The brief was the sound of the Thar after dark — a Manganiyar-style folk-music night around a fire — composed the way Marwar painters set a night gathering. It works because the grammar is already there: a central fire, the performer raised above it, the musicians ringed around, the dunes and a fort holding the back of the scene. We kept the cast to a dancer and a handful of players — a kamaicha bowed at left, a dholak, a string instrument and khartal clappers at right — and let the open amber dunes, the camel caravan and the crescent moon carry the night. The lapis sky is the cool note against the fire's orange and the golden sand; everything that would crowd the circle has been left to the desert.