‘ Musicians are social actors’
Anurag Hoon belongs to the Gujjar community and is the co- founder of Manzil Mystics — a choir group that specialises in music based on social issues
Anurag Hoon is a passionate musician who fought against all odds to pursue his first love, music. Belonging to a community that is infamous for practicing several social evils and discrimination, especially against women, Anurag’s childhood experiences led him to reach out to youngsters and propagate the message of peace and equality through music. However, the journey wasn’t easy for him. He shares, “I hail from one of the most orthodox communities in India called Gujjar. I grew up in an environment where I was made aware of several sickening issues including ‘ honour killing’. Ever since I was a child, I had been passionate about music and wanted to pursue it as a full- time career. Unfortunately, music was prohibited. It took me nine years to convince my parents to let me follow my dreams.”
He goes on, “When I was in my second year of college, my parents luckily started ignoring my inclination to pursue music and for me it was a huge achievement. Why? Because for me their intentional ignorance was a form of acceptance. In 2010, I joined the NGO called Manzil and began learning music. There I met Rashmi Arya who later became the cofounder of Manzil Mystics. She was the one who proposed the idea of starting a choir group that will compose songs based on social issues.” The group has 13 talented musicians and since its inception, they have been teaching youngsters lessons on how to write, sing and compose songs on social issues such as environment, gender- based violence, governmental corruption, honour killing, education system, etc. They also have been actively performing several music gigs, music mobs, etc. around the city and believe that music is not just a part of entertainment but it’s also an alternative medium for teaching.
Hoon shares, “I believe that one of the important aspects of music/ songs is that it serves as a forum for public debate about manners, morals, politics and social change. Musicians and their audiences are social actors because they reflect the world around them and change it. History is full of examples on how music served as a channel to unify groups of people, help them move to common action and assist them in expressing common emotions. Keeping this in mind, we decided to launch our first programme titled ‘ Learning through music’. Through this , we visit NGOs, schools, shelters, etc. to teach children music. We teach them how to express their hopes, ideals, anger and frustrations and we design our activities in a way that we even teach them life skills such as decision- making, critical thinking, values clarification, etc. We are also planning to teach mathematics through music in the near future.”
His team does all these workshops for free as well. Anurag recalls, “When we started, we were not able to support as many people as we wanted or wished to. However, ‘ Learning through music’ is a self- sustainable model. Whatever we earn through our stage shows, we invest 60% of that income to this project. Though all the musicians are professional and music is the only source of income, we do not charge for the workshop. As far as the stage shows are concerned, when we did our first gig, we received an amount of ` 128 and now we charge about ` 50,000. Also we are very thankful for Changelooms who stepped in at the right time to help us. After understanding and cross- checking our whole model, Changelooms decided to help us with resources as well as funds. Now we are working with three government schools and four NGOs.”
Talking about the group’s collective musical inspiration, Anurag reveals, “Kabir’s songs and poems have had a great influence on us. We have created a mystic version of his famous poem Chadariya jhini re jhini. Most of our songs are based on ragas of Indian classical music with a twist of Indian folk.”
Lastly, he concludes, “We want to see India develop into a community of young students who have liberated ability, refined character and a life- long love for music. We want to achieve this through Manzil Mystics and its unusual way of teaching. We know that every child is unique and we know the power of the youth.”
It took me nine years to convince my parents to let me follow my dreams