(Above) Sufi artistes from Jaipur; (below) Egyptian and Turkish artistes perform at the Ruhaniyat concert at Tollygunge Club. Picture by Rashbehari Das

The person himself is Sufi and the music he plays is Sufiana. It has the same mystical effect on the audience as on the musician,” smiled Mohamed Farghaly, who was in the city all the way from Egypt to perform at Ruhaniyat, the 8th All India Sufi and Mystic Music Festival. Offset with angithis and a surreal play of lights, the Tollygunge Club lawnside venue saw an audience of about 1,000 people lapping up the music on Saturday.

The evening kick-started with energetic renditions of Baba Bulleh Shah’s Sufi kalams by Akhe Khan and Sali Mohmad Khan from Rajasthan, instantly transporting the audience to a world of spiritual bliss.

Parvathy Baul, whose clean, sharp singing oozed as much passion as the compositions of Lalan Fakir and Prashant Gosai that she lent voice to, was up next. Playing the ektara, dugdugi and keeping beat with jhumur, Parvathy’s voice pierced through the air as the visual drama of her mystic madness had the audience in a stir.

Mohamed Farghaly on the oud (an Arabic variant of the lute) and his son M.M. Farghaly on the qanoon (similar to the santoor) introduced an all-new Egypt. The Turkish Bektashi Sufiana singer Latif Bolat gave Sufi a contemporary twist with his original composition Hiroshima. Strumming at the saz, he narrated the tale of a child scalded to death during the Hiroshima bombing. His musical renditions of the Turkish poet Rumi’s verses, as he mentioned, were more for “ecstatic gatherings” than a concert environment.

Cultural differences aside, the evening’s musical journey reached its crescendo with a frenzied medley with Farghaly singing a Rumi kalam with the saz, oud, qanoon, dholak, khadtaal and huduk as musical accompaniments. The rustic voices of Sufi quawal Shameem Nayeem Ajmeri (Jaipur) and jagariya Rakesh Bhatt (Uttaranchal), who took over during the second half of the event, were no less impressive.