JollyGul.com is an independently run website which is a curated search engine for all types of Ismaili music – ginans, qasidas, geets, contemporary and more. The principal goal is to make search, exploration and discovery easier for Ismaili music. We also intend to provide a platform to make participation and collaboration easier for the Community for all types of Ismaili music.
The Gulamani Family owns and runs this as a service and it is not for profit. It is operated with a sense of “Trust” on behalf of the Ismaili Community. But it is not an official Ismaili Community website.
JollyGul RADIO streams Ismaili music 24/7/365 and can be heard globally on your desktop, tablet or smart phones.
You can access the player on our Home Page at JollyGul.com or download JollyGul Radio App on your Android or iPhone.
Listen to Ginans (with and without music), Geets, Qasidas, Contemporary & Fusion Music.
App for Android Smart Phones from Google Play (free):
App Name: JollyGul
Platform: Android
Download URL
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.radio.m58dddd067
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For iPhones, download URL for Apple App Store (free):
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jollygul/id1439085525?ls=1&mt=8
The website and platform has been launched in memory of Alijah Gulamhusein Gulamani, our family patriach. He passed away in 2015 and lived his last years of his life in the USA. He had expressed his wish that the family do all it can to promote and keep alive the Ginan tradition and especially amongst the younger commnunity members.
After his passing, the family added music to Ginans he had recited,, in his memory as well as to increase it’s appeal to younger community members.
In 2018, The Diamond Jubilee Celebration Year of Mawlana Hazar Imam, we are taking this leap of launching the JollyGul.com platform in line with Alijah Gulamhusein Gulamani’s wish that the family to do all it can to keep alive and promote the ginan and music tradition in the community. We are bringing modern platform and collaboration technology to see how we can, as a Community, promote and develop all types of Ismaili music and take it to the next level.
Alijah Gulamhusein Gulamani was a very jovial person and always enjoyed a good laugh. His American neighbors who always loved to chit chat with him, would have a problem pronouncing his name. That’s how he got his nickname “JollyGul”.
No, not all..
Even though our goal and focus is Ismaili music, we would love everyone to enjoy and participate. Music is a universal language and a great bridge-builder. We would love to find ways to make musical connections with other faiths and traditions as one of our core objectives.
Registration is not required to use the website if you just wish to search, explore and enjoy our content. However, if you wish to upload any audio files to our servers or download ringtones, you will have to register and log in.
Also, if you wish to be on our email list, then you would have to subscribe and give us consent to periodically send you email messages. This is separate and different from registering. You do need need to register to receive emails from us, we just need consent.
The best way to reach us is through one of our website forms.
There is a Contact Form and Link Submission Form.
We will try to respond to you as soon as possible.
You can reach us through our JollyGul-Connectwebpage and tell us what you have in mind.
We specifically welcome ideas and suggestions about content development and platform development strategies that would help us address our goals of ginan promotion within our community and in making musical connections with other faiths and cultures.
Our mission is to promote the Ismaili music culture within the community as well as share it outside for everybody to enjoy it.
We do this in 3 ways:
1) We run Jollygul.com which is a search and discovery website for all types of Ismaili music – ginans, qasidas, geets, contemporary and fusion music.
2) JollyGul RADIO streams Ismaili music 24/7/365 and can be accessed globally through the Internet on desktop computers, smart phones and Amazon Echo (Alexa) devices.
3) We produce some music ourselves as well where we see an opportunity to present a new approach or idea.
JollyGul.com operates independently and is not affiliated to any official Ismaili organization. It is not-for-profit and the goal is to promote the Ismaili music culture amongst the community members and to find ways to make musical connections with other faiths, traditions and genres.
If you have any ideas that fit our overall mission and strategies mentioned above and would like to share them with us or need some help or collaboration for a specific effort, please feel free to contact us using the form on the JollyGul-Connect Page
Ringtones are available from our Ringtones webpage free of charge. You will need to download the Android or iPhone version depending on the type of phone you have.
For installing steps on Android phone, here is a helpful link:
https://www.wikihow.tech/Add-Ringtones-to-an-Android-Phone
For iPhones, this link will be useful:
https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/iphone/how-set-song-iphone-ringtone-3635061/
JollyGul Videos is our YouTube Channel where you can find high definition videos that are produced exclusively by ourselves.
JollyGul.com our website, on the other hand, indexes and features videos and audios that are in the public domain produced by community members. The goal here is to make search, discovery, promotion and collaboration easier.
JollyGul RADIO which a separate free service, streams some of the best of the audios in the public domain produced by the community members. The objective here is to make music produced by community members easily accessible globally 24/7/365.
We have organized content by genre (ginans, geets, qasidas etc) as well by media type (video or audio).
There are 3 main media sections – YouTube videos, SoundCloud Audios and JollyGul hosted audios that play from our servers.
All content has composer and artist’s name where available.
The goal is to make search, exploration and discovery easy for all types of Ismaili music.
The best way to know what is going on at JollyGul RADIO is to visit the radio web page. You will know what is playing right now, what will come next as well as last 10 titles played.
If there are any special programs on schedule, this is where you will get the most current information.
You will also find links to download our Android and iPhone Radio Apps on the webpage. And we plan to add new interactive features for the radio in the near future such as ginan, geet requests etc. which will be initiated from the same page. Stay tuned!
JollyGul RADIO can be heard free on Alexa devices by enabling the JollyGul RADIO Skill.
Go to http://JollyGulRadio.com and click on the link to the Amazon Skill Store (this can be found at the bottom of our webpage) and “Enable Skill” once you are on the Amazon Skill Store. That’s all.
Just invoke: “Alexa, start JollyGul RADIO ” and start enjoying best of the best selection of ginans, geets, qasidas, contemporary and fusion Ismaili music from across the community on your Alexa device.
The word “ginanify” is from ginans. Ginan word comes from Sanskrit: jñana, meaning “knowledge”. Ginans are devotional hymns or poems recited by Ismailis.
By saying “Ginanify Your Life” we are telling ourselves two things:
1) Let us bring the knowledge, age-old wisdom, devotion and melodies from our ginans into our lives. This is at one level.
2) However, there is a deeper esoteric meaning and interpretation to everything physical in life as a central tenet of Ismaili faith. So by saying “Ginanify” we also mean bring knowledge and intellect to bear on the journey to spiritual pursuit of truth.
Ismailism does not take the pursuit of progress in the material world and spiritual inquiry as mutually exclusive -they both have to be pursued vigorously at the same time and they should both inform and enrich each other. They are not in conflict.
So by enjoying the ginans, hopefully we will benefit at that deeper, spiritual level as well.
Certainly. Your wish is our command!
You can make a request on our JollyGul RADIO Request Webpage. You can request 1 title every hour with a maximum of 3 per day.
Here is the link to the request webpage:
Unfortunately not.
At present, Alexa Skills available only in these countries:
USA
Canada
UK
Australia
India
Beyond these countries, it may still be possible to make Alexa Skills work but without country localization and with some workaround. And the above list changes all the time, so check with Amazon.com and also with your local friends.
JollyGul RADIO is a radio station that plays all types of Ismaili music. So you can not choose and pick what you want to listen to, like on any radio station. The advantage is you can passively listen to a wide variety of hand picked music and be pleasantly surprised (sometimes) to hear something you have never heard before. And you do not have to select after every song what you want to play next. Also, you are part of a large audience listening to the same music.
To listen to ginans (without music, as recited in Jamatkhanas), our Ginans-On-Demand service will work better for you.
Ginans-On-Demand service caters specifically to the preference of those who wish to listen only to ginans without music, as recited in Jamatkhanas.
The ginans stream from the JollyGul.com server and can be accessed through a custom audio player on the GinansOnDemand.com webpage.
This service allows you to select titles from a playlist and start, pause, skip, forward, rewind, stop – you are in full control! There is also an ability to search – by title, composer or reciter and play those ginans. Or you can let the audio player play ginans at random from the playlist.
Ginans-On-Demand service is separate from JollyGul RADIO which plays all types of Ismaili music – ginans with and without instruments, geets, qasidas, modern and fusion music.
We do have Android and iPhone Smartphone Apps for JollyGul RADIO which can be downloaded with links provided on our radio webpage.
At present we do not have Apps for our Ginans-On-Demand Service. It is on our development things to-do list for 2019 and we hope get to it sooner rather than later.
However both JollyGul RADIO and Ginans-On-Demand webpages are mobile friendly (fully responsive) so you should have no problem accessing the services with your smartphone browser.
At present, our services touch 5 different areas:
1) JollyGul.com website now facilitates search and discovery for all types of Ismaili music.
2) JollyGul RADIO streams Ismaili music and is globally accessible 24/7/365 on the computer, smartphone and Alexa device.
3) Ginans-On-Demand service caters to those who wish to listen to ginans without music as recited in Jamatkhanas at their convenience.
4) JollyGul Videos produces audiovisual content to celebrate special occasions as well as ginan music videos that display lyrics and translations.
5) KalameMawla.com is an on demand service with a custom designed and developed audio player that also displays synchronized lyrics and translations.
Now you said you wanted “few words” so we kept it at that 🙂
However, if you wish to get more details, you can visit our Services webpage.
We are an independently operating Ismaili Music Service. Anything in this field is in our area of interest.
Our primary goal is to create features and offer services to the Jamat for its enjoyment, learning and inspiration.
We also hope to use music to bring us all closer together and to build bridges with other communities and faiths.
More specifically, our development plans are guided by what we hear from our community and what we feel the Jamat will enjoy and appreciate. Recently we added a Ginans-On-Demand service and Kalame Mawla service based on this feedback.
In this fast moving digital era, we need to be agile to be relevant. So it is a continuously monitored situation to see what the Jamat prefers. If something falls in our area of interest and competence, we will go for it.
In 2019 and beyond, in addition to keeping our ears open to what the Jamat is telling us, we plan to:
1) Explore how we can develop our platform to facilitate teaching and learning of Ismaili Music
2) Study how we can get more engagement and active participation from the Jamat (all age groups)
3) Present more of our ginans, geets, Kalame Mawla and qasida verses to the Jamat with synchronized lyrics and English translations for enhanced understanding, enjoyment and in an effort to reach out to a wider audience
4) Look into what we can do to encourage more creative output (supply) from Ismaili artists
JollyGul.com has a Kalame Mawla on demand service with a custom designed and developed audio player that also displays synchronized lyrics and translations.
Kalame Mawla is a poem of 327 verses, composed in Hindi, whose content is inspired by sayings, speeches and sermons of Hazrat Imam Ali – our first Imam.
Lyrics and translations are displayed in the specially designed audio player as the poetry is recited with the goal of enhancing the understanding and enjoyment of the verses and to potentially reach out to a much wider audience.
Here is the link to the service.