As Ustad Salam Jafar plays the bow-like wonder in his hand, the clutch of youngsters in front of him breaks into a gentle sway. The 62-year-old smiles because he knows exactly how they must feel. The malunga-a stringed instrument made from the intestines of a goat-has that kind of salubrious effect. A paradox of sorts in a place like Zainabad in Surendranagar district close to the Little Rann of Kutch in Gujarat, an area known for its wild asses.

NOTEWORTHY: Malunga ustads try to win over youngsters to music

The soothing strain of the malunga, however, is not the only reason that makes the occasion so special. For those who have assembled, it is also a rare journey into the past. Part of an ancient African negroid tribe, the Siddis, as they call themselves, have indeed traversed a long way. Their ancestors belonged to a Sufi cult and came to Gujarat to work as slaves and guards many centuries ago. Today, the 18,000-odd remaining members of the community are as much a section of the Gujarati fabric as the rest of the locals. When Jafar-the head priest at the tomb of a Siddi saint, Baba Ghorsaab and one of the only six malunga-playing Siddis left in the state-starts playing, a sense of deja vu descends on the gathering. For a tribe that has always prided itself on having music and dance in its blood, the realisation that it is on the verge of extinction suddenly becomes difficult to digest.

Thankfully, however, all has not been lost. In what has come as a welcome surprise, a concerted effort is being made to revive not just the malunga but other forgotten Sufi instruments like the nanga and jeja too. And that is precisely why the group of Siddis are huddled together in a week-long workshop.

Initiated recently by Amy Catline, a musicologist from the ethnomusicology department of the University of California at Los Angeles, and Dhanraj Malik, son of the former nawab of Zainabad, the workshop roped in Jafar and five other malunga ustads to teach youngsters in the community who had taken up other vocations. Among them were the children of the ustads themselves.

It all began in 1976 when a department of the famed Smithsonian Institute, US, asked Catline's Indian Khoja Muslim husband, Nazir Jairazbhoy-also the founder of the department she works in-to get a distinct cultural group to perform at the bicentenary celebrations of the United States at Washington DC. Jairazbhoy, who had done extensive research on Sufi music, zeroed in on the Siddis of Karachi to do the needful.

It didn't take long for Jairazbhoy's interest in the Siddis' music to rub on Catline too. The community's sizeable presence in Gujarat drew her to Zainabad where she was pained to see a rich music tradition under serious threat. While a variety of drums like damama, musindo and mugarman were still being played by professional musical and dance bands of the Siddis here, the stringed instruments were fast being forgotten.

The nanga could be found only in some shrines like the tomb of Baba Ghorsaab in Ratanpur near Rajpipla visited by Siddis from Maharashtra and Karnataka during the annual Urs celebrations. There is none, however, in the community who plays the nanga any longer. Similarly the jeja, an African version of the tamboura, has also gone extinct. Baba Badshah Juma, a Siddi who recently migrated to Mumbai from Surat, is reportedly the only member of the community with a specimen of this stringed instrument.

Catline, however, is determined to change all that. Last year, she got a four-month research project sanctioned by the American Institute of Indian Studies to prepare a CD on the various Siddi musical instruments. With the help of some elders in the community, she painstakingly recorded their history. Now she is looking at their future. "We are going step by step," she explains. "First it will be the revival of the malunga, then the other instruments."

Her enthusiasm is fast rubbing on to others. Mid-way through the Zainabad workshop itself, there were several youths who were convinced about the need to popularise the malunga. Says Abdul Hamid Yakub, considered one of the best dancers in the Siddi community: "We are hopeful that our Siddi Sufi music tradition will not only survive but flower all over again." The strains certainly sound promising.