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| Ustad Hakam Khan ji, Barmer |
The desert districts
of Rajasthan have been well known for their vibrant folk music traditions.
Musicians from here were among the first to give scintillating performances in
ensembles of national and international cultural festivals organised by the Indian
nation state especially after the seventies. Contemporary community traditions
popular among folk musicians from the deserts of western Rajasthan recount with pride names of Allah Jilai Bai,
Dodhe Khan, Sadiq Khan, Bhungar Khan, to name a few pioneering artists, around
whose performances a distinct identity of ‘Rajasthani folk music’ grew in India
and abroad. In the initial heydays of construction of ‘national culture’ by the
young Indian state, these musicians from remote rustic interiors of Thar were much
sought after ‘culture makers’ of scintillating performances.
Over the last few
decades this quaint and rustic representation of ‘Rajasthani folk music’ has
transmuted into a veritable trope of brand ‘Rajasthan’
being represented in different forms and patterns by
public and private actors. Although only a handful of musicians from these
communities are now regulars on national and international festivals, tours and
cultural exchange circuits of different genres of ‘world music’, this has
contributed to the much hyped visibility of folk musicians. Without doubt
singers and musicians like Anwar Khan, Fakira Khan, Mukhtiyar Ali, to name a
few prominent ones have really contributed in continuing to make sufi music
known world over. In our contemporary times of short lived stardom and a crowding
of the sufi genre by performers who are urbanites, these folk sufi performers they
have managed to carve out dignified niches of existence. In public gaze this has fed a misconception
about these communities having good fortune in this culture industry that continues
to expand and diversify around brand Rajasthan.
The production of
culture industry incessantly expands its influence becoming widespread with
many Indian and foreign labels fervently producing ‘haunting’, ‘seductive’,
‘melodic’, ‘lilting’, ‘soul stirring’ folk music from the deserts of Thar,
Rajasthan. This is not to mention
Bollywood film music that has with uncanny consistency transmogrified this
pristine music into mass entertainment. Latest to join the on- going glitter of
this culture industry are mega live music events amidst sand dunes, recreating
the royal heritage, organised in collusion by media syndicates, local tourism
lobby and regional elites. The folk musicians are paraded endlessly to adorn
the gatherings of culture elite, fairs and festivals in Rajasthan. Folk music
interludes are a quintessential feature in tour and travel packages for foreign
and domestic tourists. The enticing
overtures and soul stirring renditions of these musicians are ceaselessly marketed globally and locally by
music industry- tourism complex.
Underneath this
scintillating and loud sonic extravaganza of folk music lies a sordid story of
languishing traditions, pathos and destitution that characterises lives of
majority of these marginal practitioners of culture. Engulfed
by these existential dilemmas regarding dignified continuation of their music
traditions, these musician communities find themselves at cross roads. With the waning away of traditional societal contexts of
hereditary transmission of these traditions, the twin spectre of crass
commercialization leading to dissipation of their musical traditions and
dwindling opportunities for sustained livelihood looms large over them.
In the contemporary
context where issues of everyday existence, dignified arts practice of these
musician communities continue to escape public discourse with unceasing
monotony are their strategies and processes possible that contribute to well-
being of these musician communities?
Of enticing overtures and ecstatic renditions seeks to draw attention to
issues of pathos and destitution that paradoxically engulf the lives of musician
communities whose music is the harbinger of peace, serenity and soulful
ecstasy.
These musician
communities have been subjects of ethnography, tour diaries and memoirs. Ethnomusicologists have engaged with these
musicians whose music has been subject of much study, documentation, archiving
and survey for the last three decades, if not more. This ‘western quest’ of
ethnomusicology originating from universities in UK
or USA
has contributed a systematic body of ethno-musicological literature / archive.
The rich collection / archive of folklore and ethno musicological inquiries
have engaged with some of these communities and their selective repertoire over
the last few decades. While not discounting the value of the repertoire
collected or insights regarding music in society it could be safely said that
it has mostly refrained from engaging with challenges of lived everyday context
of these makers of the music.
It has been correctly
observed that the tourists and visitor are not very different from ethnomusicologists.
They both share the fascination for the unique and spectacular elements. This
is much to the neglect of the material context of these musicians. The emphasis has been on the music, as it is consumed,
not on the musicians. Another emergent trend is the individual ‘creativity unplugged’, ‘soul searching’
kind of creative arts practice that subordinates folk community creativities as
subservient to its own exalted aesthetic feats. The climax of this celebration
of ‘creativity outside the folk sphere’ is most glaringly seen in Bollywood,
the industry processing folk music into mass entertainment.
The irony implicit in
these promises of job creation is that these do little to alter basic
existential realities of these musicians, that of being integrated largely as
casual wage earners at the bottom of the culture industry. With the expansion
of techno aesthetics of culture industry networks especially in the last
decade, both in density and spread, employment generation based on folk music
thrives on casual payment contracts, many times unspecified and assuaged by neo
feudal hegemony. In such a context there is little hope to be pinned on culture
industry, in its current dispensation,
in liberating these folk musicians from drudgeries of daily survival in an
‘economy of tragic choices’.
Instead of getting
mystified by a cultural aesthetic that seeks to assuage the sentimental
narrative of bemoaning the loss of traditions or becoming bewitched by
glittering gismo of unbridled commercialization making community folk aesthetic
completely subservient to the whims of ephemeral modern entertainment, or even
the individual quest of soul searching creativity of urban professional
artists, it is important to invest in human resources and cultural skills of
these unique producers of veritable civilizational intangible heritage.
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| Mir Abdul Jabbar and Mir Vassu Khan, Bikaner |
