The rhythm of life: Singer Avadhoot Gandhi speaks about his journey of growing up with this genre of music

Music has always been an important aspect of our lives and for many people living in India. Our rich cultural diversity has greatly contributed to various forms of music and one of them is folk music, which is at the minute is a struggling genre. Every region in the country has its own folk music, which reflects the way of life. In Telangana, the local folk songs are very popular as many people use these songs to convey the various issues and problems that they face.

Popular Maharashtrian folk singer Avadhoot Gandhi recently performed in Hyderabad in Banyan Tree's flagship festival Ruhaniyat.

In a freewheeling chat, Avadhoot Gandhi speaks about his journey of growing up with this genre of music and why he thinks that folk music should be part of children's education in school.

Sharing on how he turned to folk music, he says, "I come from a pujari's family and I used to be part of various bhajans as a child and that's how it actually began. My mother used to sing as well. I used to listen to Pandit Bhimsen and we used to get up at 4 am every day and sing bhajan till 11 am during the time of Puja. I majorly got trained listening to various bhajans in cassettes and would learn and sing. So, as I grew up in the ambience of this kind of music, this inspired me, and I continued to learn and pursue it."

Sharing how he also performed at over 2000 Bharud's (folk art form of Maharashtra), he says, "Like how Sant Eknath Maharaj used to put up various events to spread various messages using Bharud shows, I was part of similar folk shows and we used to put up shows at various villages and I got to perform at over 2000 Bharud's, all these were part of my learnings to become a folk musicians." After which Avadhoot started to sing and perform at various big platforms including singing rock songs in Marathi films and he even acted in a few plays as well.

One of the biggest missions in his life is to keep the folk music genre and various traditional music alive. "My team and I have been working very hard to keep this music alive. In Maharashtra folk music is popular, but in other States, we need to create more awareness. I am very grateful for Ruhaniyat; programmes like these give us enough platforms to spread our music to the world."

"Everyone likes different forms of music according to their taste, but yes, a lot of today's youth turned towards various genres like Bollywood, etc due to music channels and movies. Not many children or youth have been exposed to folk, classical or traditional music, due to which many people aren't aware of the existence of folk music as well. I know of so many youngsters, who after listening to folk music have gotten addicted to it, but before that, they had no idea of the same. We need to create more awareness of traditional music in our country, that is the need of the hour. The best way I feel is to add folk music as a subject in the school for children to learn the music as they grow. Folk music has never been taught before; we need to do that now. Many musicians have been trying to reinvent folk and classical music adding a bit of fusion to ensure younger crowd start paying attention to this genre and it does work sometimes too," he adds.

Speaking about his performance in Hyderabad, he says, "This is the third time I am playing for Ruhaniyat in Hyderabad. I like performing in this city, the audience here respects and love traditional music. I have family here as well. This year we are performing with Iranian musicians for the very first time and I got to learn so much of Iranian culture as well. I am happy and grateful to play with various artists from different countries as well."

Ruhaniyat has been a two-decade-long journey; crisscrossing history, geography and musical streams. It has featured carriers of living traditions from across India and beyond in solos, group presentations specially curated Global Productions that have been melting boundaries to create musical bridges of Universal brotherhood, love, harmony, peace, and joy.