New Delhi, It was Independence Day in 1981 when a crowd at the Gopa Chowk in Jaisalmer was mesmerised by the melodious tunes of ‘Algoza’, a traditional double-flute woodwind instrument, played by 21-year-old Taga Ram Bheel.
Evoking the austere grandeur of Rajasthan’s desert and patriotism, the rendition proved a turning point in Bheel’s career, drawing the attention of state officials that eventually led to him performing before Indian presidents, prime ministers and foreign dignitaries.
Bheel, 66, will be conferred the Padma Shri on May 26 as one of India’s “unsung heroes” by President Droupadi Murmu, placing the desert musician within the national cultural canon, a home ministry statement said.
Born on April 17, 1960, Bheel started training under his father while grazing cattle in the Thar desert.
The performance at Gopa Chowk attracted the attention of Ustad Akbar Khan of the Ustad Arba Music Institute, Jaisalmer, who took him under his tutelage.
Bheel mastered the simultaneous control of breath and throat, producing a hypnotic, layered rhythm from the instrument which mesmerised crowds with traditional Rajasthani melodies.
From the wind-carved dunes of the Thar desert to international festivals in Europe and the United States, Bheel has spent more than five decades preserving the plaintive sound of the Algoza, a wind instrument crafted from dry “seesham” and “kair” wood.
He later received a scholarship from the Centre for Cultural Resources and Training in New Delhi. Over the decades, he became a fixture at Rajasthan’s marquee folk events, including the Desert Festival in Jaisalmer, the Pushkar Fair and the Marwar Festival in Jodhpur.
His career also acquired an international dimension.
Touring with the Musafir Group and the Ustad Arba Music Group, Bheel performed across France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Japan, Singapore and the United States, carrying the sparse, meditative cadences of the Thar into global folk circuits more commonly dominated by commercial world music ensembles.
Despite the international acclaim, Bheel remained rooted in Moolsagar, where he founded the Algoza Folk Music Institute to train young musicians and preserve a fragile musical inheritance increasingly threatened by migration, digitisation and changing cultural tastes.
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