Beat of India Series: Volume 6 – Kajri Songs of the Indian Monsoon

Monsoon Days by Mopasang Valath

It has been argued that the origins of kajrī can be traced back to the age of the Purāṇa-s, the dating of which is highly controversial and can be placed approximately around the IV-V century (Piano 2000: 219).

There is no consensus about the literary antecedents of the genre. It has been claimed that references to kajrī seem to have first appeared in the Bhaviṣya-purāṇa⁵⁴ (Prasad 1987: 67). Here god Kṛṣṇa describes the rituals that should be observed on the occasion of Haryālī tīj. It is prescribed to perform a pūjā, narrate auspicious stories, and sing songs throughout the night. Having celebrated all the rituals typical of a jāgaraṇ, at sunrise women would bathe in any sacred water body. The observance described in the Bhaviṣya- purāṇa actually seems to refer to Harithālikā tīj also known as celebrated on the third day (tṛtīyā) of the bright fortnight (śukla pakṣa) of the month of Bhādrapada, whereas Kajarī tīja (H. Kajrī tīj) occurs on the third day (tṛtīyā) of the dark fortnight (kṛṣṇa pakṣa) of the month of Bhādoṁ.

According to some scholars, the origins of kajrī are linked to the Śakti pūjā or Gaurī pūjā (Jain 2014: 8). This celebration—a spring festival of harvest—is dedicated to Mahāgaurī, the eighth among Navadurgā-s that is worshipped on the eighth day of Navarātri. On this occasion, women observe a ritual fast that lasts eighteen days. It is a prominent festivity also known as Maṅgalā Gaur and it occurs on Tuesdays (maṅgalvār) in the month of Sāvan. It is believed to be a particularly auspicious occasion for newly married women who perform the pūjā of a Śiva liṅga, praying for the well-being of their spouse and family. It is prescribed for brides to follow this practice for the first five years of marriage. The celebration includes an evening get-together of married women who regale each other with folk tales, traditional games, and typical songs. Young brides are asked to sing so-called ukhāne, improvised compositions in which the wife is not supposed to directly utter the name of her husband, but she has to skilfully intertwine it in rhymed couplets.

The several references to the character of Kṛṣṇa and the numerous episodes of his worldly life provide evidence of a close association of kajrī with vaiṣṇava devotional music. Ultimately, music is a very important component of Kṛṣṇa’s worship, in which a pivotal role is played by the mādhurya bhakti that acquires different features according to the sampradāya or vaiṣṇava religious tradition related to Kṛṣṇa. For instance, in the Vallabhā sampradāya or puṣṭi-mārga (‘the path of grace’), the rāslīlā is an integral part of worship.

The genre of kajrī—as its related intermediate forms—is highly diversified into a wide variety of musical expressions, from folk to the more art-oriented ones.

Kajrī is believed to have been born and developed in the area of Mirzapur, in Uttar Pradesh, the location of the famous temple of Vindhyachal. From its original nucleus, the genre spread to other districts of Uttar Pradesh and was cultivated, especially in Varanasi. Mīrzāpurī (alternatively spelt mirjapurī, according to a phonetic trend typical of eastern Hindi forms) and banārsī kajrī are considered ‘proper kajrī’, besides being the most popular and prominent styles of the genre. According to the geographical area, kajrī developed different stylistic features, thematic contents, and musical peculiarities. The genre enjoyed a great diffusion and popularity even in big urban centres, such as Mumbai and Kolkata. In this regard, it is possible to recognise quite different styles in local languages, like the so-called kalkatiyā kajrī and mumbaiyā kajrī distinct from the styles typical of Uttar Pradesh (Prasad 1987: 67).

The above paragraphs are from a rich PhD thesis by Erika Caranti, a German national and scholar. If you have interest in karji, caiti, lavni and other forms of north Indian folk music it is an incredible source of information.

Broadly speaking for the general reader and listener, kajri refers to songs that are sung during the monsoons/rainy season. The most popular examples of the Kajri, a folk song based on the rains, can be found in the Bhojpuri language, but there are similar songs in the sister languages of Awadhi, Maithili, etc. The word ‘Kajri’ comes from ‘kajal’ or kohl, referring to the dark colour of the clouds, which look almost as if they have been smeared with kohl. One also finds a reference to this in the popular phrase ‘kajrare nain’ or dark, kohl-smeared eyes, immortalised in several pieces of music and poetry, as well as in Bollywood songs (think ‘Kajra Re‘ from the soundtrack of Bunty and Babli).

BoIK

Beat of India Series: Volume 5 – Chamba Shepherd’s Songs

Gaddi man with goat

The Gaddi Scheduled Tribe is a semi-nomadic Tribe situated in the high Himalayas of Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir. The Gaddis constitute a sizeable tribal population of Himachal Pradesh who mainly dwell around the Dhauladhar mountain range, Chamba, Bharmaur and the areas near Dharamshala. In Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) they are concentrated in Doda, Bhaderwah, Kathua, Udhumpar and Ramban. They speak a dialect known as Gaddi and their main occupation is just grazing their sheep & goats and preparing khadi (home spun) clothes.

This fifth volume of the Beat of India Series highlights a typical part of their culture–the songs of shepherds. Rajender Singh and Saranu Ram are Gaddis from the Chamba region of the Indian State of Himachal Pradesh.

Interestingly, nomadic herding communities such as the Gaddi were categorized (and maligned) by British colonial scholars as being largely predatory bandits and cattle rustlers who were ultimately to be subjugated. In their theories and academic papers these ancient tribes were either ignored or marginalised. In recent decades scholars have begun to explore these communities with more empathy and investigate them in their own right, trying to understand their own inner structures and dynamics and how they relate to the larger settled agricultural people of India (or which ever country they find themselves living in).

Professor Mahesh Sharma is a preeminent scholar of the Gaddi people and is based at Punjab University in Chandigarh, India. He has written many papers on the Gaddi, their society, culture, religious practice and festivals. I have made some of them available here and as you listen to this music you can also learn about the Gaddi.

These songs are pure folk–with subject matter than references various aspects of their environment and world: gods and goddesses, festivals and the landscape.

Well done to Beat of India for preserving this precious bit of Indian folk culture (lok sanskriti) for posterity.

CHAMBA

Beat of India Series: Volume 4 – Bol ni Chhakiye

Continuing with this series we find ourselves back in the musical wonderland of Punjab. This collection is a very nice sampling of Punjabi folk singing with its unique and bold approach to percussion.

By way of introduction I am sharing just a few words from Gibb Schreffler, Associate Professor of Music & Ethnomusicology at Pomona College in California. He was the guest editor for a special music number of The Journal of Punjab Studies (downloadable here) that is an invaluable resource for all sorts of information about the music of that great South Asian culture.

“…all Punjabi communities make music in the Amateur World of performance, as indeed the  music (broadly conceived) is more or less participatory and for one’s peers. However, these people are not “musicians” per se. The professional performance of music—that which is exclusionary, specialized, and/or for profit—has customarily been associated with or confined to particular communities that cohere according to one or another ethnic(caste/tribe/clan) identity. I call these “performer communities.” Some of these communities are associated primarily with music, while others are those in which music performance may occur, but it does not have a strong bearing on the group’s identity
as such. These communities stand in contrast to those who implicitly or explicitly reject public performance as a viable or socially appropriate behavior for their members.

The vast majority of professional musicians belong to the Scheduled Castes—indeed, they are among the most marginalized of them—or to the bureaucratic category of Backwards Castes. The general principal is that, regardless of the high degree of respect individual musicians may garner, the communities from which they come are overwhelmingly
those to whom society has given the lowest status. The question of the reason for an apparent correlation between being a musician and being of ‘low’ social status in South Asia (and beyond) is one of general philosophical interest that cannot be answered here.

Although individuals from the three major religious faiths do perform music professionally, relatively very few Sikhs (the majority religious community in the Indian state) perform music as an occupation. This activity largely consists of serving as sacred “musicians in gurdwaras or, more recently, as singers in the popular music industry. According to my theory of worlds of performance, these “exceptions” can be explained by the devotional intent of the first context and the mediated and modern mode of the second. The real explanation of the
statistical fact of few Sikh professional musicians is that fewer Sikhs belong to the ‘low’ status performer communities from which the musicians historically and customarily come.
In all, one will find the communities to which professional musicians belong to be the least well known, whether in popular imagination or scholarly writing. The following briefly introduces several of these performer communities. The bias is towards groups in the Indian Punjab, as those are the ones among whom I have done the most ethnographic work.
Dom
Dom is a widely distributed ethnic term in South Asia. The Dom are not a caste, rather, their historical presence suggests they once constituted a large scale tribe or what one might conversationally call a “race.” Specific reference to the Dom people occurs by the 2nd century BCE (Ghurye1969:313). Persian scholar al-Biruni (early 11^th century) noted that the Dom were among those peoples located outside of and ranked beneath the four main classes of Indian society. Their occupation was to sing and play a lute (1919:101″2). Al-Biruni’s contemporary writer, Gardizi, mentioned a class of people called “Dunbi,” most likely the Dom. They were described in his writing as ‘black-skinned players on stringed instruments and dancers’ who occupied an untouchable class of society (Minorsky 1964:202-3). Throughout South Asia the Dom practice such professions as scavenger, executioner, basket-maker, musician, blacksmith, leatherworker, weaver—in short, occupations considered menial. One might speculate that the bulk of the castes that have been considered untouchable had their origin in some larger Dom base. In any case, the Dom are of nearly universal low social status.

One of the Punjabi branches of the Dom, locally called Dum, constitute a fairly distinct group from the larger ‘race’ as known in the rest of South Asia. The people best known as Dum in Punjab are hereditary musicians, bards, or genealogists. In fact, though the phenomenon of Dom people as musicians is wide spread, it may have its origins in the greater Punjab region (see Schreffler 2010:105). Importantly, the idea of Dom as a large-scale people or tribe engaged in many occupations underscores the fact that the occupation of musician overlaps with other occupations and duties, such as tailor, barber, circumciser, and basket-maker.

The Dum of the greater Punjab area were Jacks of several trades. Compare for example the role of the Dum in Pathan society, which extended to many rituals. During wedding rites of
the Khattak Pathans of the 19^th century, Dums acted as go-betweens or assistants. Rose recorded that when the bride was taken to her husband’s home, a Dum rode along on the pony with her (1911:531), saying that ‘The Dum is throughout an important person and is fed on all occasions’ (ibid.:532).

The descendants of the Dum, spread among several sub-castes, make up an important community in Punjab. However, people are fairly unaware of them, in part due to the fact that the over-broad (and often regarded as pejorative) term “Dum” is rarely used. Musicians that appear to be from the larger Dum stock are currently divided among at least
three separate communities: Jogi, Mahasha, and Mirasi.” [To read further about these and other musician groups get the whole article).

BoIBNC

Beat of India Series: Volume 3 – Folks Songs of Malwa

Rama and Laksmana Attack the Demon Ravana
Ramayana – Malwa, 1640 A.D.

Among the most important Miniature paintings to be produced by the Malwa School in the 17th Century are those illustrating a Rasikapriya manuscript from 1634 A.D., a series from the Amaru Sataka painted in 1652 A.D. in Nasratgarh, and a Ragamala series produced in 1680 A.D. at Narsyanga Shah. The Malwa School of painting existed for a relatively short period of time, ending around the end of the 17th Century.

Typical characteristics of Malwa School paintings are the refined drawing styles and use of boldly contrasting colours, and as previously mentioned, the use of compartmentalized scenes. A significant Mughal influence is present in both ornaments and costumes, which sometimes feature black tassels and striped skirts not found in indigenous Central India paintings of the period.

In the Ramayana illustration above, we have an example of all these characteristics. Rama and Laksmana are framed separately from the demon Ravana. Sita Devi is shown, in a striped skirt, framed almost like a picture on the wall, although the scene takes place outdoors. All the figures are flat and one-dimensional. In both the patterned pedestal the divine Heroes stand on and in the earth/rocks behind the demon, we have an interesting co-mingling of designs. The patterns seem to be mid-way between Indian and Persian motifs.

Art historians have suggested that the Malwa School does not belong to the geographical region of Malwa, but more likely to the Bundelkhand, on its eastern side. The ancient Malwa kingdom spanned part of western Madhya Pradesh and southeastern Rajasthan, up to the Nimar region, north of the Vindhyas. It has been ruled over the ages by the Avantis, the Mauryans, the Guptas, the Parmaras, the Malwa sultans, the Mughals, the Marathas, and British India.

The culture of Malwa has been significantly influenced by Gujarati and Rajasthani culture, because of their geographic proximity. Marathi influence is also visible, because of recent rule by the Marathas.

Malwa Region

The main language of Malwa is Malvi, although Hindi is widely spoken in the cities. This Indo-European language is subclassified as Indo-Aryan. The language is sometimes referred to as Malavi or Ujjaini. Malvi is part of the Rajasthani branch of languages; Nimadi is spoken in the Nimar region of Madhya Pradesh and in Rajasthan. The dialects of Malvi are, in alphabetical order, Bachadi, Bhoyari, Dholewari, Hoshangabadi, Jamral, Katiyai, Malvi Proper, Patvi, Rangari, Rangri and Sondwari. A survey in 2001 found only four dialects: Ujjaini (in the districts of Ujjain, Indore, Dewas and Sehore), Rajawari (Ratlam, Mandsaur and Neemuch), Umadwari (Rajgarh) and Sondhwari (Jhalawar, in Rajasthan). About 55% of the population of Malwa can converse in and about 40% of the population is literate in Hindi, the official language of the Madhya Pradesh state.

Lavani is a widely practised form of folk music in southern Malwa, which was brought to the region by the Marathas. The Nirguni Lavani (philosophical) and the Shringari Lavani (erotic) are the two of the main genres. The Bhils have their own folk songs, which are always accompanied by dance. The folk musical modes of Malwa are of four or five notes, and in rare cases six. The devotional music of the Nirguni cult (which I shared yesterday) is popular throughout Malwa. Legends of Raja Bhoj and Bijori, the Kanjar girl, and the tale of Balabau are popular themes for folk songs. Insertions known as stobha are commonly used in Malwa music; this can occur in four ways: the matra stobha (syllable insertion), varna stobha (letter insertion), shabda stobha (word insertion) and vakya stobha (sentence insertion).

FSM

Beat of India Series: Celebration of Life: Folk Songs from Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal Volume 1

Since the dawning of the current millennium there has been a renewed interest in India in capturing and preserving ‘authentic’ folk music. The most significant label in this regard is DeKulture which has released 40 wonderfully diverse CDs of Punjabi, Gujarati and Rajasthani folk music, many of which are field recordings of very obscure (nationally and internationally) artists. [I’ve shared these in previous posts on this blog.] Amarrass Records in Delhi has also issued some priceless field recordings as well as the delightful soundtrack of the world wide festival hit, The Manganiyar Seduction.

For the next few days I will be sharing another series of north Indian folk music. This one is called Beat of India. The label was run by a Sikh entrepreneur who also seemed to have a business or two in the aviation sector but sadly, it appears this music aspect of his work is now defunct.

Lucky for me (and you!) I acquired copies of all their releases and I’m excited to share them with you. While DeKulture’s CD are the gold standard in terms of presentation and sound quality, I like the Beat of India series for moving beyond Punjab and Rajasthan which are both very amply covered in the literature and music worlds. Less is known of the music of central India or UP; Beat of India’s collections really add another dimension to the sonic record of north India’s folk traditions.

In this first instalment, we are treated to several folk music styles popular in the northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal. I grew up in these two states and so this music brings back wonderful memories of a long lost childhood. Stylistically the singers touch on hori, a song type sung during the time of Holi, the colourful spring festival; chappeli, songs lovers sing to each other to make their bond of love stronger; jantsar which is sung during the time of harvest, mostly by women. There is also a wonderful ‘political campaign’ song which nicely shows how old traditions are made relevant for the present day.

BEATofIndia1UPfolkMusic