Lunch Hour: When Music Talks In the Capital Via “ARIFA”

A Mind blowing And A very Goose bumpy Ancient musical tradition from the Middle East and Balkans blended with jazz and contemporary improvised music through a Western set of mind now reaches across the oceans all the way to INDIA.

ARIFA’s secret lies in the creative chemistry between its four members.

From Bulgaria- Zhivko Vasilev, Playing Kaval, from Hungary- Bence Huszar Playing Cello, from Turkey and from Netherlands-Sjahin During, Playing Percussion and Lastly from Germany-Franz von Chossy playing Piano. Their music is just as diverse as their origins, moving from traditional Turkish and Balkan sounds to jazz and contemporary music.

ARIFA was founded back in 2010 by percussionist Sjahin During. Since the day of the Bands formation till date they have performed in 28 countries worldwide and 5 continents at international festivals and venues.

They recently are performing in India.  The First one was in Jodhpur on 07^th October,2022 at the Jodhpur Riff Festival , Secondly they performed in Bangalore on 11^th October, 2022 at the  Indo-German International Jazz Week followed By their recent performance in the Captial New Delhi.

The Performance was at The Piano Man Jazz Club, Opp Deer Park, Safdarjung Enclave, New Delhi, on 14^th October, 2022. The Owner  of the club Mr Arjun Sagar Gupta a very humble by nature person himself hosted ARIFA’s performance making the Friday Eve a truly mesmerizing and an unforgettable one.

As a Journalist I got a chance to interact with the band members each of them with a different level of talent but one common trait of all was their polite and friendly nature and it was too over whelming.

A Great Band with an aim as high as Grammy Awards still with an appreciable characteristics that of a friend.

Their CD ’Beyond Babylon’ were released in 2010,

“Anatolian Alchemy’ in 2012,

“Voices from the East” in 2014 and

Fourth album “Secret Poetry” in 2019.

They were consecutively awarded the title “best world music release” in the Netherlands to five star reviews and highly acclaimed internationally.