Entertaining Indian folk trio barely clears hurdles in time to travel 34 hours to Sunfest

A band from India got everyone dancing at Sunfest, but they almost didn’t make it to London in time. CTV’s Brent Lale has their story.

Rajasthani folk music trio SAZ had the crowd on its feet Sunday at Sunfest.

“This is the first time he’s had such a mix of an audience who danced with him to Rajasthani songs that they know, and he said they all danced very well,” band member Zakir Khan said through interpreter Divya Bhatia. “It didn’t matter whether they were white or Mexican or wherever they came from, but everyone was together and they were dancing.”

Dancing front and centre was Sunfest founder Alfredo Caxaj. He became emotional, and broke into tears describing the difficulties getting Sax to London, Ont.

“This particular year, they were rejected over and over with their Visa,” said Caxaj. “We were determined in bringing them and finally we made it. Literally they got their passports stamped three hours before their flight.”

With help from London North Centre Member of Parliament Peter Fragiskatos, they worked right down to the wire with members of SAZ waiting in India for clearance.

“Thanks to working with the MPs office here and me being in touch with the India desk office at immigration, we were able to pull it together,” said Bhatia, a music festival promoter in India who helped bring SAZ to Sunfest. “The morning that they were to fly, which would have been the day before here, was when I got an email saying, ‘Yes we’ve got it.’”

Bhatia described the hurdles they had to jump through and multiple flights to get the trio to Canada.

“Zakir collected the passports and flew from Delhi to Bombay,” said Bhatia. “Asin lives in the village, so he took 2.5 hours to get to Jaipur, then another 1.5 hours to Bombay. They had a six-hour layover, then the 3.5 hours to Dubai, 14 hours to Toronto and then three hours to London. It was about 30-34 hours the last two days of nail-biting stuff. Is it going to happen or is it not going to happen? I think there’s a movie here somewhere.”

Throughout the park over the four-day festival, music was rocking on four different stages with patrons describing it as “packed” and “shoulder-to-shoulder” on Saturday night.

As music goers found shade from the heat, the food and artisan vendors were packed.

“We’ve been blessed with beautiful weather and we’ve been breaking record numbers of people once again,” said Caxaj.

“The logistics of setting up Sunfest, it took us pretty much the whole year to put together all the aspects. It’s just an incredible team of people working behind the scenes that truly we have over 700 volunteers. We are extremely happy and delighted that this particular weekend has been just truly an incredible and magical time,” he said.

Bhatia took the mic after SAZ’s performance to praise Caxaj, and his compassion for people and culture.

“You do not know how fortunate you are to have this man, his family, his team, his supporters in London, Ontario,” Bhatia told the crowd. “Music is the only space left where it doesn’t matter what color you are, what country you come from, whether you’re a migrant or not, it doesn’t matter. Music brings us together irrespective of language and texture and Alfredo has that in him.”