Jodhpur RIFF 2026: Roots Musicians To Shine At Mehrangarh This October

This October—from the 22nd to the 26th, timed as always to coincide Sharad Purnima, the year's brightest full moon—Jodhpur RIFF, the spectacular roots music festival held under the aegis of the Mehrangarh Museum Trust, marks two decades with one of its most diverse editions yet.

Roots music stars from a dozen-odd countries, including Colombia, Chile, Cabo Verde, Poland, Scotland and Estonia, among others, will perform at Jodhpur RIFF 2026. On stage will be folk musicians from Rajasthan as well as other Indian states—over 250 of them, from the Manganiyar, Langa, Meghwal, Bhopa, Kalbelia, Meena, Bhil and other communities.

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Jodhpur RIFF, Chief Patron Maharaja Gajsingh II of Marwar-Jodhpur says, “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...Here, the universal language of music resonates and is lovingly shared, relationships and networks are built, and revival and innovation are nourished.”

Festival Director Divya Bhatia emphasises that Rajasthan's artists have always been the festival's lodestone and that hasn't changed in 20 years. "What we have built painstakingly at Jodhpur RIFF, with international, Indian and Rajasthani artists, is a platform, an equal playing field and much more," Bhatia says. "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."

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, 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.

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.

Martha Redbone and Aaron Whitby, vital, urgent voices in America’s roots music scene, bring The Martha Redbone Roots Project—a fusion of Appalachian roots, gospel, blues and indigenous tradition that The New Yorker called "a brilliant collision of cultures".

The Book of Queens makes its India premiere with 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, it is 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, lush musical legacy of the archipelago—the morna and coladeira rhythms of island life.

Indian Legends and Maestros

Padma Shri vocalist Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande, torchbearer of the Jaipur-Atrauli Khayal tradition, takes on her gharana's most demanding ragas. 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—an 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. 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 also lead a looping workshop with Rajasthani folk musicians to explore what a single instrument, ancient or otherwise, can still become.

Collaborations

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, 50 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 35 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. 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 on, voice to voice, into the next 20years.

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

Jodhpur RIFF 2026 steps 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.