Saving Art Forms From Extinction

Manganiar musicians perform the traditional gatha katha in Jaisalmer’s Dabri village. (Photograph courtesy Documentation of endangered musical traditions in Western Rajasthan/Facebook)

Folk music is more than just lyrics set to the beat and sound of exotic instruments. For certain communities in Western Rajasthan, it is an integral part of their existence. These communities use music to express emotions and hand down oral histories that might otherwise be lost if not passed down to younger generations.

The American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS)-Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology (ARCE), with funding from the U.S. Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation (AFCP), worked on preserving and reviving the disappearing musical forms of ballads and oral epics in the Langa and Manganiar communities of western Rajasthan.

The AFCP grant program draws on U.S. resources to support the preservation of historic buildings and monuments, archeological sites, museum collections, ethnographic objects, paintings, manuscripts and indigenous languages and other forms of traditional cultural expression. Through the AFCP, the United States has invested $2 million over the past two decades in the documentation, conservation and restoration of more than 20 key historic sites and intangible heritage in India.

As part of the AFCP project, “Documentation of Endangered Musical Traditions of Western Rajasthan,” AIIS trained young musicians to locate remaining community performers, as well as interview and record them. Additionally, six senior musicians taught the music form to six younger musicians. The project, which ended in December 2022, helped ensure that the art form continues to live on.

An endangered tradition

Oral traditions like ballads, oral epics and ritual narratives are a vital part of India’s intangible cultural heritage. However, they are sometimes not easily understood due to the unfamiliar language used. In addition, epics and ballads, often considered “slow genres,” can have performances lasting for hours or even days, making them challenging to accommodate with modern lifestyles or work schedules.

AIIS, along with folklore research institute Rupayan Sansthan, headed the AFCP project focusing on the ballad repertoires of two marginalized hereditary musical communities—the Manganiars and the Langas of Western Rajasthan. These communities perform their ballads in two forms—gatha (sung) katha (recited) and varta or baat (narrated).

According to Shubha Chaudhuri, project director at AIIS-ARCE, performing this art form for a general audience comes with its own challenges. “The performers find it very difficult to sing for a stage audience,” she explains. “This art form is interactive and people from their community know how to respond. They have a tradition of hunkar [vocal assent] in many places,” she adds.

However, without the collaboration of the audience in the performance, Manganiar and Langa folk artists struggle to take their traditional music outside their communities, she adds. As patronage for these art forms dwindles, so does their popularity as they fail to make it to the urban stage, which could help protect the art from extinction.

Revitalizing the art form

Though the Langa and Manganiar communities do not have the same repertoire, there are overlaps. They share the context of performance and stories told through these ballads. These communities are mostly concentrated in Barmer, Jaisalmer and Jodhpur, which form the cultural region of Marwar.

The ballad genre common to the two communities is composed through dohas or couplets on romance, tales of bravery, and stories of deities with great devotional importance. The language of the ballads is largely Marwari.

Along with documenting the oral tradition, explains Chaudhuri, the project also ensured that the oral tradition continues to live by helping six trained musicians each take on a disciple. “We succeeded in bringing attention to this genre, which had started to be forgotten,” says Chaudhuri. “Just putting it on stage and raising awareness has sparked interest in the genre,” she adds.

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