Biography

The Manganiyar Seduction By Roysten Abel is a LIVE band based out of the finance capital of India, Mumbai. The 11-piece group is the brainchild of Roysten Abel. Roy graduated from the National School of Drama in 1994 and went to apprentice with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and founded the Indian Shakespeare Company in 1995. After that, he started to work with street performers like magicians, snake charmers, jugglers, acrobats, impersonators, puppeteers, musicians, etc. His work got noticed in Italy, and he was invited to conceive and directed a play on the Italian filmmaker, Federico Fellini, in Rimini, which is Fellini’s hometown in Italy. The Manganiyars, as the roots of the name suggest, asked for alms instead of entertainment, playing at weddings, deaths and childbirth: something they do today. They converted to Islam 400 years ago, an event that only enhanced the already rooted folk tradition of Sindh and Rajasthan with the import of words, tunes, and instruments (like the kamancha, a three-stringed ancestor of the violin) from as far away as Azerbaijan. Their music is secular and sophisticated, its roots spread wide, though chiefly in Hindustani classical music. But its performance is not bound by the set rules of this tradition. The Manganiyar cuts notes into improbable fractions, keeps beat with his eyes, changes tempo as swiftly and effortlessly as a blast of desert wind moves a dune. A number of musical instruments are employed in their show. The rounded kamancha; the sarangi, arguably the most difficult Indian instrument to master, it has up to 40 strings, most of which hum as they are caressed by the bow while the three top strings are conducted towards notes by the fingernails of the player. Then, there is the khartal, just two flat pieces of wood, held in each hand, that are made to talk in the complex expression of claps by gravity and the magic in the palms that hold them. There is the algoza or double flute; the small, but potent, morchang, held skillfully in the performer’s mouth, its stiff reed is plucked to produce twangs that talk.