Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Thiruvananthapuram
Visakhapatnam
Music beyond boundaries
|
Gulabi Sapera and Thierry Robin represent the world stage with their respective styles of music and dance. Their effort also reflects the harmony of rural Indian and western modern music culture.
|
SONG AND DANCE: Gulabi Sapera and Thierry Robin.
HERS IS a fairy tale fling to fame; his is a blessing of the muses. For how can one explain two diametrically placed persons meeting on the musical firmament. She hails from the remote tribal region of Rajasthan in India and he belongs to the fashion rich France. The cordon of language between the two is as thick and hard as the Great Wall of China. Yet they communicate, collaborate and create some of the best contemporary music one can ever get to hear. She is Gulabi Sapera, the girl who had danced her way into the western hearts way back in the 80s. He is Thierry Robin whose life is tuned to bringing a synthesis of the east with West through music. Together they perform, reaching out to the world at large and attesting that art recognises no boundaries, no barriers.
Born into a humble family of snake charmers in Rajasthan, Gulabi had twinkle toes even as a child. "We lived in a village called Pushkar in Ajmer. I used to accompany my father, a snake charmer by vocation and swing along with the snake that used to pop out of his basket when he piped for the street show. I was showered with compliments by those rural crowds who watched me by the roadside along with the snake. My father became proud of me while my family disapproved of my tagging on to him and exposing myself to street dancing,'' reminiscences Gulabi of those innocent days. When she was hardly 12 in 1981, her dance along with others of her age at the popular Pushkar mela attracted the attention of the officials of tourism department. These were Trupti Pande (Ela Arun's sister) and one Himmat Singh. "They came up to my father and asked him to make me dance for some foreigners who came on a visit to Rajasthan. Till then, I did not know what a stage was and it was the first time I danced with anklet bells around my feet provided by the department officials. My sapera (snake charmer) community was aghast and my father was ostracised for exposing his girl. He had to give in to the social pressure and I was forbidden to dance any more for strangers. At this juncture my brother from Jaipur was a source of moral support and I decided that I could not live without dance. I escaped to Jaipur with him and was fortunate enough to get shelter from the Maharani of Jaipur. It was she who cajoled my parents into allowing my in-born talent to bloom, despite social stigma,'' she says recounting those days of innocent passion to dance. She started dancing her tribal gypsy dance at all the Indian national festivals organised by the department of tourism. Her first break on the international scene came in 1985 with her two month sojourn to the USA for participating in India festival. As life would have it, Gulabi had the rudest shock that could ever hit a young girl when her father died on the eve of her journey. "For a moment my world enclosed me in utter darkness. I lost interest in the whole thing. Here was a man who had risked everything he had just to encourage my passion for dance and who had this uncanny fear, like all innocent rural folk, that he may lose his daughter to those far off lands where he could never go. It was my mother and my brother who consoled me and made me go ahead with the scheduled journey which I eventually did,'' she turns nostalgic.
From this point there was no looking back. Her community realised the name and fame she was acquiring at a tender age and welcomed her with open arms. All the same, Gulabi had to give in to the customs of her people and got married in early teens to Sohonath, a literate and also a musician of sorts (he was good at the dholak). Today Gulabi is the mother of five teenage children. "My husband took over the threads of my dancing career from where my father had left. He is my constant source of inspiration. He would bring home cassettes of other Rajasthani dances for me to learn so that my repertoire enlarged. Today I'm able to dance for three hours at a stretch,'' she says with pride.
Foreign tours kept flowing in. Once while performing in Denmark, Gulabi came across another Indian artiste settled in Paris called Hamid Khan (tabla player) who persuaded her to join his troupe. It was here that she was destined to meet a guitarist who would navigate her career through the most unchartered course. For she never danced to the guitar so far and here was Thierry (Titi) Robin, an innovative French musician whose guitar strings could spell the magic of Arabia with that of Europe in the melodic tones. Says he, "I never had a formal training in music or instrumental; nor was mine a musical family. I am a self-taught musician. I learnt free instruments -- the Arabic Oud (lute), the bouzouq and the guitar. My fascination for the east grew with my friends from Arab. The roots of the western gypsy dance are actually Indian, like for the instance the flamenco. I happened to see a video clipping of Gulabi's gypsy dance. I thought it would gel with my mixed oriental and gypsy music, which is basically Mediterranean. That's how it all happened.''
He met her at the White Car festival in France and extended an invitation to join his troupe. Gulabi too on her part, took a few CDs of Titi Robin and tried her dance to the tunes of a guitar, which to her was an entirely novel instrument. When she picked up confidence enough to please him, she joined his group. "From 1992, we've been performing together. We were able to cut three to four CDs , Rakhi being our latest venture,'' they clarify. She sings while he plays for the records while she dances to his tunes on stage. Thierry Robin is fired with the zest to bring the two cultures together into one harmonious union with distinct identities that can merge in music. Gulabi is too glad to be a professional companion to such an amity crusade.
RANEE KUMAR
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Thiruvananthapuram
Visakhapatnam
|
