We do not want the boy to stop singing [Pearl of the Desert in the DocFilmMusic competition]

22.06.2020
We do not want the boy to stop singing [Pearl of the Desert in the DocFilmMusic competition]

"Pearl of the Desert" is a poetic film and at the same time – unpretentious. A desert story about a boy from the Muslim Manganiar community who wants to fulfill his big dream and become a musician. One of the best music documents of the recent years.

First of all, it is truly musical, not only in content, but also in form. The extensive, with no dialogue, film sequences create the space for the moving songs that the film characters sing. Rajasthan is famous for its musical heritage, which has flourished for centuries only thanks to its rich patrons. In the film, the moving voice of twelve-year-old Moti favors contemplation of the sun and desert, the exotic landscape intrigues us, gives a special context to the local music, we receive it also very sensually, almost feeling the heat vibrating in the air.

Moti, however, dreams about something more than making music on the sand, he wants to be on stage. To achieve this, he must go a long way to officially learn music, and then to gain the opportunity to perform in public. Education is nothing what we know from our European school system – the teaching is mainly oral, the are no funds to run a regular school, the children are used to support their parents in farm work. Despite this, Moti manages to go abroad together with his peers from the band, and to record traditional songs in a studio.

He returns to his village as a hero, nobody asks him anymore, for what he will live as a musician, and some even ask him to never give up his passion. And he does not really has to - music is the local heartbeat, it accompanies the population during their simple everyday activities, and this happens to be the best form of education, the natural, unconstrained one, strongly connected with the spirit of a multi-generational community.

It is difficult to say what determines that the artistic film made by the director and actor Pushpendra Singh is perhaps the strongest position in this year's list of the International DocFilmMusic Competition. Is it the boy's voice or the affirmation of the community singing, the intuition, the improvisation, the tradition and communication with nature, the phenomenal landscapes or the slow rhythm of the story, which is viewed like a fairy tale from far sides? The story is simple, but it is told sensitively and with good sense of situation, with love for the hero and his songs.

The cultural observation mixes here with a kind of film meditation. One can not only be deep in gazing at “Pearl of the Desert”, but also deep in listening to it, nobody interrupts this listening with any quick interviews, any avalanche of encyclopedic information, neither with any video clips, nor with any creative experiments on the verge of visual exaltation, or with more or less sophisticated anecdotes or narcissistic commentaries by performing artists, who often are co-producers of films about themselves, especially when they can promote their newly released CDs at such occasions.

Of course, many of the music films using such tools are outstanding or at least cognitively interesting, sometimes they are very well thought out and - what is important - they are distinguished by a clear concept of their authors. However, a small boy from the desert with a heart-catching voice will always win in such a competition, we want to support just him, he does not need to be anybody known. And this is probably the strength of the musical document. When we look at Moti, it is enough that he is and we very much want him not to stop singing.

(Maja Baczyńska, translated by Władysław Rokiciński)

POLISH VERSION HERE

 

Wszystkie treści na PrestoPortal.pl czytasz za darmo. Jesteśmy niezależnym, rzetelnym, polskim medium. Jeśli chcesz, abyśmy takim pozostali, wspieraj nas - zostań stałym czytelnikiem kwartalnika Presto. Szczegóły TUTAJ.

Jeśli jesteś organizatorem życia muzycznego, artystycznego w Polsce, wydawcą płyt, przedstawicielem instytucji kultury albo po prostu odpowiedzialnym społecznie przedsiębiorcą - wspieraj Presto reklamując się na naszych łamach.

Więcej informacji:

Teresa Wysocka , teresa.wysocka [at] prestoportal.pl

Drogi użytkowniku, zaloguj się aby móc komentować nasze treści.