Music exponent adds classical touch to folk garbas

VADODARA: Can one imagine garba songs without lyrics and that too in classical genre?

Well, a city-based businessman, who is a music exponent, has turned this concept into a reality by composing eight garba songs and releasing them in the form of an album.

Businessman

Bharat Desai

, who will soon earn his doctorate in music, has added classical touch to this folk genre using 16 instruments only out of his love for music. While the lyrics of the garba songs are the most integral part, Desai’s compositions are only instrumental to lay more emphasis on the instruments. The compositions have now come out in the form of an album which Desai will launch in USA during the nine-night revelry.

“Instrumental music is the purest form of music and it does not require support of words for the expression of emotions,” said Desai adding, “The aim behind this album is to promote and popularize classical based folk instrumental music.”

Instruments like sitar, mandolin, dilruba,

banjo

, surbahar, flute, shehnai,

clarinet

, table, dhol, nagara, pakhawaj, naal, zaanz, manjira and khanjari among others have been used in classical and semi-classical form to compose the album. The album consists of eight popular garbas including ‘tara vina shyam’, mehndi te vavi’, ‘aaj no chandaliyo’.

For his love of music, Desai invested his own money for the album and tied up with mandolin maestro Mustafa Sajjad Hussain. Mustafa is the son of popular music director Sajjad Hussain who had composed music for many Hindi films of 20th century.

“When I approached Mustafa Sajjad Hussain with my idea, he immediately agreed, but cautioned me that making the album will be very costly because artists of all these instruments charge a bomb. But we went ahead and luckily the artists also charged less out of respect for Mustafa Sajjad Hussain and on knowing that the album will not be commercial,” said Desai.