Sufi Kirtan

Ghoshen’s impressions of the most recent album by the ensemble HuDost.

Dance is one of the most religious phenomena, but it has lost its meaning so completely that it has almost fallen to the opposite polarity.”
Osho, The Secret of Secrets, Vol. 2, Ch 1

All my life I have loved to dance and one of the most treasured things I received from Osho was a license to dance. I have danced in performance but my secret love is to dance in private all by myself. I dance to Mozart; I dance to Van Morrison; I dance to music that plays only in my head; I dance to exquisite silence. And recently I found something I cannot stop dancing to which is “Sufi Kirtan” by a group called HuDost. I have followed this Canadian group for several years and seen them live in concert once.

HuDost (a Turkish word) are wonderfully eclectic but I think of them primarily as a folk group with a Balkan-Middle Eastern bent and a spiritual outlook. While their other material is rather different, it gives me no surprise that they can do a fine job with Sufi music. Listening to this CD, complete with harmonium, takes me back to Pune 1 and my favourite activity there, Sufi Dancing.

“Sufi Kirtan” by HuDost (Moksha Sommer, Jemal Wade Hines and friends) was released under the label White Swan Records on August 7th, 2015 – hudost.com

Available from bandcamp.com – amazon.com – amazon.co.uk – amazon.de

Ghoshen is a regular contributor to this magazine