Strumming for Social Change

Anurag Hoon (center) is one of the co-founders of Manzil Mystics, a band and an NGO that jammed with the U.S. Army Japan Band. (Photograph by Krittika Sharma)

Anurag Hoon was already associated with Manzil—an after-school alternative learning center in New Delhi—when he left for Edmonds College in Washington under a U.S. Department of State-sponsored scholarship program. He returned to India a year later and created his nonprofit that uses music as a tool for inclusive education. In seven years, the nonprofit has reached over 300,000 children.

Hoon and his team, most of whom are alumni of the U.S. State Department’s Community College Initiative (CCI) Program, run the nonprofit Manzil Mystics Foundation. The foundation is dedicated to ensuring that children at all learning stages receive music education. They also operate a commercial band by the same name, performing songs inspired by the ideas of Kabir and Gandhi.

This year, the co-founders, along with students and musicians from the NGO, had the opportunity to jam with the U.S. Army Japan (USARJ) Band. The collaboration culminated in a two-hour concert hosted in the Manzil Mystics mobile recording studio.

The CCI connect

Alongside Hoon, the core team of Manzil Mystics—the band and the Manzil Mystics Foundation—consists of co-founders Reshma Arya, Neeraj Arya and Niti Pandey, as well as Ankit Mandal, Himanshu Bhatt and Shahbaaz. All members, except Shahbaaz, are alumni of the CCI Program.

The CCI Program provides scholarships to spend up to one academic year at a U.S. community college. Participants build technical skills and may earn certificates in their fields of study. Through professional internships, service learning and community engagement activities, they strengthen English language proficiency and immerse themselves in the culture and day-to-day life in the United States.

Hoon says that the CCI scholarship was the force that brought the current core team together. “Music was doing something for us and we started becoming aware of it after returning from our CCI scholarships,” says Hoon, who also serves as the CEO of Manzil Mystics. The alumni decided to do something for the community, related to music, after discovering that 80 percent of children in New Delhi did not have access to music education.

“By 2016, we realized that not a single NGO was working to ensure that every child in the learning stages gets music as a subject,” he remembers. “The ones that were, were not working on scale. We decided to do something and registered the Manzil Mystics Foundation as a nonprofit in 2017.”

The CCI Program was integral in helping Hoon understand the true meaning of community leadership and the value of volunteering. “The most important lesson I learned during the CCI Program was leadership and its impact on a community,” he says. “It made me understand that I need to take leadership in anything that affects my community.”

The extended Manzil team comprises music students associated with the NGO. “All members of the NGO are musicians from low-income families and have been students of Manzil Mystics. Our work culture is also very alive,” says Hoon.

U.S. Army Japan Band visit

The USARJ Band, a military band comprising musician-soldiers stationed in Japan, visited India for the U.S. Independence Day celebration in the summer of 2023. The USARJ Band regularly performs a variety of music for military, bilateral and public relations functions for the Japanese public as well as the American community in Japan.

During their visit to India, they spent two days with the students and musicians of Manzil Mystics—an experience Hoon describes as nothing less than “brilliant.”

“They jammed with us, created music and showed our students how to be creative on the spot,” explains Hoon. “The students learned in those jamming sessions what we cannot teach them in a year.”

The cultural exchange between the musicians of Manzil Mystics and the USARJ Band was nothing short of mesmerizing. The Manzil musicians and soldiers harmonized, sang together and created music on the spot—sometimes improvising to play Bollywood and Hollywood numbers to the beat of the drum.

It was a beautiful opportunity for the music students, offering much more beyond the confines of musical notes. “They showed them the possibilities of what they can become,” says Hoon.