Singer and Songwriter Jasleen Aulakh at Mahindra Kabira Festival 2022, Banaras || An evening of fusion spiritual performances

On Day 3 of Mahindra Kabira Festival in Benaras, the evening session was mostly about fusion music with several bands and artists performing fusion music about spirituality, love, and their own interpretations of Kabir. One of such performers was Jasleen Aulakh. 

A singer, musician, and composer, Jasleen Aulakh draws upon the folk music of Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, and Rajasthan. Apart from soulful lyrics by her mother Polly Saghera, Jasleen's music also incorporates interesting musical instruments such as the Tibetan Meditation Bowl, derbuka, djembe, cajon, xylophone, tabla, morchang/dan moi, storm drums, etc.  

Saumya Kulshrestha's introduction of Aulakh had me really looking forward to this performance. The performance started to loud cheers by the audience. Dressed in all black with a bright pink dupatta for accent, Aulakh looked all set to set the stage on fire.

Apart from Hindi and Punjabi, Aulakh has also recorded songs in Urdu, English, and French. In fact, she has also studied French language. Her first Punjabi album was Polly's Diaries, which was based on the romantic lyrics penned by her mother. 

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However, I believe there was some problem with her audio settings that day during the Kabira Festival and her voice wasn't as clear as was expected and as a result we had trouble following her words. At first, we thought may be this is her accent, but later when we listened to her over the Internet, we realized that it isn't a usual occurrence.  So may be the sound test should have caught this issue. 

Apart from her guitar, Aulakh also used a meditation bowl and a harmonica during her performance. Also, the musician accompanying her were very good. Aulakh sang about spirituality, love, remembrance and other profound topics. Her performance was the one before the last of the evening and at that time, audience were still full of energy. We, however, had to leave and couldn't stay for the entire evening. 

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The next performance was going to be by The Raghu Dixit Project. We have seen Raghu Dixit's performance in the past and would have loved to stay for it, but it was getting late and Banaras goes to sleep really early. So we headed back to our hotel.