Sufi singer Mukhtiyar Ali and French composer and multi-instrumentalist Mathias Duplessy captivated the audience in a rivetting performance at the Institute Francais in India. By Saritha Saraswathy Balan
Mukhtiyar Ali had no inkling about what exactly to compose when he first sat with Mathias Duplessy eight years ago. Fast forward to the present: Duplessy begins to play the guitar while Ali belts out song after song. The audience is in for a musical treat, one that elevates them to an altogether different plane of existence.
Ali and Duplessy presented a fusion concert on Tuesday in connection with the inauguration of the Institute Francais - the cultural wing of the French Embassy in its new avatar. The concert turned out to be a fascinating musical interweaving of French and Indian culture. For Duplessy, the fusion was born out of their friendship and their love for each other. “We inspired each other as in a love story. What is most important for me is being human. We met, composed music, started playing with each other and unfolded a human story,” says Duplessy, a multi-instrumentalist from France. Their musical journey began in 2008. It was in 2011 that they composed the album Jeena Jeena. The duo also got to perform the songs from the album at a couple of venues in France.
“We met and instantly fell in love as friends. When we sat together for the first time, we had absolutely no idea of what to compose. It all seemed to happen in an instant. He started playing the guitar and I sang along to its rhythm. Duplessy is a Sufi from within,” grins Ali.
Ali, who partakes of the great legacy of Sufi music inherited from the semi-nomadic Mirasi community of the Thar desert, confesses to being in touch with his feminine side while singing: “Sufism is all about love. Only a female can express the various moods of love in its purest form. I hence transform into a woman every time I sing.” Evoking the mysticism and deep sense of spirituality that constitutes the essence of Sufi music, Ali’s voice can be heard alternating between his lilting notes: “The songs that I sing and the music that I talk about are imbued with hidden meanings. It seeks the one within us and does not have to go outside in search of the truth.”
Ali has done numerous shows abroad as well as scored the background music for many Bollywood films. Yet he prefers to live in his village, the hot and arid Pugal in Rajasthan that shares its border with Pakistan. “That is my comfort zone. Everyone there knows me and vice versa. I seem deeply rooted to my birthplace. I cannot bring myself to take my children to live in the polluted cities. It is a wonderful experience to live in a land native to you,” he shares.
His voice has soothed many a hearts, filling them with love and a deep sense of total surrender. He sings relentlessly for hours on end. “Even now, I practise daily for many hours. There is no fixed schedule that I follow. I just sit with the harmonium and sometimes it can go on for a whole day,” he smiles.
Duplessy does the same. He plays the guitar even while sitting at a railway station or while waiting for someone. A globally acclaimed singer, who has three albums and 30 sound-tracks to his credit, he made his first stage appearance at the age of 18. “Music seems ingrained in our genes,” chorus the duo.
For ten years, Duplessy has sung in Mongolian overtones and also played the morin khuur or the Mongolian fiddle. Crazy Horse is his latest album with which he toured several countries. He plays dozens of instruments, with the guitar being his favourite. “I love the guitar the most….I love strings,” he laughs. Duplessy recently played at the Thar Desert festival in Rajasthan. To him, collaborating with traditional musicians is tantamount to crossing boundaries, a quality he is known for.
Each performance is novel one for him. “Every performance is a fresh one….hence different. My eyes fill with tears at times during the course of a performance. Once when I performed in Canada, I was a bit worried about how the audience would understand my music which is in a language alien to them. But after a while, the audience asked me to stop trying to interpret the music for them, as they could feel it,” recalls Ali.
They both agree that music and songs would not tire them out even at the age of 80. They intend to stop only when their listeners ask them to do so.