Mewar Manganiyar Folk Music Rajasthan

The Manganiyar are a hereditary Muslim musician community from the Thar Desert region of Barmer, Jaisalmer, and Jodhpur districts of western Rajasthan whose virtuosic performance of desert folk music (lok sangeet) represents one of India's most celebrated living oral musical traditions. Manganiyar musicians are professional performers whose families have served as hereditary musicians (jajmani relationship) to patron Rajput landlord and merchant families for generations, preserving the accumulated repertoire of desert songs as oral memory transmitted from father to son. Their primary instrument is the khamayacha — a short-necked bowed string instrument with a goatskin membrane resonator, played with a horsehair bow, producing a haunting drone-and-melody sound unlike any other Indian instrument. Secondary instruments include the harmonium, dholak, and hand cymbals. The Manganiyar repertoire covers devotional songs for Hindu and Muslim occasions alike (the tradition is syncretic — Manganiyar singers perform at both Hindu temples and Muslim shrine festivals), life-cycle songs for birth, marriage, and mourning, and historical ballads celebrating local heroes. The late Saker Khan Manganiyar is considered a master of the tradition. Manganiyar performances at international world music festivals — WOMAD, Real World Records — brought them global audiences from the 1990s. The Jaisalmer Desert Festival each year features Manganiyar and Langa musicians in the dunes outside Jaisalmer fort.