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Sidis of Gujarat
The Sidi Malunga Project, Rifa’i Sufism, and the Sidi Culture and Heritage Trust
Speakers
Hidden within Gujarat’s landscape is the living memory of the malunga: a sacred musical bow of the African-Indian Sidi community, whose sound carries histories of migration, faith, and resilience. This event opens a rare window into a niche cultural world in India, where music is not performance alone, but inheritance. Through documentary and dialogue, it introduces the Sidis as Sufi Muslims of the Rifa’i tariqa, rooted in the spiritual lineage of Bava Gor, the fourteenth-century saint from Nubia who journey and settled in India.
The evening begins with a screening of The Sidi Malunga Project: Rejuvenating the African Musical Bow in India (2002), by Amy Catlin-Jairazbhoy and Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy: a film that documents not only the malunga’s near-disappearance, but also captures the extraordinary moment of revival that brought elders and youth together to ensure its survival. The screening is followed by a presentation of the newly formed Sidi Culture and Heritage Trust, outlining ongoing efforts to sustain Sidi musical, spiritual, and cultural life.
A rare window into a living, resilient culture: a musical world few know, but many will remember.
Speakers
Amy Catlin-Jairazbhoy
Amy Catlin-Jairazbhoy is an ethnomusicologist whose research, writing, teaching, curatorial work, and multimedia publications center on community development and the preservation of minority musical traditions, particularly in diasporic contexts. She curated and led the first concert and lecture tour outside India by African-Indian Sidi performers from Gujarat in 2002, traveling with the ensemble through England and Wales. Her major publications include Sidi Sufis: African Indian Mystics of Gujarat (Apsara Media, 2002), the co-edited volume Sidis and Scholars: Essays on African Indians (with historian Edward Alpers, 2003), and several multimedia projects such as The Sidi Malunga Project (2004), From Africa to India: Sidi Music in the Indian Ocean Diaspora (with Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy, 2003), and Music for a Goddess (with Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy, 2008), an interactive 175-minute DVD documenting musicians devoted to the goddess Renuka-Yellamma in Maharashtra and Karnataka.
Gordon J Whiting
Gordon J. Whiting is cofounder and publisher of Newsjunkie.net, an innovative news journal and database that covers the news business itself. He has worked primarily behind the scenes in radio, music and film, for acclaimed companies like American Zoetrope (“Apocalypse Now”), The Saul Zaentz Company (“The English Patient”), and Fantasy Records (Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Thelonius Monk). He is a long-time associate of internet pioneer Ted Nelson, founder of Project Xanadu and inventor of hypertext. He is presently surveying the Indian journalism scene for Newsjunkie.net.
