MUSA GULAM JAT AND JODIA PAWA - FROM SINDH TO BANNI
MUSA GULAM JAT AND JODIA PAWA - FROM SINDH TO BANNI

Summary/Abstract: The history of pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial India is replete not only with changes and movements of people across numberless borders but also with their stories of life that have been re-made and re-told over and over again. Although these sometimes have not been recorded in written form, myths and music have always served as oral vehicles of transmission of culture for migrant and nomadic communities. This paper explores the connection between one man’s music, cultural and ethnic background, and the geographic environment that offered him and his community a home to which he would constantly return. Shri Musa Gulam Jat is renown for his unparalleled expertise in playing the double flute thus opening possibilities for him in Western European countries such as France, Germany and Britain. Member of a nomad community, the Jat community, and himself a nomad since the age of twelve, Musa Gulam Jat has settled in the Banni area of Kachchh, Gujarat, India, close to the Indian-Pakistani border. Having changed places and multiple homes in search of food for his cattle, Musa has always kept his instrument - Jodia Pawa - along, with which he refined the sound of the double flute playing Sufi music, the music of his ancestors. Since there is no much academic work on Musa Gulam Jat’s art if at all, most of the information obtained for this article is based on the testimony and writings of Shri Umesh Jadiya of Bhuj, Kachchh, himself an artist and ethnomusicologist.

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