Welcome to the home of the Kabir Project. About | Films | Music CDs and Books | People | Contacts | Srishti
Started in 2003, the Kabir project brings together the experiences of a series of journeys in quest of this 15th century mystic poet in our contemporary worlds. It consists of 4 documentary films, 2 folk music videos and 10 music CDs accompanied by books of the poetry in translation. The following materials will be available from this website by October 2008. [top] JOURNEYS WITH KABIR: 4 films by Shabnam Virmani These films journey into contemporary spaces touched by the music and poetry of the 15th century mystic weaver-poet of north India, Kabir. We meet a diverse array of people – an urban folklorist, a street fruit seller, a social activist, a Dalit folk singer, a Zen Buddhist scholar, a neo-fascist cleric of a Kabir sect, a Muslim qawwal – each encounter offering a moment of insight into the poetry and its contemporary meanings. We glimpse not one but many Kabirs. Sometimes he beckons, sometimes he baffles, but always he pushes you to self-interrogate, to question the boundaries of your identity, nation, ideology, caste and religion… making these journeys unrelentingly inward even as they venture outward. The 4 films are interwoven in significant ways, but each can be viewed independently. HAD-ANHAD: Journeys with Ram & Kabir, 105 min Kabir defied the boundaries between Hindu and Muslim, refusing to be labeled himself and sharply criticizing sectarianism. His name and upbringing were Muslim but his poetry often uses Hindu concepts and Hindu names for God, especially Ram. This film journeys in search of the “Ram” invoked in Kabir's poetry, delving into the heart of divisive Hindu-Muslim politics of religion and nationalism, encountering singers and lay people in India and Pakistan, probing the forces of history and politics that have created disputatiously diverse Rams, while also spawning many Kabirs. KOI SUNTA HAI: Journeys with Kumar & Kabir, 96 min This film interweaves the oral folk traditions of Kabir in central India with the intensely personal narrative of the late classical singer Pandit Kumar Gandharva, keeping the spiritual ideas of Kabir as the central binding thread. Journeying between folk and classical, between rural and urban expressions of Kabir, the film finds moments of both continuity and rupture between these disparate worlds. CHALO HAMARA DES: Journeys with Kabir & Friends, 97 min A journey in search of Kabir’s des (country) this film unfolds through the interwoven narratives of two people from two very different countries – Dalit folk singer Prahlad Tipanya and North American scholar Linda Hess. We enter the world of Kabir, through the personal and public lives of these two individuals, brought together in an unlikely friendship by the amazing universality and cross-cultural resonance of Kabir. KABIRA KHADA BAZAAR MEIN: Journeys with Sacred & Secular Kabir, 94 min This film investigates the ironies and tensions between sacred and secular Kabir, interweaving the sacralization of Kabir by the Kabir Panth (an organized sect of the followers of Kabir) with the secular appropriation of the same poet by the social activist group Eklavya. The story unfolds through the life of Prahlad Tipanya, a Dalit singer whose participation in the Panth and Eklavya begins to raise difficult questions for him about ritual and organized religion. [top] 1. GHAT GHAT KABIR / IN EVERY BODY KABIR: In these music CDs the words of Kabir speak through a wide array of musical genres – folk, classical, dhrupad and sufi – through the voices of 10 singers:
Produced with a 100-page book featuring the verse in original language (Hindi, Malwi, Marwari, Punjabi, Urdu, Sindhi) with English translations and research annotations by Linda Hess, Homayra Ziad, Vidya Rao and Shabnam Virmani. 2. RAJASTHAN MEIN KABIR / KABIR IN RAJASTHAN: Featuring songs by Mukhtiyar Ali, a Mirasi folk singer from Bikaner, and Mahesha Ram, a Meghaval singer from Jaisalmer, Rajasthan. Translations & notes by Vidya Rao. 3. PAKISTAN MEIN KABIR / KABIR IN PAKISTAN: Featuring Fariduddin Ayaz & Brothers, qawwals from Karachi, Pakistan, and Shafi Mohammed Faqir, a Sindhi Manghaniar folk singer from Umarkot in Sindh, Pakistan. Translations & notes by Homayra Ziad. 4. THUMRI MEIN KABIR / KABIR IN THUMRI: Featuring songs by Vidya Rao, a thumri singer and writer based in Delhi. Translations and notes by Vidya Rao. 5. MALWA MEIN KABIR / KABIR IN MALWA: Featuring Prahlad Tipanya and Kaluram Bamaniya, two of the best folk singers of Kabir from the Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh in India. Translations and notes by Shabnam Virmani. 6. AJAB SHAHAR – KABIR IN AMERICA (DVD): The films feature the live recordings of Kabir songs performed during a concert tour by the Malwi folk singer Prahlad Tipanya in the USA in 2003, interspersed with glimpses of these folk singers from India encountering for the first time, the culture and music of north America. Translations and notes by Linda Hess and Shabnam Virmani. [top] Shabnam Virmani is director of the Kabir Project, a documentary filmmaker and artist in residence at the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore since 2002. Co-founder of the Drishti Media Arts and Human Rights collective [www.drishtimedia.org], she has directed several documentaries in close partnership with grassroots women’s groups in the country, some of which have won awards. In 2002, she co-directed an award-winning community radio program with the Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan in Gujarat. The Project Team
[top] Email: thekabirproject(at)gmail.com Postal Address: Phone: +91.80.40447000 [top] Srishti School of Art, Design & Technology is an institute of art & design education, research and experimentation. Srishti offers residency programmes for artists and welcomes creative practitioners and scholars of arts and design for visits and collaborations. Find out more at the Srishti web site: www.srishti.ac.in. [top]. |