Ambapar village is located in the Debar area of Anjar block. It was once a thriving place of Folk Music Scene and Poetry. Reyans – Folk Music evenings – were part of their lifestyle. But after the earthquake in 2001, the village never saw a Reyan again, until this day. Organising Reyan in Ambapar, after a gap of 12 years, was a very special and an emotional one for both Kala Varso and the villagers of Ambapar.
Ambapar has its own Folk music style and form. Bhajans and Lokgeet were the prominient Folk Music Forms practiced here. All the songs were sung on the traditional stringed instrument called Santar. Hence Santar occupies a very important place in the Folklore of this region. Here people don’t use other traditional Kutch instruments like Chang, Double flute (Jodia pavo), Kaafi etc.
Ambapar once had many talented Santar artists – today there are none. As a symbolic reference to this lost art, one can see a Santar enclosed in a glass case in the local temple here.
For the Folk Music evening, we invited Folk Musicians from various other blocks: Banni, Pacham, Khadir and Lakhpat to showcase to the village various other music forms of Kutch. These artists sang in Kutchi-Sindhi dialects in addition to Gujarati language. In Ambapar village, artists used to sing the Bhajan and Lokgeet songs in Gujarati mostly, and in Hindi in the later years.
They hoped that this musical evening will inspire the youth in their village to take up their traditional music roots and that the Reyans will become part of the village culture again.
A note about the Ambapar Village: A legend is that the name of the village came from a Mango tree – in Kutchi language Amba means Mango. Another legend is that it’s the name of the person called Amba bhai, who discovered this place and made settlements. The village has mainly two communities – the Rabari community of goat and sheep herders who have been nomadic traditionally; and the Ahir community – the farmers who migrated here because of the fertile lands
