Jodhpur RIFF 2026: Mehrangarh Fort to host global roots music festival

Jodhpur RIFF will celebrate 20 years from October 22 to 26 at Mehrangarh Fort, bringing together musicians from six continents and Rajasthan’s folk communities. The festival will feature global collaborations, 250 folk musicians and, for the first time, spoken theatre

New Delhi: The 15th-century Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur will come alive from October 22 to 26 as Jodhpur RIFF marks two decades of celebrating roots music — folk, blues, gospel, country and other genres passed down through generations within cultural communities around the world.

The Jodhpur RIFF music festival, organised by the Mehrangarh Museum Trust, will host its “wildest and widest” guest list yet, featuring new and returning roots musicians from six continents and about a dozen countries, including Colombia, Chile, Cabo Verde, Poland, Scotland and Estonia, performing alongside centuries-old Rajasthani and Indian folk traditions.

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Apart from more than 250 folk musicians from Rajasthan and other Indian states, representing the Manganiyar, Langa, Meghwal, Bhopa, Kalbelia, Meena, Bhil and other communities, the festival will host several legendary roots musicians for the first time, including Filipino-Murrawari rapper Dobby, Latin American duo Camila y Silvio, UK Uilleann piper Michael McGoldrick, and American folk and blues singer Martha Redbone.

Talking about the upcoming edition, festival director Divya Bhatia said that over the last two decades, the festival had built an equal playing field for international, Indian and Rajasthani artistes.

“Rajasthan’s artistes have always been this festival’s lodestone; that hasn’t changed in 20 years. What we have built painstakingly at Jodhpur RIFF, with international, Indian and Rajasthani artistes, is a platform, an equal playing field and much more.

“It is an environment where, on the one hand, Rajasthani artistes can reframe the state’s greatest folk traditions for today’s audiences, at times pioneering a new medium, and, on the other hand, the finest roots performers from across Rajasthan, India and the world can engage in a dialogue with one another and collaborate to build something entirely new for the performing arts,” he said.

One of the most notable musical collaborations at Jodhpur RIFF this year will be French opera singer Camille Bordet’s “The Book of Queens”, a mythic resurrection of history’s forgotten heroines, from Hildegard of Bingen to Mirabai, voiced through an ensemble spanning Iran, Europe and India, alongside Hindustani vocalist Smita Bellur and Rajasthani kamaicha maestro Kode Khan Manganiyar.

The multicultural project brings together Indian, Rajasthani, Iranian and European musical elements centred on warrior women through diverse vocal traditions, instruments and musical styles.

While Bellur’s Iranian connection is through Rumi’s poetry and Sufi singing, Kode Khan’s kamaicha is a distant cousin of the Iranian string instrument kamancheh.

“I felt it was a project in which I could shift how we collaborate. Normally, it’s just us producing a collaboration between artistes. But this is a co-production… So, it made sense for me to bring that in when I was looking at this project. It is a multicultural project, women-centric and women-led,” Bhatia told PTI.

The co-produced and co-commissioned project will premiere at Jodhpur RIFF before travelling to Jaipur and then Mumbai.

Another collaboration, which first took shape at Scotland’s Celtic Connections in January, will bring together SAZ — the trio of Langa masters Sadiq Khan, Asin Khan and Zakir Khan — with Michael McGoldrick and composer Donald Shaw.

SAZ will also collaborate with Redbone, a Native American and African-American musician, while Finnish fiddler Emilia Lajunen will perform alongside Asin Khan on the Sindhi sarangi.

Another collaboration this year will bring together Polish singer Karolina Cicha, who is devoted to reviving her country’s vanishing Tatar music, and Anita Dangi, a hereditary keeper of Rajasthan’s classical Rajwaadi Maand tradition.

“Earlier, artistes wanted to come and perform, but now we are having projects and producers and important parts of the world wanting to come and collaborate with our artistes. Karolina and Anita — I didn’t put them together. You see the shift that’s happening. Earlier, I was the one finding both sets of artistes. Now, I don’t have to do that anymore,” Bhatia added.

Other artistes at the upcoming festival will include vocalist Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande, Manipuri pena player Mangka Mayanglambam, pianist-composer Merlin D’Souza, sitar prodigy Chintan Katti, flautist Avadhoot Phadke, percussionist Aniruddha Shirke, and festival artist-in-residence Ruby Abley on saxophone.

The festival’s ‘Living Legends’ programme will host Taga Ram Bhil, one of the foremost masters of the alghoza, and bhapang exponent Gafruddin Jogi.

Jodhpur RIFF will also host performances by 120 young Langa and Manganiyar artistes trained under the Mehrangarh Museum Music Projects’ Folk Futures programme.

“Because of Jodhpur RIFF, I have seen our Rajasthani folk artistes receive worldwide acclaim as they present what they have inherited and mastered, while also shining brightly in unique music collaborations at the festival, which continues to serve as a superb stepping stone and bridge.

“It is where our performers meet the world and find their place in the modern music ecosystem. Here, the universal language of music resonates and is lovingly shared, relationships and networks are built, and revival and innovation are nourished,” chief patron of Jodhpur RIFF Maharaja Gajsingh II said in a statement.

Also, for the first time, Jodhpur RIFF will showcase spoken theatre with Adishakti Theatre’s “Brhannala”, a movement-driven retelling of Mahabharata hero Arjun’s year in disguise as a dance teacher, originally directed by Veenapani Chawla and performed by Vinay Kumar.