Photos: JODHPUR RIFF to Mark 20th Year With Global Roots Musicians at Mehrangarh

Jodhpur RIFF, described as India's premier international roots festival, marks its 20th year this October, from the 22nd to the 26th, at Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur, India.

There is a particular kind of magic that happens when a full moon rises over red sandstone ramparts, and a song that has travelled ten thousand kilometres meets one that has never left the desert it was born in. That is the alchemy Jodhpur RIFF has spent twenty years perfecting at the Mehrangarh Fort, and this October — from the 22nd to the 26th, timed as ever to Sharad Purnima, the year's brightest full moon — the festival, held under the aegis of the Mehrangarh Museum Trust, marks two decades with one of its most diverse editions yet.

Six continents. A dozen-odd countries, from Colombia and Chile to Cabo Verde, Poland, Scotland and Estonia. Roots music stars and legends are stepping onto Indian soil for the very first time— arriving not because a booking agent made a call, but because of a friendship, a jam session, or a chance encounter on some other stage, somewhere else in the world, that demanded a second act. Jodhpur RIFF 2026 is twenty years' worth of persistent relationship-building, finally converging in one place, at one time, under one sky.

Standing tall under that sky are folk musicians from Rajasthan, as well as other Indian states, who have always been this festival's beating heart— over 250 of them, from the Manganiyar, Langa, Meghwal, Bhopa, Kalbelia, Meena, Bhil and other communities, returning year after year to a stage which has grown, quite literally, around them.

On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of Jodhpur RIFF, Chief Patron HH Maharaja Gajsingh II of Marwar-Jodhpur said: 'Jodhpur RIFF now sits strongly in our cultural landscape. Because of it, I have seen our Rajasthani folk artists receive worldwide acclaim as they present what they have inherited and mastered and also shine bright in unique music collaborations at the festival, which continues its essential function as a superb stepping stone, a bridge. And where our performers meet the world as they 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.'

'Rajasthan's artists have always been this festival's lodestone— that hasn't changed in twenty years,' said Mr. Divya Bhatia, Festival Director. 'What we have built painstakingly at Jodhpur RIFF, with international, Indian and Rajasthani artists, is a platform, an equal Playing Field and much more. It is an environment where, on the one hand, Rajasthani artists 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 dialogue with each other and collaborate to build something entirely new for the performing arts.'

Mehrangarh

Jodhpur RIFF turns Mehrangarh into a living map of sound, where every stone courtyard and open sky finds its own note to play. Mornings begin gently at Veer Durga Das Memorial Park before the fort itself wakes into song — sunrise and moonrise concerts at Jaswant Thada, workshops and residencies unfolding in the marble hush of Chokelao Bagh, and the Zenana Courtyard rising each evening to host some of roots music's hold the festival's grandest concerts. As day dissolves into night, music drifts on toward the desert stillness of Rao Jodha's Desert Lounge and, finally, into the after-hours pulse of Club Mehran at Salimkot— so that across the days of the festival, the fort itself becomes the festival's truest instrument.

Performing in India for the First Time

The ARIA Award-winning Filipino-Murrawari rapper, drummer and composer DOBBY marks its first India performance with an arsenal built for impact— an album that turned river conservation into an anthem, and 'I Can't Breathe,' the song that became the sound of Australia's Black Lives Matter movement.

Camila y Silvio, two of Latin American folk's brightest names, also arrive at Jodhpur RIFF for their India premiere: a sonic universe conjured from guitar, charango and legüero drum, where the zamba, chacarera and cumbia rhythms of the Andes spill into an ode to nature, ancestry and community.

Michael McGoldrick, widely considered one of the UK's finest flute and Uilleann pipe players, finally brings his artistry to Indian shores — decades after he first struck up a musical partnership with BAFTA-nominated composer Donald Shaw, who marks his own return to Jodhpur RIFF with this act. Their reunion here marks the first time this long-running partnership has performed together in a new country.

Printz Board's Butter Funk Family touches down with a two-time Grammy winner at the helm and one unshakeable mission: to get the audience on its feet. Expect tight drums, booming brass, staccato guitars, and the kind of James Brown-style command that turns a crowd into a chorus.

Martha Redbone and Aaron Whitby need no introduction. Their Tony-nominated Broadway score for For Colored Girls... cemented their place as vital, urgent voices in America's roots music scene. To Jodhpur RIFF, the husband-wife duo bring The Martha Redbone Roots Project — a fusion of Appalachian roots, gospel, blues and Indigenous tradition that The New Yorker dubbed 'a brilliant collision of cultures.'

The Book of Queens makes its India premiere as a truly audacious offering: Persian speaking, French opera singer Camille Bordet's 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. Co-commissioned and co-produced by Jodhpur RIFF itself, it stands as the festival's own ode to the women of Rajasthan.

Guitare Voginha of Cabo Verde, torchbearer for his father, guitar legend Tazinho, channels the mellow yet lush musical legacy of the archipelago — the morna and coladeira rhythms of island life.

Indian Legends & Maestros

Padma Shri vocalist Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande, torchbearer of the Jaipur-Atrauli Khayal tradition, takes on her gharana's most demanding ragas with a command and warmth that make even the knottiest passages feel like conversation. Performer and educator Mangka Mayanglambam, one of the last living players of the pena — the Meitei court lute once forbidden to women — folds its centuries of silence and defiance into music and movement. Pianist-composer Merlin D'Souza, one of India's most celebrated voices across Bollywood, jazz and theatre, unveils a soul symphony, a mellifluous world-music tapestry, alongside sitar prodigy Chintan Katti, flautist Avadhoot Phadke, percussionist Aniruddha Shirke and festival artist-in-residence Ruby Abley on saxophone. Jasleen Kaur Monga, a voice trained in the Patiala Gharana since the age of thirteen, eases the festival awake as night surrenders to sunrise, with raag-based Shabads, chants and Nirguni bhajans. And Ambi Subramaniam, trained by his legendary father Dr. L. Subramaniam, leads Jodhpur RIFF into rare territory — a genuine onstage dialogue between Carnatic and Hindustani traditions, carried by a violin technique few his age can rival.

Old Friends, New Chapters

Finnish fiddler Emilia Lajunen — said to play 'like a village full of haunted fiddlers' — returns to the festival, and Colombian DJ Killabeatmaker is back to push last year's electric fusion with Rajasthani percussion even further. Meanwhile, Estonian duo Puuluup resurrect the near-vanished hiiu kannel through loopers and electronic effects, singing in a patchwork of tongues that trade language for pure feeling — and beyond their own set, lead a looping workshop with Rajasthani folk musicians to explore what a single instrument, ancient or otherwise, can still become.

Collaborations Built on Borrowed Time and Long Memory

One exciting collaboration involving SAZ — the trio of young Langa masters Sadiq Khan, Asin Khan and Zakir Khan Langa — with Michael McGoldrick and Donald Shaw, was born at Scotland's Celtic Connections in January. Another was ignited at Lincoln Center in June, where Martha Redbone crossed paths with SAZ during a performance of Inayat: A Duet for Four — itself a Jodhpur RIFF original — leading her to plan a partnership that will be brewed at this year's festival. In yet another, Emilia Lajunen sets her fiddle strings against SAZ member Asin Khan Langa's Sindhi sarangi — two traditions born a hemisphere apart that share one uncanny secret: both have always sounded less like instruments than like human voices remembering something.

Another fascinating collaboration this year brings together Polish singer Karolina Cicha — devoted to resurrecting her country's vanishing Tatar music — and Anita Dangi, hereditary keeper of Rajasthan's classical Rajwaadi Maand, in a meeting of two women breathing life into two significant traditions through their art.

Rajasthan, Rewritten in Its Own Voice

Under open skies at the Rao Jodha Desert Rock Park, Mir Bassu Khan of Bikaner's Mir-e-Alam community channels the Seraiki mysticism of Baba Farid, Bulleh Shah and Khwaja Ghulam Farid — devotional poetry that has outlasted every hardship history has thrown at it. Padma Shri awardee Taga Ram, fifty years into mastering the Bhil community's double flute, the alghoza, turns circular breathing into something closer to weather than music — a sound that has now travelled to thirty-five countries. Brothers Ghewar Khan and Darre Khan Manganiyar, sons of the legendary Padma Shri Sakar Khan, remain among the last true masters of the fretless kamaicha, joined onstage by brother Feroze Khan on dholak. And Asin Khan Langa, an Aga Khan Music Award recipient trained under Lakha Khan Manganiyar, has emerged as the finest living voice of the Sindhi sarangi — an instrument that comes closer to the human voice than perhaps any other string. Meanwhile, performances by over a hundred young Langa and Manganiyar artists, trained under the Mehrangarh Museum Music Projects' Folk Futures programme, signal that this legacy is being passed, voice to voice, into the next twenty years. Extraordinary women Rajasthani artists this year include Anita Dangi, Meghwal sisters Dariya and Kewal and mother-daughter duo Ganga and Sundar, keepers of a centuries-old oral lineage in Rajwadi Maand.

Theatre at Jodhpur RIFF

This year, Jodhpur RIFF steps squarely into spoken theatre for the first time with Brhannala, Adishakti Theatre's rigorous, movement-driven retelling of the Mahabharata hero Arjuna's year in disguise as a dance teacher. Originally directed by Veenapani Chawla and performed by Vinay Kumar, this meditation on Advaita finds its deepest truth in the act of transformation itself: that losing the self may be the surest way to finally find it.

About Jodhpur RIFF

Timed to coincide with Sharad Purnima, the brightest full moon of the year in North India, Jodhpur RIFF features a series of spectacular concerts and events in and around Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur. HH Maharaja Gaj Singh II of Marwar-Jodhpur is the festival's Chief Patron, and Sir Mick Jagger is its International Patron. Mr. Divya Bhatia is the Festival Director.

Jodhpur RIFF is a not-for-profit festival committed to supporting roots music traditions, held under the aegis of the Mehrangarh Museum Trust, Jodhpur.

Note to editors: Some outlets have previously treated 'RIFF' in 'Jodhpur RIFF' as an acronym for 'Rajasthan International Folk Festival.' This is inaccurate — the festival's name pairs the city of Jodhpur with the musical term 'riff,' a short, catchy, repeated phrase that often forms the structural and emotional heart of a song.

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