a long journey, they enchanted the audience with some soul-searching music.
Speaking to DNA, Reuben explained that one of the gravest problem that musicians from the North Eastern frontier of the country are facing is the lack of will power to create original music. Patting his son’s head with the latter looking up at him for inspiration, Reuben explains, “With 89 per cent of the population in Manipur being Christians, music is embedded in our blood. Youngsters grow up going to church and playing the organ or joining the choir. But even that cannot change the situation because after becoming professional musicians, they still do not want to create original music.”
The North East boasts of a rich cultural heritage of the some of the finest blues and folk music. But Reuben believes that the reluctance to learn Hindi and even English for that matter often does not carry their music to the global audience. He suggests, “People should understand that it is for their best. In my state, there are over 260 spoken dialects. Even if you cut an album in a particular dialect, how many copies are you going to sell anyways?”
Naturally, Reuben feels that record labels are unwilling to produce music from the North East. The artist states, “Record companies are not stupid. Of course, their prime concern will be how many copies they can sell through-out the country. Although some musicians are willing to shell out a few lakhs to launch their own music, distribution across the country again becomes a problem.” Voicing the emotions of several of his fellow artists from the North East, Reuben points out that although the sentiments are common with performing artists there, it sometimes becomes difficult to communicate all things in English. For Guru Reuben and his son Saka, the endeavour however continues.
