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A QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER FROM NATIONAL FOLKLORE SUPPORT CENTREJAISALMER WORKSHOP SPECIALVOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001THE ADVENT OFASIAN CENTURYIN FOLKLorE1ContentsINDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001EDITORIAL ...........................3IN A TIME WARP ...................5DESERT VOICES ....................6ANNOUNCEMENTS ........ 29, 35FOLKLORE ANDCREATIVITY ........................ 14ADIEU, JAISALMER ............. 26PARTICIPANTS’ REPORTS..... 30ON CREOLIZATION ............. 36ON FOLK ART MUSEUM ...... 41ON DOCUMENTARYACT.................................... 43ON FOLK NARRATIVES ........ 49REFLECTIONS ..................... 57FOLKLORE READINGS ......... 61

National Folklore Support Centre (NFSC) is a non-governmental,non-profit organisation, registered in Chennai dedicated to thepromotion of Indian folklore research, education, training, networkingand publications. The aim of the centre is to integrate scholarshipwith activism, aesthetic appreciation with community development,comparative folklore studies with cultural diversities and identities,dissemination of information with multi-disciplinary dialogues,folklore fieldwork with developmental issues and folklore advocacywith public programming events. Folklore is a tradition based onany expressive behaviour that brings a group together, creates aconvention and commits it to cultural memory. NFSC aims to achieveits goals through cooperative and experimental activities at variouslevels. NFSC is supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation.2S T A F FProgramme OfficerN. Venugopalan, PublicationsAdministrative OfficersD. Sadasivam, FinanceT.R. Sivasubramaniam,Public RelationsProgramme AssistantsR. Murugan,Data Bank and LibraryJasmine K. Dharod,Public ProgrammeAthrongla Sangtam,Public ProgrammeSupport StaffSanthilatha S. KumarDhan Bahadur RanaV. ThennarsuC. KannanRegional Resource PersonsV. JayarajanMoji RibaK.V.S.L. NarasamambaNima S. GadhiaParag M. SarmaSanat Kumar MitraSatyabrata GhoshShikha JhinganSusmita PoddarM.N. Venkatesha○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○INDIAN FOLKLIFE - EDITORIAL TEAMM.D. Muthukumaraswamy, EditorN. Venugopalan, Associate EditorRanjan De, Designer○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○INDIAN FOLKLIFEThe focus of April special issue is on NFSC’s Jaisalmerworkshop on Documenting Creative Processes of Folklore,held at Hotel Dhola Maru, Jaisalmer, from February 5 –19, 2001. We acknowledge our gratitude to Mrs. VidyaSigamany (vidyasigamany@eth.net) for patiently anddiligently transcribing audio recordings of the workshop.We invite submissions of articles, illustrations, reports,reviews offering historical, fieldwork oriented, articlesin English on works in other languages, multidisciplinaryand cultural approaches to folklore. Articlesshould confirm to the latest edition of MLA style manual.Cover Illustration:Zakhar Khan in different poses playing KamaichaBack Cover Photo Courtesy: L.N.KhatriBOARD OF TRUSTEESAshoke ChatterjeeB-1002, Rushin Tower, Behind Someshwar 2, Satellite Road, AhmedabadN. Bhakthavathsala ReddyDean, School of Folk and Tribal lore, WarangalBirendranath DattaChandrabrala Borroah Road, Shilpakhuri, GuwahatiDadi D. PudumjeeB2/2211 Vasant Kunj, New DelhiDeborah ThiagarajanPresident, Madras Craft Foundation, ChennaiJyotindra JainSenior Director, Crafts Museum, New DelhiKomal KothariChairman, NFSC.Director, Rupayan Sansthan,Folklore Institute of Rajasthan,Jodhpur,RajasthanMunira SenExecutive Director, Madhyam,BangaloreM.D.MuthukumaraswamyExecutive Trustee and Director, NFSC, ChennaiK. RamadasDeputy Director,Regional Resources Centre for Folk Performing Arts, UdupiP. SubramaniyamDirector, Centre for Development Research and Training, ChennaiY. A. Sudhakar ReddyReader, Centre for Folk Culture Studies, S. N. School, HyderabadVeenapani ChawlaDirector, Adishakti Laboratory for Theater Research, Pondicherryhttp://www.indianfolklore.orgNEXT ISSUETheme for the July issue would be Religion, Folklore andFolklife. Closing date for submission of articles for thenext issue is June 15, 2001. All Communications shouldbe addressed to:The Associate Editor, Indian Folklife, National FolkloreSupport Centre, No: 7, Fifth Cross Street,Rajalakshmi Nagar,Velachery, Chennai - 600 042. Ph: 044-2448589, Telefax: 044-2450553, email: venu@indianfolklore.orgOn SyncretismApril, 2000On City Landscapesand FolkloreJuly, 2000On Ecological Citizenship, LocalKnowledge and FolklifeOctober, 2000On Arts, Craftsand FolklifeJanuary, 2001INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

EDITORIALAll of them vigorously participated in the discussionsand enriched the learning process enormously.Reflecting back I am inclined to think that Jaisalmeritself contributed to the spirit and dynamism of theworkshop. As the westernmost town inside India’sborder Jaisalmer has an extraordinarily medieval andMiddle Eastern feel, with its crenulated goldensandstone walls and narrow streets lined withexquisitely carved buildings. With four major gatewaysto the town and founded by Prince Jaisal in 1156,Jaisalmer grew to be a major staging post on the famoussilk route. On the roughly triangular shaped Trikuta hill,the Golden Fort (called so because of the colour of thesandstone) stands 76 meters above the town enclosedby a 9-meter wall with 99 bastions. When you walkthrough the narrow streets within the fort you oftenget blocked by an odd goat, cow or a camel cart and itof lack of rain. He shared with us a wealth of informationon how the desert supports a variety of plant, animaland bird lives. After his lecture it was very easy toperceive hardships of living in the desert as well as toappreciate human ingenuity in the built water ways andconservation systems (in Khuldara villages), artificiallakes, city plans, food habits, cow and camel herding,grass growing and indigenous medicinal systems.Komal Kothari has been presenting this perceptionabout Rajasthani life all through out the workshopthrough innumerable instances and living in Jaisalmerfor fifteen days made us realise that folklore studies gobeyond studies of expressive behaviour to gain insightsinto life situations. Folklore as a discipline holds a visionof human life in existential terms beyond the corridorsof power and it is important to maintain that visionwhile addressing the questions of art and creativity also.Function for distributing musicalinstruments to young folkmusicians of Rajasthan4is amazing to see even today how about a 1000 turbanclad men, veiled but bejewelled women and schoolgoing children live in tiny houses inside the fort oftenwith beautiful carvings on doors and balconies. Througha mere walk through the town you meet with musicians,puppeteers, weavers, jewellers, potters, toy makers andironsmiths. With an abandoned aircraft kept as a publicmuseum piece on a roadside park with a piles of potson the opposite side, the puppeteers dwellings twostreets away, havelis with their beautifully carved facades,jali screens and oriel windows visible at the other endof street, the camel carts pushing their way throughand the fort in the background when you sip a cup oftea at the roadside shop you tend to think Jaisalmerdefies time.It was astounding to learn from Ramsingh Mertia’slecture that the entire Thar Desert must have beenunderneath the sea ages ago and the desert was a resultThe same vision made us understand that while desertis both a metaphor and reality Rajasthani folk music isnot only an artistic expression but also more of anexistential necessity. It was not at all difficult for us tosee why music and so Sarangi and Kamaicha are centralto Rajasthani folk life. It was not at all difficult for us tounderstand why Komal Kothari was lamenting thatthese two musical instruments had not been made inthe last one century. I am most grateful and mostdelighted that the board of National Folklore SupportCentre and the Ford Foundation approved making ofthese two musical instruments with the little excessmoney we had for the workshops and distribution ofthem to the child musicians of traditional communities.The making of these musical instruments was not aseasy as it appeared to be. Despite Komal Kothari’s fourdecades of research in musicology and easy access totraditional communities it was difficult to make theinstruments as it called for knowledge of the woodsINDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

EDITORIAL / IN A TIME WARPand carpentry skills apart from a collaboration betweenfolklorist, carpenter and traditional musicians. Thestrenuous and adventurous collaboration headed byKomal Kothari lasted for several months and just beforethe workshop they were able to complete only sevensarangies and three kamaichas. As I am writing these linesthe project is still going on to achieve the target of onehundred instruments.What a grand finale the distribution ceremony turnedout to be! All the musicians, who were performing allthese days for us either at Hotel Dhola Maru or in thevillages, were all present. By then we had realised thatZakar Khan, Anwar, Barkat, Gazi, Sagar, Ghewar,Perupa, Buchi, Mehra, Mayat and Gazi Barner were allworld-class musicians. The scintillating performance ofthe child musicians, Yassin, Mehboob, Abdul Rashid,Sikander, Kutla, Shankara, kheta, Darra and Roshanwas lingering in the memory.We were remembering the haunting voice of RukmaDevi, Kherati Ram Bhatt’s skillful puppetry, Kalveliadance of Sukmi Devi, Teratali dance of Chanda, Kamala,Rukmani and Gazi Khan’s institute of music in the villageof Bharna. In the midst of a sudden avalanche ofpowerful evocations, Sharada Ramanathan of the FordFoundation began distributing musical instruments tothe child musicians. They were historic moments filledwith unknown emotions and sentiments. Those werethe moments one normally feels contentment, fulfilmentand satisfaction.My colleagues, Athrongla, Jasmine, Murugan and Venujoin me in thanking the Ford Foundation, the facultymembers, the participants, all the artists (includingB.D.Soni, the jeweller), Kuldeep Kothari and the staffof Rupayan Sansthan our collaborative partner for thisworkshop, Naval Kishore Sharma of Jaisalmer museum,Rajasthani Patrika which carried the news of theworkshop everyday, Major General Bhandari, his familyand the staff of hotel Dhola Maru and the administrativestaff of NFSC who stayed back home to give usbackground support.We are especially grateful to GowherRizvi, Representative of the FordFoundation’s New Delhi office withoutwhose help we would not haveidentified three participants from otherAsian countries and expanded the scopeof this workshop. Although I feel thesense of an ending for this introductoryessay, I do not have the satisfaction ofhaving said everything. Let me say inexasperation: O Jaisalmer!○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○In a time warpKamaicha5Henry GlassieThe musical instruments that are lined on the table today set the mood. The mood is one of transfer,of making it possible for people to continue to do what it is that they wish to do. We should have no desire tomake people continue to do what they don’t wish but if musicians want to make music, if they want to celebratethe universe through sound then we should make it possible for them. Our giving musical instruments to thenext generation, allowing that generation to accomplish its own world in its own way, today establish the mood.So think of those musical instruments as the proper metaphor for everything that’s happened in this workshop.This is the moment of conclusion, it’s a moment of transfer, it’s a moment of gift; it’s a moment when anothergeneration rises to receive, rises to go forward, rises to make possible the continuity of culture. So just as we aremaking it possible for a group of young musicians, by the possession of musical instruments, to carry forward thebeautiful, astonishing and deep music of Rajasthan, so too has this workshop worked in exactly the same way.The idea being a group of elders transfering to a new generation a hope for possibility for a new idea of folkloreresearch; and so just as the musicians will be able to make such music as they want, we hope we who have beenteaching in this workshop that we have transferred to you the instruments with which you can make the musicthat you choose to make, not it is to be hoped the music that we made, but better and more beautiful music.But at the core of that act of transfer there is the hope for a kind of continuity, a kindof continuity that can be expressed in this very simple way–echoing in reverse, aspoint of complexity. And that it’s what could be simpler and what at the same timemore complex than the idea of folklore. I would say that the idea of folklore isnothing more or less than this – it is that time when a human being elects to act withsincerity, nothing more. Meaning that a human being will inevitably work towardsthe expression of the self, will work towards the preservation of the society, willwork towards the preservation of the world, and will work towards honouringwhatever sense of the transcendent visits that individual…(these excerpts were takenfrom Henry Glassie’s concluding remarks…Editor)INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001Henry Glassie

DESERT VOICESDocumenting creative processes of folklore: desert voicesWelcome address: Komal Kothari6It is a big opportunity for me to welcomeArunaji, Henry Glassie, Lee Haring, Pravinaji and allother friends who have come over from all parts of thecountry and a few of them from outside the countryalso. It was in Shillong a year back that a workshop onFrom Fieldwork to Public Domain was held and it wasdecided at that point that next time we would meet inJaisalmer. It was something, which we were doing inShillong, was totally east and now what we are trying todo is totally west. What we were doing in the hills, nowwe will be doing the same type of exercise in the desert.So, this type of a workshop is practically to conceive asort of an in-house, in-depth discussion about thepossibilities folklore presents to human society. We willbe here for another two weeks and will try to come incontact with people who are involved in creating lot ofartefacts, lot of life objects, lot of life material throughwhich they pass and we will try to look into it and thatwill give us opportunity to go among the people, staywith them, try to understand them, try to understandtheir creative processes as that is what is required.We would welcome people from Jaisalmer who wouldbe ready to exchange or know about the processes withwhich the folklore discipline is attached in one way orthe other. They are welcome to join us at any particularmoment. But let me hope that I should be able to takelot more time later on and I welcome you all and it is agreat opportunity to have met here in the desert, whichas you see, has its own silence but silences also have lotof meaning. Let us try to get the meaning out of silence.Thank you.Chief guest address: Aruna RoyI would like to thank NFSC and the Rupayan Sansthanfor inviting me today. I am particularly glad to be withKomalda, we all affectionately call Komal Kothari,Komalda or Komal kaka in Rajasthan depending onour ages. It has always been a privilege to be whereverKomalda has worked, in whatever form. He has alwaysbeen with us whether we have worked with politicalactivism, with social activism, with folklore, with folkmusicians or getting folk people together. He has alwayshad a great sympathy for people who struggle againstoppression, who struggle for justice. So I feel privilegedto be with you all here today and honoured thatKomalda has thought me good enough to inauguratethis session. So I would like to, with all my humility,say that I come here to share my thoughts, not withthe arrogance that they may be right ones, but feelingthat I owe a great debt of gratitude to Komalda and hisvarious folk artists and friends who have always foundtime for us. So I think it is necessary in this world tofind time to communicate with each other from ourvery different worlds.I work with an organisation that is extremely small,which is based in central Rajasthan called the MazdoorKisan Shakthi Sanghatan. It is a small organisation, whichis a non-party people’s organisation. In India today,because all systems have failed us, whether it is thepolitical system of parties or whether it is the system oftrade unions, for poor unorganised people living in thevillages of Rajasthan and elsewhere in India, we feel itis extremely important to understand that in democracypolitics is everybody’s business; to re-shape democracy,to make it our democracy, make it participatorydemocracy and make it something that will fulfil ourdreams, our needs and our vision.It is true that we in our specialisations have differentareas of interests–some look at folklore, some look atfolk tradition, and people like me who work with ruralpeople have, in a certain sense, to look at themholistically, though I may have to concentrate on theirparticipation in political processes, to see that they havemore power to decide for themselves what kind of worldthey want to live in. And I think if we look at the earthand its enormous resources and the way it is goingtoday, and the way people’s initiative, small processes,small groups of traditions that exist, are all beingsteamrolled into one standard uniform culture, thenwe are all important in our different ways, to see thatall these individual small traditions exist, and they notonly exist but have a right to exist. And in that right toexist they make their expression an important form ofexpression to communicate, to entertain, to teach andalso to form a big political statement on the need forexistence of sub-cultures.We cannot have one uniform culture all over the world.We have institutions in India, which are specialisedinstitutions for higher culture, which exist, but I do notthink that there are many institutions in this country,which exist for the smaller cultural groups. Rupayanhas made a substantial difference to this perception. Ifyou look at the crafts, if you look at singing traditions,if you look at creative traditions in India, we could seethey have been expressions from people whom we callDalits, whom we call Dastakars, whom we call the lowerstrata of our caste-ridden society. It has been importanttherefore to not only look at the expression of thesevarious communities but also to give them some placein our social fabric, to give them some importance, toalso accept that they have a right to live other than theexpression of their medium.INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

DESERT VOICESI do not know how many of you are familiar, who havecome from abroad, but those of us who live in thiscountry well know that when the performance takesplace we accept, for that particular moment, the equalityof the performer with us, but when it comes to feeding,when it comes to living, we always differentiate betweenourselves and them. One of the fundamental thingsthat the Rupayan Sansthan has done is to break thosedifferences. And I think it is a major contribution thatit has made to our lives in Rajasthan.In India, we have a country divided by many things,we are divided by language, we are divided by tradition,different kinds of tradition, different kinds of culturalpatterns and though in a sense we are one country, itis these differences that make this country really a richtradition, a rich heritage, a rich cultural texture. Thereare attempts today, even from amongst us, to make usa uniform whole. Politically we talk of one Hinduatva,of one Hindu party. It is wrong, in my opinion, to talkabout culture in those terms. I think in the course ofthe fifteen days that you will meet here you will seeand understand the kinds of different textures anddifferent kinds of cultural forms that exist. But I willmake a plea and the plea that I will make for you and Iknow that you are interested but I would still like tomake a plea that in our work I have found when wetalk about political alternatives today in this country oralternatives of social reform, I find that the middle classis really pulverised.We damn the whole lot as illiterate, we damn them asnon-creative, we damn them as people who do not knowanything, and I think we do the greatest harm to themand to ourselves.The oral tradition that exists in Rajasthan, I am sure itexists in all parts of India, has contributed enormouslyto our understanding of us, to the understanding oftradition and to the understanding of knowledge.Though I extol tradition as extremely important, I wouldalso like to bring to bear upon us the negatives oftradition. In Rajasthan, we have also seen a womanburnt at the stake not very long ago with her husband’sbody in a funeral pyre when the Roop Kanwar’s Satitook place. We also see all kinds of atrocities on womenin the name of tradition. I am not saying that tradition,in and of it, is wonderful. I am saying tradition is amixed bag, just as development and modernisation is amixed bag, so one is not talking of one versus the other,one is talking of preserving those forms of traditionand those forms of modernisation which are for socialjustice and equality, which also perpetuate culture inthe form that we want to define it. I am not willing,and I am sure most of you are not willing; to let theelectronic media or newspapers that are now in thehands of multinational corporations define what cultureshould be. I think we have a right as people in a livingsociety to define what culture we need to subscribeand I will be very interested to know what comes outas a result of your fifteen days’ deliberation on it.7I think no great major ideas have emerged from themiddle class in the last 50 years. They have only rehashedvarious things. If you look at the political status of Indiatoday, I do not think we can claim any great contributionto the nature of politics or the nature of economics ofthis country. It is important at this juncture, for peoplelike me and many of my friends in this country, to lookat and understand the nature of knowledge that existsamongst people whom we dismiss generally as illiterate.I think though literacy is an extremely important tool fordevelopment, it is a toolwhich is important, for it isa living skill and here comemy friends who are thegreatest of performers, whomay be illiterate, but who intheir performance, in theirknowledge of musical notes,in their knowledge ofvarious things, have thegreatest understanding ofmathematics in theunderstanding of beats, they have theunderstanding of rhythm which originates froman understanding of timing, which originatesin mathematics. We have the most marvellousweavers in this country who weave the mostexquisite fabrics in which the precisionin terms of mathematical calculation exist.Pravina Shukla: Keynote addressInaugural functionI have just come back from Brazil and where, WorldSocial Forum held an alternative social summit to theeconomic summit held at Davos. In Davos, the WTOmet to see how the world could be standardised, howeverything could be under the normative pattern of onegroup of people who decide how the world will workeconomically. As an alternative, the World Social Forumwhich organised itself in Brazil invited people who arenot in the mainstream of decision-making today butwho are the large majority of this earth’s population.The meeting discussed what kind ofINDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001alternative modes could prevail in theworld to decide and protest against thestandardisation and steamrolling ofeconomics and of culture. If you lookat the way multinationals are comingin, it will not only be in the selling ofsoap and the selling of tea and theselling of goods, it will also be in whatwe will read in thenewspapers, what we willread in magazines, what willbe shown on the television,and its going to be a bigstruggle for all of us whosupport the marginalized, socalledmarginalized groups ofpeople, whether it is thepeasant or whether it is the

DESERT VOICES8folklorist, whether it is the singer, whether it is theperformer, against this massive inroad and the amountof money that is being spent on it is colossal. But wepeople who are on the other side have one greatadvantage and that is the numbers that we are. We areenormous numbers of people and they are very few ifyou look at the comparison in terms of numbers.The problem is that in India, and I am sure in the restof the world but I only know India well, the peoplewho protest are few, the people who promote thosethings are also few, the large numbers of us do not sayanything, we keep quiet. Here in Rajasthan, there is afavourite phrase, whenever I went to the village andtalked about things which were community properties,which were community heritages, which werecommunity things, there was a famous saying especiallyin economic terms when you talk about governmentspending, they used to say badhbadoji, badhbado, marutho ko na - it isn’t mine, let it burn. I do not think I willtake much time but I will just mention it because that isthe reason why I am here with you all today, and ourcampaign for right to information and transparency ofgovernment funds and of all people dealing with publicmoney has now become a national issue.It is one way in which we can make the governmentaccountable to its people and we can make the peopleresponsible for political action in a democracy. In ademocracy people cannot just cast a vote and say thatthe five years between one vote and the next is theresponsibility of the politician we sent to power andthe bureaucrat who looks after us. We have realisedthat in a democracy if we want real power, we will haveto speak, we will have to monitor. We will have tohave continuing accountability of the government tous. We have to make the people’s voice stronger. Icome to you with a final plea that ethics whether it is inthe business of public life and politics or ethics in thequestion of cultural choices is not in the depiction orjust in the mode of depiction or the purity of thedepiction of a certain form.Many years ago, I had the good fortune to study danceat Kalakshetra in Madras, and I know what it means tohave a purist form because in the school that I studiedin, we were not even allowed to see performances ofBharatanatyam by people who are not considered puredancers. And the people who came and taught us thedance form were in the pure tradition, in which therewas no interpolations of any cinematic mode, of anymodern mode but came in the true tradition of whatthe Bharatanatyam system was. We did not hear anyclassical music in which there was any infiltration ofany other thing. I am not talking of purism, which initself has its own value. I am talking about ethics of thepeople who perform. I think the lives of those people,the kind of life they lead economically, and the kind oflife they lead socially are as important as the forms thatthey project.I will just end with a simple quotation not from one ofthe great people in the world we know but from LalSingh who is a comrade and a friend of mine, whoworks with the Mazdoor Kisan Shakthi Sanghatan. Sowhen we were invited to speak in an institution in Jaipurwhich organises training for people in the civil service,they invited me and they invited another person whois also bilingual, both English and Hindi speaking, andwe took with us three farmers and workers. After all,my organisation translates into a workers’ and peasants’organisation and I am neither a worker nor a peasant.So they thought that Lal Singh had just come as a sortof a totem to say that, you know, there are peasants andworkers we work with. As usual, they gave me fifteenminutes to speak but they said to me at three minutesthat time was up. So Lal Singh said to them he neededonly one minute.When Lal Singhji was given that one minute to talk,three minutes to talk, he said I would speak in oneminute, that’s all I need. And what he put succinctlyin that one minute, it will take me half-an-hour to explainwith all my verbosity. So like all other cultural folklorists,our peasants are also people who are gifted with thegift of language, of thought and I will translate what hesaid in Hindi. With all these to-be bureaucrats andcivil servants sitting in front of him, he said to them; wewonder if we do not have the right to information andtransparency whether we poor will exist in India at all. Youas people who are going to sit and rule over us as a state, youwonder if you give the right to information, whether you willbe in control or not, whether you will sit on that chair or notliterally, because your power will be distributed, because onceyou share information, you share power and you will loseyour seat and your control over power. But actually what weshould all do is to collectively think whether the country willexist or not exist if there is no transparency or right toinformation, if there is no ethics in public life. So, friends,I come to you with all humility to share the fewthoughts. Thank you.Keynote address: Henry GlassieIt is a great delight for me to be here. I have spentmany years of research in Bangladesh, visited Pakistan,toured in Tamil Nadu, this is my very first visit to northIndia, therefore I pretend no expertise, I know nothingat all about your place, I come here humbly to learnfrom you. Not to teach but to learn. I need, inexpressing my delight, to thank a friend who have mademy visit possible. In M. D. Muthukumarasamy, an oldand dear friend, a great folklorist, a man with whom Ifeel great kinship and who have made this conferencepossible. We need to remember Sharada Ramanathanof the Ford Foundation in Delhi who has providedsupport to NFSC. I consider it a great honour to behere with my colleagues, the great Komal Kothari andmy colleagues from America, my old, close belovedfriend Lee Haring and Pravina Shukla who teaches withme at Indiana University.INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

DESERT VOICESI come in the very beginning to make a fairly simple setof propositions. Here is the first one: I teach you alittle bit about the history of our discipline. We can divideits history into three great phases. The first one is theEuropean phase. In the European phase, folkloristswere primarily interested in history. Their eyes wereturned backward, they were concerned with distanttimes, distant places, the movement of ideas, and themovement of peoples and as they looked backward,they first discovered something about their nationalheritage. But the more the folklorists concentrated ontheir national heritage, the more the Germans wereinterested in Germany, the more that the Irish wereinterested in Ireland, the Italians in Italy, they began todiscover the proposition of the international. They losttheir concern with nationaldestiny and began to think,however humbly, howevercrudely, and from whateversuperior perspective thatthey adopted, they began tothink about an internationalview, an international viewthat through various seriousresearch ultimately broughtthe folklorists into anunderstanding of one greatland mass that lay on the west in Irelandand on the east in India and the greatThomson in his day titled the mostimportant chapter of the most importantbook, From India to Ireland. Note the wayin which the folklorist’s interest in theorigins of folklore in India that then movedwestward was precisely counter to all theforces of colonialism. The forces ofcolonialism were suggesting that all ideaswere moving from Europe to Asia; theAruna Roy: Chief GuestKomalda: Welcomeaddressfolklorist was arguing that all the great ideas had in factmoved from Asia to Europe.Humble, small, marginal, of no great importance, thelittle discipline of folklore took as its task, from the veryinception, to countering the proposition of colonialismby arguing in behalf of the world moving against thesun and all of the ideas moving with the course of theuniverse from east to west. In its first days, its Europeancentury, folklore was primarily concerned with the pastand as it was concerned with the past, it was primarilyconcerned with the reconstruction of a history thatwould be for modern people a better, more democratic,more comprehensive history than the history that waswritten in history books. It started this discipline offolklore in pure opposition to the force of history, theforce of history being that force that supported colonialendeavours, that supported oppression, that supporteddivision, that attempted to work against the entirenotion of democracy. In its first century, folklore wascommitted to an understanding from the past aboutpossibilities of a democratic future.In its second century, folklore shifted from Europe tothe United States, and in shifting from Europe to theUnited States folklore began to be concerned not somuch with the past as with the present. As itreconstructed itself as a view of the present, folklorelost the value structures that had committed folklore toa countering of colonialism; it began to look at thepossibilities of a universe made up of equal civilisations,of equal cultures, of cultures each of them with theirintegrity, of cultures each of them with their power, ofcultures each of them with their beauty. Folklore thenbecame the celebration of the integrity of distinctcultures, the ways in which small groups of people hadthrough speaking well, through making well, throughthinking well, had constructed for themselves ways oflife that answered their needs, that fit their ecology,that fit their hopes for the future. In a sense, in itssecond century, its American century, folklore devaluedvalues, deconstructed historical propositions and movedtowards the notion of a universe made up of separatesocieties, each with its own integrity, and each with itsown purpose.We are, you and I, involved in a very powerfulhistoric process because we are at the verydawn of folklore’s third century. Its first centurywas a century of Europe and history; it was acentury of looking backward in order toreconstitute a history that could be useful forthe future. In its second century, its Americancentury, folklore is primarily oriented to thepresent, looking out uponthe present and fragmentingthe globe into a thousand,thousand small societies,each of them with theirLee Haring: Keynoteaddressbeauty. We are nowstanding at the verybeginning of folklore’s thirdcentury, which will be notits European, not itsAmerican century but itsAsian century. We are at thevery dawn of folklore’s Asiancentury and folklore’s Asian century will not be a centurythat orients to the past, it will not be a century thatorients to the present, it will be a century that orientsitself to the future, that begins to look forward and toimagine how all of that learning that we have developedabout history, all of that learning that we have developedabout culture can be put into action. No longer will wesuspend judgement; we will be obliged to makejudgements. No longer will we be involved in pureresearch, we will be involved in impure research andimpure research that allows us to rethink the entireproposition of scholarship, the entire proposition ofscience and allows us to realise that what we should bedoing is putting into play, applying, ameliorating,making the world better for the world’s people by usingpure research to develop means by which we can9INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

DESERT VOICES10improve the lot, not only of the poor, but of the rich,the way that we can improve the lot of all the peoplewho live on the world.During its American century what folklorists did wasto dismantle the value structures by which history wasconstructed and attempt to eliminate values on behalfof equality. What I would like is to think about it assomething beyond equality, beyond somethingegalitarian, something that might even propose thefrightening notion of a new aristocracy, a newaristocracy of the mind, of the heart, of the soul, a newaristocracy that might allow in its Asian century forfolklorists to solve the problems that the West has notsolved – the problem of gender, the problem of class,these are the problems that lie before us; we have failed,it is my hope that with God’s power that you willsucceed. So my mission in coming to you is to help thetransition from the century of America to the centuryof Asia. And in this mission what I imagine is a changein folklore, a change in folklore as you just heard thenotion that we might reshape democracy, I wouldimagine us reshaping the entire proposition of ideologyand in that reshaping what it is my hope that can happenis that Asian scholars who receive from western scholarsall of those things that westerners have learnt and thennot only adjust those things to a new territory butcompletely rebuild the discipline of folklore. I am hereto give you the discipline of folklore with my blessingand my hope that you will do a better job with it thanwe did. We brought it to a certain point but at thispoint we in the West have failed.My first statement of my mission is that what I am hereto do is to learn from you and to hand to you all of thatwhich is of value in the discipline of folklore so thatyou can reconstruct the discipline and not only make itfit for Asia but so that Asians can now begin to lead theentire world, to do folklore better than we did folklore,to do better than the Europeans did folklore, to takefolklore to new glorious heights in which pure researchwill be dedicated not merely to the accumulation ofknowledge, but pure research will be dedicated to thesolving of serious problems. There are serious problemsthat lie before us and the folklore can be the very means,it being so crucial to the way human beings constructtheir lives, the folklore can be the very means by whichyou construct a new discipline and you can, I wish,you can lead the world better than we have. Americapresumptuously calls itself the most powerful nationon the face of the earth; I see America as a great giantthat does not know yet that it is dead. It is still stumblingaround on the face of the earth as though it had energy.America’s energy lies entirely in the past; Europe’senergy is not even a dream in the mind of a dying soul.The whole hope of the future, in my opinion, lies withyou in Asia. I am very delighted to be able to; I wish tosurrender to you such virtue as remains in the disciplineof folklore. My first mission is to give you folklore andmy second mission is to follow you into the future, notto lead you but to follow you. My third mission is tohope that with you we can dismantle this monstrousneo-colonial proposition called globalisation;globalisation that can seem like a positive force,globalisation which is nothing but colonialism in a wholenew, more insidious guise. What I would like to do isto say to you first of all, as an American, for heaven’ssake, do not follow America. For heaven’s sake, pleasebegin to lead America. America needs your directionand folklore needs your direction too.What we need to do is to work against the propositionof globalisation on behalf of freedom, on behalf ofjustice. Folklore is not marginal to those endeavours.Our understanding of folklore is absolutely dead centralto those endeavours; there will be no possibility for usunderstanding the world unless we study closely, soclosely the people who have mastered tradition, thatwe do not consider those people to be our equals butwe humbly accept those people to be our superiors andat last we learn to follow them and their wisdom intothe future. I am, I repeat, delighted to be here. I amlooking forward to these two weeks with you; I amexcited in the ways in which I will be able to learn fromyou but more importantly what I would like us to do isto be able to develop between ourselves, amongourselves with all the powers that lie behind us in ourcivilisations, to be able to develop for the world a bettermodel of what the future can be like. The Europeancentury was about history and the past, the Americancentury was about the present, the Asian century willbe about the future and whether the future will be betterthan the past is largely up to you. I say at the end ofthis little rant that I am perfectly happy, delighted tobe following you into the future, pleased to be here, Ithank my friends.Keynote address: Lee HaringDear colleagues and members of the workshop, I takea moment now to express to you my immense gratitudefor the invitation to me to travel here to Rajasthan andto be among you for the two weeks in this workshop.It was a year ago that I was privileged to attend theTwentieth Indian Folklore Congress held at Patiala.There I met many Indian folklorists and was impressedby the great importance that the study of folklore holdsin the past and present and future, as my dear friendHenry Glassie has said, of this great country. It was anAmerican anthropologist, Milton Singer, who pointedout, almost fifty years ago, India’s strong interest in therecovery or reinterpretation of India’s traditional culture.Singer also gave us this challenge, I quote, and theprofessional student of culture and civilization may contributesomething to this inquiry through an objective study of thevariety and changes in cultural traditions. That is thecontribution we all hope to make through thisworkshop.INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

DESERT VOICESWriting about African-American blue songs, the greatnovelist Rod Ellison remarked that any viable theoryabout part of a culture obligates us to fashion a moreadequate theory of the whole of that culture. Blues, hewrote, cannot be isolated from other kinds of music,whether African-American or other, cannot be isolatedfrom other kinds of American expression or other partsof American culture. Ellison’s logic if we take it to aglobal scale implies the reverse as well. Any viabletheory of world culture in our time obligates us toassemble facts about local cultures, more facts indeedthan globalisation theorists usually acknowledge.Folklorists are uniquely positioned to direct attentionto local cultural situations. And that is a large part ofour study in this workshop – identifying the new genres,tools and insights that arise in the studies, the centraltask of folklore is to take its place where it belongs atthe centre of the human sciences. I am glad to be withyou as a new millennium begins. Last year, manypeople celebrated an ending as though it were a newbeginning. But new beginnings are always possible forus. I try to start over each morning, so I greet you withgratitude and excitement, and I wish all of you, all ofus, a happy and fruitful time of working together.Keynote address: Pravina ShuklaGood Morning. I am going to keep my comments verybrief because you have lots of opportunity to hear metalk in the next two weeks. First of all, I want to thankM.D. Muthukumaraswamy for being here. It is a veryimportant personal pleasure for me to be here in India,participating in this workshop. I am also honoured asa new professor to be in the company of my heroes,people who have proven and inspired me in folklore. Isee my presence here at this folklore conference/workshop as symbolic. I see myself imbibing theconnections between India and America. I am of Indianheritage, my parents are from India; I was born andbrought up abroad; I have done fieldwork in both Indiaand Brazil, where I grew up. So I study both the newworld and the old world, both areas of my background,countries and cultures that make up who I am today. Ithink what we have to do is take the abstract of whatHenry and Lee talked about and make it concrete.We need now, we continue to need, compassionateunderstanding outside those perspectives. Still, we alsoneed perspectives that bridge, a friend of mine justrecently called me, saw me as a bridge between eastand west, between Asia and America or Europe. I thinkwe need the perspectives of the bridge, people who areboth insiders and outsiders simultaneously, which Iconsider myself. And then we need to add theimportant insider’s perspectives to this. That would beyou talking about studying India. All three of theseperspectives are needed for us to come to a betterunderstanding of the dynamics of Indian folklore. I donot think we are using the insider’s perspective, I sayyours, the kind of bridge perspective, I say mine, theoutsider’s perspective, I say theirs. One is not betterthan the other, one is not replacing the other in thischronology of centuries; I think we need all of themsimultaneously. As I hope for the future in makingthis abstract specific, we are currently in the final stagesof developing international folklore connection betweenIndiana University and India. We have Indian scholarsand contemporary folklore theory. Henry Glassie and Iwould be the co-directors of that. This is an officialconnection; in the meantime while this happens wecan engage in all kinds of unofficial connections. It is apleasure to be here, I look forward to getting to knowyou. Thank you.Vote of thanks: M.D. MuthukumaraswamyAruna Roy, the Chief guest of this function, HenryGlassie, Lee Haring, Komal Kothari, Chand, Bhandari,the Director of the Folklore Museum, Jaisalmer, anddistinguished members from Jaisalmer anddistinguished participants, it is my pleasure to thankyou all for coming over here. This has been a verydifficult workshop for us to organise, in the sense thatwe are sitting there in the city of Chennai and then weare organising something in Jaisalmer. This workshopwould not have been happened without thecollaboration of Rupayan Sansthan headed by KomalKothari and his staff. They made all the localarrangements here and we were coordinating betweenthe international faculty, the participants who appliedto us and also with so many other people. One of themajor tragedies that happened on January 26, the IndianRepublic Day, the major earthquake in Gujarat, thatset us really in a bad mood and many participantswondered whether we would be able to hold thisworkshop. The tragedy was colossal and the wholenation went through depression. On TV, the imagesshown were depressing and it was purely because ofthe encouragement I received from Komalda I wentahead with all the preparations. I am also glad for allthe participants who enquired with us whether thisworkshop was to happen in the first place, who believedmy assurances and then came over here.I would like to make a few comments about thisworkshop and its organisation and also thank all thecolleagues who are to participate. We began theplanning for this workshop in December 1999 when Iinvited Glassie to come over for our Shillong workshop.But at that time he could not make it because he hadsome other commitments in Bangladesh and then webegan a conversation about this workshop and purelydue to Glassie’s commitment to the Asian century ofthe future that we were able to put together acurriculum, put together the faculty and I am gratefulto Henry Glassie for being associated with me and thenguiding me for the workshop for nearly one and a halfyears. That kind of a preparation went into this, allthrough emails: of course email is a blessing. Email andinternet have revolutionised information sharing.11INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

DESERT VOICES12That brings me to the idea Shrimathi Aruna Roy broughtto us today, the right to information, the right to havethe transparency installed in government, nongovernmentand other organisations. National FolkloreSupport Centre receives a grant from the FordFoundation. We at NFSC believe that the funds availableto us from the Ford Foundation are public funds. It isa public fund we are handling and NFSC standscommitted to the accountability of receiving publicfunds. At NFSC I strive hard to keep the centre,egalitarian. We have no hierarchy in the organisation;we have only roles to play, and we have only work toaccomplish. And I have distinguished, hard-workingcolleagues with me, Venugopal, Jasmine K. Dharod andAthrongla Sangtam and Murugan. Then we have theblessing of working with the colleagues from RupayanSansthan, Kuldeep Kothari and Rajinder.All of us are participants, we are students of folklore,we are here to learn and as organisers we have secondroles to play. We are here to learn from you and alsolearn from the place, Rajasthan. Another thing I wouldlike to talk about is the kind of faculty we have in thepresence of Lee Haring and Shukla. I entirely agreewith Glassie when he says the future of folklore as adiscipline is in the hands of Asian scholars. I hesitateto say Indian scholars because we planned to have SouthAsian and South-East Asian participants for thisworkshop. Unfortunately when we initially conceivedof this workshop, we conceived of it only as a nationalworkshop. Then we thought we have a largerconnectivity with the South Asian and South-East Asiancountries and we needed participants from there also.But we could not provide them with the travel fundsand Glassie said he would relinquish his travel fundsto give that to candidates from Bangladesh or otherSoutheast Asian countries. We found although we arevery eager for a conversation with our colleagues in theSouth Asian and South-East Asian countries,communications between us are dismal. So givinginformation was difficult, we could get only very fewapplications and once we asked them to come over,they had difficulty finding travel funds. This is one ofthe problem we need to take into consideration inbuilding up an Asian century for folklore. However wewere able to get three scholars, Phuong Lethi fromVietnam, Tulasi Diwasa and Bandhu from Nepal. Thestructure of the curriculum, the course, we thought,should address transnational ways of seeing folklore.Transnational in the sense how cultures mingle andhow cultures offer ways of all the time creating newpossibilities, all the time creating possibilities of genre,possibilities of life forms, possibilities of expression, thepossibilities of wisdom.Without expression, there is no possibility of wisdom.Without wisdom, there is no possibility of learning andwithout learning there is no possibility of building anation of democracy and the nation of democracydepends on learning from the people as we all agreedand then for learning from the people, we need tools,we need theoretical tools, we need people who havestudied them. So we have Lee Haring and PravinaShukla, both of them are experts in studying howcultures mingle and how new possibilities emerge.These are very important to us in the context ofglobalisation as Glassie mentioned, in the context ofgrassroots expression as Aruna Roy mentioned and thenin the context of listening to the silences as KomalKothari mentioned. So along with distinguished facultyI think we also have distinguished participants for thisworkshop; most of them are senior to me in this fieldand I look forward to a great listening and great learningexperience with all of you. We, I hope, to spend fruitfultime here in Rajasthan; let us explore Rajasthani culturealso when we are here for the next fifteen days. Withthat, I thank every one of you, I thank the FordFoundation, I thank my colleagues, I thank mycolleagues at the Rupayan Sansthan, and I thank ourlearned teachers.Workshop Participants and FacultyStanding (from L to R): Murugan, Nima, Geeta, Muthu, Pravina, Lakshmi, Jasmine, Simon, Khubchandani,Kuldeep, Aruna, Jayathirtha, Tulasi Diwasa, Sawai, Phuong Le Thi, N.K. Sharma, Moji RibaSitting (from L to R): Bandhu, Gayatri, Komalda, Munira, Guy, Shikha, Athrongla, Ashok AlvaINDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

FIELD VISITS / EVENING PERFORMANCESField visitsDatePlace6 February Jaisalmer fort, Jain temples, Haveli sculptures and khadi bhandar8 February Kalakar colony to Kherati Ram Bhatt’s place where the whole process of puppet makingand a puppetry show were performed9 February Folklore museum and Garisar lake11 February Visited Bharna and Gazi Khan’s Institute, listened to folk music concerts, went forcamel safari and visited the sand dunes13 February Visited goldsmith B.D. Soni’s work place and observed the various stagesof making jewellery14 February Visited Hamira village for traditional pottery and later to Gazi, Anwar and Zakar ‘splace where they sang folk songs and visited the traditional fair related tomother goddess Kale Doongri16 February Visited village Khuldara, abandoned villages by Pallival Brahmin community andlater went to the sunset point○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○Evening performancesDate Artists Description Contact Addressof performance13Feb 5 Child Artists: Yassin, Mehboob, C/o Kheta KhanAbdul Rashid, Sikander, Folk Songs Manganiyar,Kutla, Shankara,Village Post Hamira,Kheta, Darra, RoshanDist- Jaisalmer, Rajasthan.Ph: (02992) 51285Feb 7 Rukma Devi Solo artist (song) Payachi, Rajasthan,Near Hotel Dhola Maru,Jaisalmer, RajasthanFeb 7 Kherati Ram Bhatt Puppetry Katputliwala, Houseno. 47, Kalakar colony,Jaisalmer, RajasthanFeb 9 Ghewar, Anwar, Barkat, Gazi Folk Songs Village Hamira,(Hamira)Dist. Jaisalmer, RajasthanFeb 11 Ghazi, Sagar, Perupa, Buchi, Folk songs Village BharnaMehra, Mayat, Anwar, Gazi, (Bharna) Dist. JaisalmerGazi Barner, Satar, BarkatRajasthanFeb 12 Sukmi Devi, Suva Devi, Kalvelia Dance Sheshnath Lok KalakarSatar Khan (Dholak)House no. 55, Sanjay CColony, Pratap Nagar,Jodhpur, RajasthanFeb 13 Anwar, Gazi Bharni, Ghewar, Folk Songs Village Hamira,Barkat Khan, MehraDist. Jaisalmer, RajasthanFeb 14Chanda, Kamala, Narayan Das,Rukmani, Gaffur Teratali Dance Gaon DholTehasil Gokurda,Dist. Udaipur, RajasthanINDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

FOLKLORE AND CREATIVITYParticipant report: folklore and creativityGuy Poitevin is Director, Centre for Cooperative Researchin Social Sciences, Pune, India14The workshop on documenting creative processesof folklore, was meant to bring together people activelyconcerned with folklore issues in India in order to initiatea process of interaction among them, and as a followupexplore possibilities of cooperation between theNational Folklore Support Centre (NFSC) and theparticipants, in whatever form and context deemedappropriate to the objectives of NFSC. The deliberatechoice of Jaisalmer is to focus on the culturalpotentialities and artistic capacities of deprivedcommunities and popular performers. To this effect,NFSC intends to cooperate with Indian Universities andsupport folklore researchers.The Far-East regions having been neglected by Indiasince Independence, NFSC purposely organised a firsttraining workshop in Shillong in May 2000 for mid careerIndian folklorists to reflect upon their practice. Thesecond one was decided to be at Jaisalmer with RupayanSansthan. The workshop was organised to offer anopportunity of intense exchange of views andexperiences to selected participants, either in generalsessions through immediately reacting to thepresentations made by the faculty members or in thesmall groups of five which were arranged as their followupand animated by a rotating faculty member. Thesesmall groups were recomposed every five days. Fieldvisits were generally arranged in the afternoons to getacquainted with various facets of folklife and interactwith them in their life environment. Evenings wereearmarked for performances of music, puppetry anddances. The latter again gave opportunities to personallyrelate with the performers and express our appreciationfor an expertise, which often compared with that ofprofessionally trained artists.Guy PoitevinThis report deals withthe general sessionsonly. It does not intendto be an objectiverecapitulation of thelectures made byfaculty members andfollowing generaldebates. The richnessof these lectures anddiscussions would onlymake this taskimpossible. I meansomething else,namely, to point out afew issues, which seemto me particularlyrelevant in the field offolklore studies and practices in India. I intend on theone hand to stress points which should become matterof consensus and be remembered as significantlandmarks for reference by the participants keen onproceeding further along ways chalked out by theworkshop. I shall on the other hand take thisopportunity to occasionally raise critical questions onissues, which in my opinion remain problematic andrequire further consideration.Identification of core issuesThe workshop was meant to possibly identifyprogrammes to be further carried out with NFSCsupport. This implied that basic perspectives be sharedin order to work actively upon whatever be the fieldsof social involvement or the domains of research. Itwas essential to that effect that right at the outset theconcerns and expectations of every one be spelt out inorder to facilitate a broad homogeneity of perspectives.The participants were therefore requested to make ashort self-presentation and state their main fields ofinvolvement or areas of research. This gave an initialidea of what actually folklore means for them, practicallyand theoretically.The concerns of most participants can be categorisedas follows: (1) the publication of articles, documents,books, video-tapes, visual and audio-documents andfilms on folk traditions; (2) the promotion of folk artsand support to performances, sometimes theorganisation of traditional artists’ melas, talks and meets,one of the significant aims of such activities being ofpresenting these living traditions to a large public whichignores or even looks down upon them; (3) thepreservation and reactivation of people’s traditions andknowledge for the next generations at a moment wheretheir survival is problematic, but their heritagesignificantly relevant. The aim of most of the participantsis of strengthening such potentialities, enhancing theirresilience, propounding their social relevance andavailing of them as assets for cultural activities in frontof destructive social challenges.Issues of theoretical concernThe preliminary self-introduction pointed to a fewtheoretical issues bearing on methods, perspectives andthe clarification of which motivated the wish of theparticipants to come and attend the workshop. Theirhope was that workshop would provide fruitful insights.The particular expectation expressed by severalparticipants was of discovering through a direct contactwith the rich Rajasthan folklore especially its music,INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

FOLKLORE AND CREATIVITYcraft, tales, songs, dances, etc. The holding of theworkshop in Jaisalmer was indeed meant to offer asingular opportunity of personal experience andexposure to Rajasthani folk traditions through directlyrelating with artists and their communities at home inthe course of the field work visits arranged in theafternoon, and evening performances.With Hamira village musiciansWith Hamira village musiciansKherati Ram Bhatt’s homeThe preliminaryquestion raisedby many was:What is folklore?The questionof thetheoreticalstatus offolkloreas aconstituencyo fknowledgeproves a crucialand pervasiveissue, at thecognitive as wellas at thepractical level.Those who tryto enhancethe validityand survivalof oraltraditionsespeciallyin tribalcommunities raisedanother importantissue: What doescreative processmean? Thequestion hasreference tolanguage,social forms,marriagecustoms,tales andmyths,melodicheritage, etc.Aruna Roy and others, not as afact to be deplored but a boon to beworked out, naturally stressed the question ofmultiplicity of cultures alive and vibrant in the wholeIndian subcontinent.Folklore is a matter of speech and not of pure textualtraditions, which possibly exist only as mental fictions.(The word text is being used in this report in the senseit was later defined by the Faculty as a metaphorborrowed from the world of weaving to mean what hasbeen woven together, that is to say, elements thatsomebody puts together as to shape a distinct object).In this regard several questions arise. First, what areorality and its function versus the written? What canpeople’s oral traditions mean in the context of presentday development and in general with reference tocultures and civilisations grounded in the written textwhich use to entertain disregard for the oral texts ofprimitive societies? Secondly, what cognitive status andauthority do we recognise to oral texts when ourdocumentation means and procedures are guided byprinciples and concepts framed by systems ofknowledge based on the predominant authority of thewritten text? In other words, we may try and knowhow to let performers of oral texts speak for themselveswith an authority of their own, but to what extent arewe able to apprehend the logic of their oral regime ofexpressivities? Thirdly, human rights and the rights toinformation were strongly stressed by Aruna Roy andbrought forward time and again by the participants asa core issue directly connected with our interest infolklore. How would we figure out this politicalconnection between peoples’ traditions and democraticrules of social communication?From the outset questions were raised about what do wedo when we document? What is the meaning ofdocumentation? How and why do we document? Thequestion is an ethical one. It bears on the rapportbetween the scholars, the research worker, or, for thatmatter, the activist, and the people with a differentculture and a much lower social status. How would welike to qualify and figure out this rapport? The questionis one of the core issues to be addressed by a workshopon documentation. Why do we collect songs and wishto archive oral traditions? What are our motives? Whatare we looking for? How to secure continuity andsurvival for disappearing traditions (songs, tunes, tales,crafts)? What are the means to preserve them? Whyand how to preserve them when styles of living changedrastically and changes do not care for continuity. Howdo we manage or negotiate such ruptures? What arethe means to reactivate traditions? How can we base onthem processes of cultural action in the modern context?How do we concretely figure out the continuity or oftradition and modernity in the case of folk-tales, songs,myths, music, etc? How do they enter in and berepresented by our modern discourses? Traditionalsocieties are swept away off their social and culturalmoorings (family customs, ways of living, culturalwealth, occupational skills, etc.). How can we reactivatea collective cultural memory found fading away, andsave its relevance, if any, and, if so, which one, in amodern environment, to the benefit of the overall polityand culture of India to-day? Are we only enjoying arole of mourners with no other purpose than thedubious pleasure of an aesthetic contemplation of thebeauty of the dead?15INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

FOLKLORE AND CREATIVITY16Cultural memory may draw upon the inner dynamicsof old folk forms and incorporate their semantics andvalues in a new life style, in different systems of socialrelations. Why should we not even continue using oldinstruments and react against their falling out of use?A mental shift is needed to prompt new people to adjustto old instruments on account of their musical potentials.Why not create this opportunity and device a new leaseof life for them in our times? remarked Komal Kothari.From the outset, a kind of principle for action wasstressed, namely, that at a time when many traditionalforms are disappearing, these forms should be carefullydocumented and systematically studied for whateverthey are worth for (social form, musical tune, myth,tale, etc.). Save one percent in your budget for pure folkstudies is the motto and request of Komal Kothari to allsocial action groups. But how to solve such difficultiesas the availability of time and funds, have concernedand competent people, of means and methods?Then how to do good work and do justice to thetraditions themselves? This applies to musicalknowledge as well as to mythological logic. This impliesfirstly that forms be studied in their whole humancontext, not as isolated folklore item. There is no morepure music or pure technical craftsmanship withoutconcrete human social communication, humanexpression and as a consequence constant variation arethe three characteristic modes of living oral traditions.Pure excellence is always defined out of context. Folktraditions have their own life; they constantly changeaccording to time and historical transformations. Theyare never fixed and isolated objects. They are historicallyconditioned inventions. The workshop was preciselymeant to examine ways and methods of documentingthe particularly significant dimension of creativity ofpeople’s traditions.Careers and concernsUnder this title faculty members shared introspectivereflections about their individual journey as folkloristsso that the lessons that they drew from their professionalcareer may help us to avoid dead ends and suggest away to us. Lee Haring was initially a performer of banjoand singer of traditional American songs. He realisedlater on that songs were coming from country people whomI had no connection with. We had no concern for their context.We were selling ourselves as guardians of authentic Americansongs taken often from commercial productions. A secondlesson is the discovery of the importance of music inthe European songs that his students, sons of migrants,were learning at home as part of their culture. Whenfolklore became a reality in the North America in the60s, another discovery was the retrieval and theinvestigation of the text as a form of creative process.In Kenya, in India and in Madagascar, I discoveredcomplicity between the ignorance of their folklore by peopleand European colonialism. Their folklore became less isolatedand ultimately appeared to me as equivalent to people’s culture,and culture equivalent to history. Folklore studies becamethen a way to acquaint people with their own heritage.Ultimately, ethnicity and nationalism appeared to me narrowapproaches, if not altogether wrong perspectives. Notions ofendangered species and pure forms were also discarded asmisleading, as there is only mixture, métissage, diversityand hybrids. This would apply to situation in the USA also,confirmed Lee Haring in reply to a question. There is ahistory of the concept of folklore in the USA as well,with the same need to transcend concepts of ethnicity,otherness, purity, and nation.Pravina Shukla reflected upon her professionalexperience as folklorist in Brazil (carnival), Benares(women’s practices of body adornment) and inorganising exhibitions and museums in the USA (seePravina Shukla’s article in this issue–Editor). She pointedout practical difficulties encountered in fieldwork whiletaking photos or shooting to document the carnival,in particular to gender constraints.Documentation from collectingmaterial anddisplayingobjects topresent thefindings andthe ultimateresults of aninvestigationwith possiblythe help ofvisual and audiomaterial orexhibition ofobjects and textsraises a number of questions. Venugopal wonderedabout the cognitive status and extent of validity of adocument, which claims to actually represent the reality.There is in a document more than what one sees. Thereis first what we selected and choose to present, andhow and why we gave it a definite signification. Usuallythis is not spelt out when we write a book. What isbeyond or behind? G. Poitevin raised the point ofanother distinction to be made especially with referenceto documenting through visual material, to twocognitive processes, the one of the scholar constructinga document and the other one of the receiver whoseinsights depends on the symbolic values that the imageshave for him. The image has an uncontrollableeffectiveness of its own. Here are two separate worldsof meaning construction. Henry Glassie sharedreflections on the nature of folk creativity. His experiencetaught him to move from a song text and singer’s songtowards the whole life environment and culture of thoseconcerned (housing, cloth and dresses, cooking andfood habits, architecture and material culture in general),which are consonant with the song. People sing songs asGarisar Lake gateINDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

FOLKLORE AND CREATIVITYtheir house looks. The best way to protect people anddocument their potentialities is, first, to reveal theirnames and identity as individuals with reference to theirenvironment, instead of hiding them under emptygeneralisations or deleting their personal lifefeatures. Extractinga performance outof the performer’slife space andsocial relationsc a n n o tapprehendindividual’screativity. Aperformer’screativitylies in theirrapport.Secondly,with regard to theperformance itself, no tune repeatsitself two times absolutely equal to itself. A storyonce repeated will adapt to each particular situationand only variants exist. The storyteller’s creativity isrealised when we listen several times to the same storyin different moments and situations. The tale is affectedby the interaction of the teller with his audience, andthe ethnographer as well, while being narrated.Creativity is the function of interaction. There is nopure, original folk-tale. The text of a tale or song thatremains with the ethnographer is only an abstract, anemblem or a short sample of the reality of the singerand his culture.Kherati Ram Bhatt’s homeAll theories arebound todisabuseFolklore is notan anonymouscultural item.We oftenassume thata folktraditionsuch as asong or atale is acollectivewealth and has nocomposer. Even when the composer’sname is not known, a great poet composer willbe credited with the song creation, as is the case inIreland. It was felt that the issue of the individual versusthe collective in respect of oral traditions should not beviewed only with reference to a western approach tofolklore, in which the concept is applied to modernpractices and innovations which are launched byindividuals before becoming popular in the opinion; asAt Ghazi Khan’s Institute-Bharnaa consequence legal questions of authorship andcopyright are to be acknowledged once the product hasbecome a commodity. The example of a song composedby a Rajasthani traditional singer and shared by thewhole community of Manganiyar singers for decades inRajasthan before being commercially appropriated bymass media with an immense and profitable successbecomes a legal question of authorship and copyrightin a modern context only. The previous popularity ofthe song was not credited to an individual’s rights andconsciousness against the collective consciousness ofhis community. This does not mean that folk songs inIndia are cultural goods, which belong nowhere andstand as nobody’s property; the performers own themas the common heritage of their community. Even whenno name can be mentioned as the author of a givenfolklore, this does not mean that the latter can beconsidered as an aesthetic item isolated from mooringsin a concrete community and surviving withoutperformers or carriers.This issue of individual carriers or performers versus acommunity was unsatisfactorily discussed. Let us referto two instances of traditional practices. The story-tellerof an oral narrative will put his name as being thenarrator or carrier but not the author of the tale or mythwhich the whole community owns as his wealth; thenarrative does not stand by itself as anybody’s ornobody’s story, but neither as a singular individual’sproperty. Similarly, the formula of identification andthe signature of authentification of the collectivetradition of the grind mill songs in India are spelt outby the phrase: I tell you, woman. This implies a sharedappropriation of the tradition by an individual womansinger in the performance itself, through embeddingherself and incorporating her testimony within thecommon heritage; the question of ascribing the song toan individual artist’s name never occurs and would seemincongruous. Artist’s anonymity points simultaneouslyto a commonly shared heritage and a deeplypersonalised identification of oneself within the commonheritage in the moment it is received and commonlycarried over.Should we not conceive of a process of individualisationor personalisation growing abreast with an increasingsymbiotic interaction of each carrier with the othermembers of his community, each one reaching in eachperformance a deeper stage of himself/herself or shapinga new a material heritage through his/her identificationwith the very collective heritage of the community? Theindividual and the collective seem to be better construedinteractively and communicatively than antitheticallywhen we deal with traditional forms of tangible orintangible culture. This issue is crucial as it has adeterminant bearing on methods and procedures ofdocumentation. It calls for further elaboration as thecreativity and fate of people’s traditions dependconstitutively on the interaction of all members throughmodes of symbolic communication and systems of oral17INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

FOLKLORE AND CREATIVITY18transmission of knowledge specific to cohesive societies.Here the process of cultural creativity of the individualagent significantly differs from that of a modernindividual in a modern context where orality is no morethe determinant and sole regime of communication.Issues of documentation practices and documentationethics, as well as issues of collective vitality and survivalof traditional oral cultures are to be conceived alongspecific conceptual constructs. A debate remainsnecessary on the concept of living collective traditionand singular ways of traditional creativity with referenceto the multitude of Indian communities, their systemsof mutual relations and symbolic communication, theirindigenous or autonomous knowledge, their expertisein crafts, and last but not the least their every daywisdom. Processes of creativity vary with each of thesedomains and should be documented in minute detailfor each of them. In Japan, folk traditions are alive inplenty. Japan is extremely rich in folktales. Folk can bevibrant with high standard of living. It is equally wrongto connect folk creativity with illiteracy. Why then folksurvive when comfort and high literacy are not adverseto folk traditions and may not mean their extinction?According to Henry Glassie, folk creation emerges whenan individual feels furious against the collective. Threefactors are required for folk to exist: 1) a brave individualready to stand up and refuse the fashion of the many,2) a group of people surrounding him and ready to betaught something else, and 3) a belief in a transcendenceor an ideology, that is to say, a constitutive link betweenoneself and something beyond.Religion is the substratum of folkloreWhen clarification was sought in a small groupdiscussion about the third factor, Henry Glassie definedtranscendent belief as a conviction transcendent toethnicity, environmental constraints, economics andpolitics. Something deep provides a resource fromwithin and is distinct from everyday constraints. Thisresource is usually sought in philosophy or religion.This transcendent resource offers a language differentfrom ordinary language and allows us seeing lifedifferently. That transcendent element is an ideologicalconception in the control of people, not imposed fromoutside. Folk creativity rests upon language or art asmetaphorical form of expression and symboliccommunication. The performers have the ability notonly to make artefacts; they are moreover able to speakabout their art with a language of their own. Thatlanguage helps them to control, transform, and interprettheir art as a system of significance, which helps themto defend it.For instance, potters in Turkey have a language todiscuss life borrowed from Sufi poetry, which is notpart of orthodox Islam, but these sets of poems allowpeople to have a practical and different language oftheir own. When their art of potters is threatened, andthe majority of the potters of Bangladesh or Turkeydecide to discontinue the tradition, many pottersdisappear, but their beautiful language offers a defencewhich a minority avails of, finding in it inspiration andways to overcome. This creativity is not economicallyor politically ground. They avail a means of their ownto protect their art: it is a transcendent force that makessome of them continue their art practices.The person engages himself increating somethingnot only forhim butalso in thename ofoneness witha supremepower or toplease thatpower. Thesame is the casewith weaversand theirweaving. Theidiom is taken fromIslam and notf r o meconomics.Atranscendentideologyprevents theirart fromdisappearing, aresult that asimple economicor utilitarianargument wouldnot be able toperform. Folkforms aresymbolicforms. Thisexplainstheir survivalin the midstof adverseeconomicconstraints.Process of puppet makingFolklore Museum, JaisalmerThis theory ofemergence offolklore wasunfortunately not discussed. It appears amazinglyidentical to theories of popular culture as counter culturewhich flourished in the West some decades ago, forwhich the people, namely, small insurgent groups arethe source of innovation; they are moreover understoodas individuals from low status community, or repressedminorities. It sounds as if the term folklore is justbrought in to replace the term popular. This subjectsGarisar LakeINDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

FOLKLORE AND CREATIVITYthe construction of Folklore as transcendent source ofhuman survival to those objections made to the popularconstrued as alternative front of counter-culture. Thisis not to deny the necessity of ideological sources ofinspiration for social actors exploited by dominantinterests to fight against unjust socio-economic systems,but the question is not of accounting for the emergenceof action-groups.The concept of individual, which appears here, maynot prove appropriate to conceive of the relation of thecreative individual performer to its community in atraditional way. Creative processes within oral folktraditions characteristically appear to be communicativephenomena, rather than artist’s courageous upsurge,and their mechanisms would have been better discussedwith reference to the many Indian folk realities familiarto the participants, starting with the various folkpractices encountered during the field work visits inand around Jaisalmer. A second question is that a hugemass of folk traditions as much in India as elsewhereare not essentially religious, and their emergence as aresponse to a transcendent call may simply be nottenable as a general theory.A third observation is that the function of a number offolk traditions consists in maintaining the status quo ifnot even repressing dissent, or in emulating higher upmodels if not seeking acceptance and recognition bydominant communities. The Indian narrative traditionsconstitute the wealth of each community (for instancethe practice of genealogies and the sets of myths specificto subaltern castes, to mention only two examples) seemhardly capable of breaking altogether the over-allhierarchical and patriarchal patterns.Performance theory: Henry GlassieSeveral lessons can be drawn from Glassie’s lecture.The first lesson is that a text as a thing in the world, anarchaeological monument, is to be distinguished fromthe inner view of the human agent. The latter’s insightis a meaning to be ascertained from within once wehave documented the processes of production of a form.The ethnographic stage is necessary but not sufficient.The second lesson is that the meaning can bedocumented only after a prolonged interaction withpeople. Truth is any way out of reach, as it exists onlyon the inaccessible horizon, which the interpretationsof the folklorist in dialogue with those of his performerspoint to; all of them remain only approximations. (SeeHenry Glassie’s article in this issue-Editor)In his two presentations, the one on musical instrumentsand other one on folk tales, Komal Kothari gave accountsof creation of form with reference to their physicalparameteres, location, social mapping andcorrespondent distinctive genres. These accounts wereinspiring illustrations of how one could analyse theseforms. Kapila Vatsyayan explicitly articulated a firstlesson later in a talk: What is the distinction betweentangible and intangible culture? This categorisation neveroccurred to Komal Kothari to distinguish themanufacturing of instruments and the narration of tales.His description immediately clarified crucial points: theproduction of a given instrument is directly guided bya certain form of music which is specifically if notexclusively performed in particular circumstances: thetune cannot be separated neither from its materialvehicle, which itself is symbolic of caste, technical andaesthetic expertise, and therefore instrument of socialdistinction, nor from the social/symbolic function of theperformance. Similarly the import of folk narratives fromlow status castes cannot be properly assessed unlessthey are perceived as embedded in the everyday materialculture of communities maintained in a state ofdeprivation. Second lesson: Forms do not emerge fromnowhere; they are contextually embedded in the totalityof a social structure, which comprises of a number ofagencies mutually interdependent and interactive(Kapila Vatsyayan). A form should therefore beanalytically examined at various levels. The wealth ofinformation given by Komal Kothari cannot be reportedhere. A few details only may be remembered tosubstantiate the previous statements.Regarding musical instruments, for instance, barringthe simple ones, they were played in hereditary castessupported by patrons. If most of them come fromkitchenware, the reason is that they were mostly playedat folk shrines of the goddesses. Until thirty years ago,rural people were not using metallic utensils becauseof the difficulty of making alloys. The study of musicalinstruments has led us to study food practices (therewas no fried food), and their use led us towards theshrines of the goddesses. Different instruments (pabu,jantar, jogi and sarangi) were used for different epics withthe result that specific epics captured some; as a resultthey remain used exclusively for that particular epic.Two groups of musicians, langas and manganiyars, arefound in western Rajasthan, each of them divided intwo sub-groups, which play a different instrument (forinstance with strings differently placed on the bridgeof their sarangi in the case of manganiyars). Themanufacturing of sarangi and kamaicha had to be learntagain, they were not made in India for last one hundredyears; two families who could make the Sindhi sarangiwere in Karachi and the kamaicha was only repaired butno longer made.The reactivation of manufacturing expertise and thevalorisation of musical practice proved a long march ofperformative creativity. Our problem was to get goodinstruments made and repaired. Komalda remarked:Nowadays we struggle with the exact place of the bridge;often we cannot tune, as the exact place has to be found foreach of them. At the start, in 1953, a musician runs awaywhen I asked him to allow me to record his song. He said: IfI sing, I shall lose my voice. Camps were organised in villagesfor musicians: some knew how to tune the instruments (someof them tune not with the ear but on the basis of the colour of19INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

FOLKLORE AND CREATIVITY20the strings). Gifted musicians tried to improve. Children weremade to listen and try for themselves in camps organised forthem. The manufacturing of instruments requires a complexknowledge of appropriate substances different for each part(teak wood, rose wood, brass, copper, horn, etc.),measurements (with fingers) and location (particularly difficultin the case of flat and vertical bridges). We tried and madeexperiments: our experience has taught us for instance thatfor the kamaicha the best skin is that of a six-month old goat.Not a single instrument is exactly of the same size as anotherone. All are unique. The manufacturing skills developedagain. The transmission of performing skills to youngboys since 1992 is now one of the most excitingexperiments. Komalda remarked: Our concern is formusical quality. I boycotted the harmonium. The Portugueseamong other many good and bad things such as the small poxbrought the harmonium. All folk instruments are traditionallyfor accompaniment and not meant to play solo. We promptthose who use harmonium to shift to kamaicha and abandonharmonium. We have remade three instruments: sarangi,kamaicha and ravanhatta. We shall now take up otherinstruments.As regards Rajasthani folk-tales, a few significantfeatures are worth reminding. First, the variety of genresshould be identified. For instance, to start with talescomposed or narrated against payment, come thegenealogies kept by the caste of Bhats. There are twotypes of Bhat, those who keep written records of familylineages and those who keep only an oral memory ofthem. The maintenance of genealogies is a necessarystatus symbol. Bhats visit once a year families who paythem to keep record of their descent, stay a couple ofdays, spend evening telling stories. The art requires ahighly ornamental rhetoric. Those who keep oralgenealogies are also acrobats, and work with poorpeople. Their stories start with Sun, Moon, and Waterand follow a format close to Puranas. (See Komal Kothari’sarticle in this issue-Editor)Creation: making and remaking of the worldThis title offered a framework for two presentationsthat tried to illustrate the theory of performance andthe process of documentation as two moments ofcreation with reference to a folk object with the help ofphotos and through a well-knit biographical narrative.Henry Glassie tried to draw the full life profile anddynamics of a Hindu potter (murti maker) in Bangladesh.The potter learned to make the murti by spending anumber of years visiting many artists in India andBangladesh and studying all the sixty eight possibleforms of the goddesses and their background narratives.Instead of following the written prescriptions of thesastras, he followed only his mystical inspiration, settingto work after long moments of prayer only during whichhe was granted a mental appearance of the devi. Hejust tried to shape his statue as a visual projection inthe clay of his internal vision. The clay is not fired, asthe seed of creation would go off the clay. The body of thegoddess cannot be fired. Perfect symmetric order of thebody and absolute brightness of the face display a figure,which transports the devotee out of the human, everyday life into the divine realm of gods. The murti is notthe god, only the receptacle of the divine. The deitydescends to communicate with the devotee and thedevotee’s world. It is a direct fusion and an exchange:the devi consumes the flowers that are offered to herwhile she responds to her devotee’s needs. Against avow the devotee is granted a son. When the meet isover, the statue becomes clay again and is thrown inthe river to merge with the silt of the delta. Once themurti’s function is over, the clay goes back to the earth.The overall documentation of a murti in Bangladeshwas meant to stand as a pattern of documentation oftwo creative processes. As a matter of fact, thepresentation was essentially displaying a third creativeprocess, that of the construction of a representation ofboth the processes by a third agent, the ethnographer,to a particular audience, that of the participants of theworkshop. The third process takes place in a contexttotally alien to the space and time of the first twoprocesses. In this respect, the exercise revealed at leasttwo pitfalls that the process of documentation mightfind hard to avoid when its logic is one of exemplificationof a general idea more than a scientific display structuredby analytical concepts. The determinant general idea,that of the mystical dimension of the process of murtimaking, was stressed to the point that thecorrespondence of the ethnographer’s discursive objectand the concrete actual murti became problematic.Reality tended to be turned into the pretext of anaesthetic constitution when the discourse on the beautyof the goddess was making one forget that the colours,the dresses, the jewels, the soft and white skin of thedevi’s plump face might have as much to do with theappearances of film actresses in the dream of youngfemale devotees than with the apparition of the devi tothe artist in prayer. Similar doubts were raised aboutthe measurements of the statue: to what extent werethey not borrowed from canonical texts, resulting froma negotiation between people’s tastes and normativedefinitions? To what extent can folk potters remain freefrom these norms, even if we assume that they neverread them and that sculptors strictly observe thesecanons? As a result the representation of theethnographer looking for an in-depth mysticalunderstanding of a tremendously ambitious potter couldhardly avoid the serious danger of actually standing asa marvellous piece of orientalist literature.This leads to the methodological question of the motives,which may, explicitly or implicitly, structure thediscourse of the documenting ethnographer. The truthof the latter might not be the same as that of theperformer who is documented. Everyone has his truth.Documentation is a process of representation, whichmay mirror the ethnographer’s truth more than theINDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

FOLKLORE AND CREATIVITYperformer’s intention or the user’s interest. The latter’screative process displayed in the performance may differfrom the ethnographer’s interpretative performance. Theethnographer’s logic ought to be clearly stated. Theethnographer no less than the performer avails of thematerial at his disposal.Pravina Shukla presented as a process of creativity thechoice of jewels by women in Benares jewellers’ shopsto adorn their body. Jewels are matched with the dress,the shoes, the demeanour, the complexion and theimage of one’s body. The choice reflects the wealth ofthe family, a sense of beauty and others’ liking. Theresult is a performance of sorts: the creation of a selfportraitresulting from a reflection on oneself and one’sappearance often with reference to film actresses whosephotos are exhibited as models of beauty on the wallof the shop. In short anelaborate process and anumber of moments ofcreation and gendercollaboration with malevendors are prompted bya wish to look fit, a feelingof self-esteem, a sense ofpower and control overthe situation, ultimatelyan ability to achievesomething.The purely descriptiveapproach raised as e r i o u smethodologicalquestion that of atotal lack ofanalyticalframework tostructure theobservation anddocument theprocess of body adornment.A decision was to be made in this regard andneed to be stated by the ethnographer. Documentationis more than mere superficial exhibition. The study ofeveryday life style cannot be a scientific attempt ofconstruction of folk knowledge without deciding uponthe concepts of references most appropriate to the objectof study. These might have been of a triple nature inthe given example: (1) the concepts adequate to a minuteobservation of practices such as those of taste, smell,beauty, sense of colours and physical forms, etc. withreference to various parameters such as age, positionin the family, education, etc., (2) the norms- Thedeterminant point is that the analysis cannot avoidconsidering the location of the performance in the givencultural, social and political environment: bodyadornment creates a female social form. In this respectit might prove difficult to construe the possibility ofchoice offered to high middle-class women as a creativeKherati Ram Bhatt’s home-puppet showpotentiality. It might more appropriately be studied asan aggregate of distinctive class markers. All jewels areprovided by the market and designed by some one else,none of them at the initiative of the women performer/customer who looks like a complacent puppet in thecontrol of various external agencies; she selects on thebasis of criteria alien to her own decision (the tastes,wishes and reactions of husband, in-laws, relatives andthe distinctive aesthetics of her class). The range ofinitiative opened by the choice to be made is as muchlimited as conditioned by constraints accepted as therules of the game. Categories of imitation and socialreproduction would give a better account of the processunder consideration.Creolization: creativity in cultural convergenceWhen people of different languages come together, theyrenegotiate their culture. Lee Haring in the islands ofthe Indian Ocean studied this process of creativity byconvergence: Madagascar, Mauritius, La Reunion,Seychelles and Comoros. The process called creolizationcan be defined as the mixing of two or more languagesin specific situation of social and traditional contact,which often contains power differences. Mauritian creolegrew out of the impact of French and slaves in an islandpopulated now by Indians (two thirds), the descendantsof former slaves (one fourth) with a Chinese minorityof shopkeepers. All had to come to terms with eachother, especially out of the necessity of labour relations.(See Lee Haring’s article in this issue-Editor)Why folklore?Though no debate took place on this central issue,several kinds of considerations were made. On the onehand, Hentry Glassie boldly assigned to the workshopand specifically to Asian scholars the task of rebuildingthe discipline of folklore in a way suiting Asiancommunities, right at the beginning. On the other hand,Kapila Vatsyayan reminded everybody that the wordcarries in India a historical load. It was imported as anepistemological weapon fitting other systems of thecolonisers’ knowledge, science, administration andgovernance. Folklore is in India is a marker of thecolonial moment in the history of the sub-continent.Since then it has applied to phenomena categorised andconstructed with reference to Western-Europeanepistemological models of the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies. The theoretical concepts of these modelswere simply transferred and grafted on an Indian socialconfiguration which was itself structured by aliensociological and anthropological categories (for instanceclear cut distinction of hunters, gatherers, tribes, villagesocieties, etc.). Kapila Vatsyayan stressed the fact thatthese categories have permeated our discourses. The theoreticalframework that we have received has inevitably chalked outour perceptions of traditions, our people and ourselves. Theprescriptions of the language obviously bear upon our21INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

FOLKLORE AND CREATIVITY22understanding of the textual documents. What happened tofolklore once it is Indianised and grafted to Indian realities?What have we retained? How have we worked it out as toconform to our own perceptions and systems of social relationand symbolic communication? We ought to be clear aboutthe semantics of our discourse of folklore and the varioustheoretical perspectives that it carries since colonial rule.In a small group discussion, Henry Glassie madesupplementary clarifications. The first everethnographer, F. Boas, did not distinguish betweendisciplinary boundaries as was later done (socialanthropology, history, sociology, human geography,art, linguistic, folklore, etc.). The present growinginterest in folklore studies in Africa and the USA is dueto the discredit attached to anthropology, which wasonce, a science meant by the colonialist rulers to servetheir interests. Folklore is free from the stigma ofscientific aggression. In the USA, folklore is seen as theheart of anthropology. As a matter of fact, the distinctionof folklore and anthropology is false and of no seriousor scientific relevance whatsoever. Folklore is only seenas representing a humanist approach. Folklore wouldbe particularly interested in people’s own creations andfocus on the texts themselves (myth, art, music,indigenous knowledge, etc.) of the individual membersof a community. Folklore considers the individual asthe sole human reality and possible source of creativity,and not as an example of a generality. Anthropologywould on the contrary look for structures andregularities. Actually the difference is no moreconsidered as the marker of different disciplinaryboundaries. The distinction is only one of approach andaccentuation.In a general lecture, making another attempt to clarifyquestions, which were constantly raised, Henry Glassieexplained how folklore couldn’t be defined as such but withreference to tradition, communication, art and creativity. Hedefined tradition as the creation of the future out of thepast, all decision being based on the past. All definitionof folklore would therefore entail an idea of traditionand recognise that every tradition is impure. We cannotoperate out of memory. For instance, in the USA, weobserve a tremendous revival of Indian traditions, theanthropological texts of F. Boas being the basis of thisrevival. If we record what is dying out, this is becausea reconstitution of the dead may later be made.Communication is a creation in the present out ofavailable means and resources.Art is sincerity and cannot operate out of the frame oftraditions. Creativity occurs when a form (tale, song,etc.) is positioned in the world. There is no innovationunless something is relocated in the world, in a newrelational context. Newness comes always as areconsideration of the past. The power of a human beingis measured by his potential to assert oneself. Thisdefines his/her creativity. Documenting folklore meansto document this creative potential. This creativitysignals the emergence of the individual as the momentof a constant negotiation by some one with a collectiveto which he confusedly belongs, for asserting one’sidentity. We are all members of several collectives(gender, class, age, caste, religion, etc.). An individualis the gathering point of a number of collective identities,a point endlessly open for negotiated relations.Documentation of the individual’s creativity bears onthe act of fusion of identities at the moment where thepower of the individual shapes a new integrativesynthetic form. We bother to document the past becausewe ourselves belong to a tradition of science andknowledge to which we want to contribute throughbearing witness to humanity.Evening performances during the workshop-folk musicians from Rajasthan: Yassin, Mehboob, Abdul Rashid, Sikander,Kula, Shakela, Kheta, Dasseo, Roshan, Ghewar Khan, Anwar Khan, Barkat, Gari, Sagar, Perupa, Budin, Mehra, Mayat,Gazi Barner, Satar and Barkat, Kherati Ram Bhatt’s puppetry and Rukma (solo artist)INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

FOLKLORE AND CREATIVITYDocumentation: ethics, ways and problemsDocumentation is an intrusion in people’s lives. It mustbe positive, that is to say, leave the communityundisturbed. Folklorists may make wounds: they mustcommit themselves to make good. They cannot beneutral. They cannot be objective. Their intrusion is apolitical act. Documentation without a purpose isimmoral. This differentiates an activist from a pureresearcher. But a folk activist must have a profoundknowledge of who are the people and identify withthem, repairing the damage that his intrusion maycause. Archives are only residual and accidentalobjectives. The main aim is to act against prejudices.Ultimately information should be shaped so that it maydo well and have a definitive beneficial impact onhumankind. We cannot enter into people’s lives withoutproper intellectual understanding. We must be able torecapture the meanings of the process underlying theforms and find out the categories adequate to apprehendfrom within the significance of the forms. Meaningsare there, but usually in a confused state ofconsciousness. We have to articulate them and helppeople themselves reaching a higher level of selfconsciousness.This only may give legitimacy to ourintrusion.The research on folklore often ends up with a product:a stereotyped form is presented in isolation as if therehad been no process of creation and no functional value.The uniqueness and universality of living forms are lostwith their standardisation and globalised replication,their desacralisation and social disembodiment(KapilaVatsyayan). When living forms walk out of theirlife context, they are presented, as pieces of art, cut offfrom their role and value in their socio-economic milieu.They are sliced, only a small portion of the form isselected to be brought out, ten minutes of dance are(water, land, air, community relations, fertility, gods).A fair documentation should try to comprehend andrepresent forms with the totality of their functions andvalues, in their wholeness, that is to say, with referenceto all the structures of the society, which they belongin. Kapila Vatsyayan substantiated this perspective witha vivid example, that of the multiple contexts in whichan earthern pot may be used. Similarly, lecturing aboutthe transcription of verbal art, Lee Haring’s advice isthat we should discover for ourselves and reveal to othersits patterns and contents. Several patterns are bound toemerge: phonetic, linguistic, syntactic, rhythmic,melodic, rhetoric, semantic, acting, etc. The tale mightbe the same but notations will change with moods andmeanings, meanings will change with audiences andcircumstances. Appropriate means should be found totranscribe the creativity born from interaction withpeople during the narrative performance.Forms cannot be closed categories. We look for authentictexts. But there can be no such thing as an authentictext. We oppose oral or folk to written and classical,and look for fixed and distinctive forms. We similarlyoppose agricultural to non-agricultural communities,Adivasis to villagers, literate to illiterate, etc. But wehave only variants, and folk and classical forms are inconstant relations with one another. Authenticity is inthe changes and transformations, which keep formsalive and relevant.The critical review by Lee Haring of the history of ethnopoetictranscription of folktales in the Americanscholarship since F.Boas draws our attention towardssignificant lessons to be remembered. No idea of artisticachievement in the performance. No idea of thecomplexity of a unique event. This is the perspectivethat folklore kept in view. E. Sapir (1884-1939) translatednarratives as prose. This erased the poetic value of oralnarratives and distorted considerably the original23performed, sequences are decontextualised and thevalue of the form totally altered. Originally folk formsare dealing with essential environmental problemsmaterial. Poetry is a repetition of words and it enforcesthe message. Cancelling poetic aspects (refrains, wordswith no literal meanings, non-sense syllables, etc.) killsINDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

FOLKLORE AND CREATIVITY24the strength of the narrative and misses what mirrorsthe structural patterns of a song as a whole. M. Jacobs(1902-1971), a linguist, considered folktale performancelike a drama and tried to reconstruct it as a play, not anovel. D. J. Crowley (1921-1998) in his writings focussedon the complexity and uniqueness of each oralperformance.The concern is how not to distort the poetry, how tokeep old poetry alive and attractive to changing currenttastes. This requires a new translation. But how do wefit an audience without distorting the original message?For Dell Hymes narratives can be organised in verses,scenes, distinct lines and series of acts. A narrativefollows patterns; it is not prose but measured verses.Unlike the Greek and Latin meters, the rhythm isessential by compressing time, accentuating words, anddevising rhymes. The paradigms and indicators ofpatterns are to be found. Speech patterns are reproducedas much as possible. Participants were referred to thepaper by Dell Hymes, which was circulated for furtherdiscussion, Discovering Oral Performance and MeasuredVerses in American Indian Narrative. Henry Glassiesuggested concrete procedures to (1) honouring one’sresponsibility to accuracy, (2) engaging the readers, and(3) giving back to people a product in which they mayrecognise themselves. A transparent documentation isa combination of these three achievements. But whennarration is not information but speech, that is to say,merger of prose and poetry, how to renderaccentuations, silences, intonations, rhythms, wordsmusicality, etc. in prose? Speech and story are not prose.A direct transcription from tape cannot render thespeech performance. Henry Glassie referred to his paperon Irish folk history that was circulated to exemplifyways and means of a faithful and effective ethno- poetictranscription of oral narratives.Let us here recall only one significant advice amongmany: No quotation! People should talk directly in thefull text; their voice should not come as quotationsexternal to the central discourse of the ethnographer,brought in by the latter to illustrate or evidence hisown views about others. The views expressed shouldbe those of the people, who should be the author ofthe central discourse. It is the duty of the historians toshow how the documentary evidence upon which theyfound their discourse legitimately introduced themethod of quotation. The same method is objectionablein ethnographic documentation where living humanbeings should be heard constructing their life-worldthemselves, documenting themselves, as it were, bymeans of a skillful ethnographer’s techniques and tools.In short, the ethnographer’s function is not toinstrumentalise his informants and their speech with aview to stage or vindicate a true representation of theirworld-view; but to let his expertise be instrumentalisedby an attempt of self-presentation of the peoples’themselves. Henry remarked that I burry scholars in theendnotes of the book.Henry Glassie tried to illustrate this with a presentationof photographs. A tightly, aesthetically and emotionallyconstructed narrative performance of the ethnographermay convince an audience of the truth of theethnographer’s invented story and captions. But thistruth is ethnographer’s view. Photos can speak forthemselves to the extent their selection and sequenceenforces the meaning that we want them to conveywhen we display them. Give a set of ten photos todifferent people; each of them will assemble them in adifferent order as to support and evidence differentnarratives and messages, which may even clash withone another. Photos create their own metaphors but tosuggest various scenarios in the minds of differentpeople. Similarly, the narrative of the ethnographer isa fiction, a myth, and an invented scenario, whichrepresents mainly the truth of the ethnographer.Two issues may be raised in thisregard. A subjectiveone: thetransparency ofpurpose, whichHenry Glassiearticulates in clearterms: You can dowhat you want providedyou inform what you aregoing to do. Anobjective one: a criticalawareness of thediscursive logic of thenarrative representation.These issues maysubstantiate a radicalquestioning of the veryclaim to be able to actuallyrepresent people asthemselves. Theethnographer’s wish of aperfectly transparentinstrumentality seems likelyto be a directive utopia. It should be recognised as suchlest it becomes a mirage and a (needed?) selfmystificationof the anthropologist. Unless weunderstand the impasses, pitfalls and confusion of arepresentation model we would better discard thatutopia and define another directive model fordocumenting popular cultural forms, their import andrelevance. I would suggest that this be accounted asone of the theoretical results of the workshop.ChallengesTraditional water conseration: KuldharaThe exchanges did not result in commonly articulatedconclusions. Debates rather raised open-endedquestions. It would be only appropriate to concludewith summarily stating a few challenges, which bearupon the future and expected achievements of thecultural practices undertaken by the participants of theINDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

FOLKLORE AND CREATIVITYworkshop. Three issues seems to me significant. I wouldlike to identify them as follows: the need of a reflexiveconceptual construction, the urge of a systematic critiqueof tradition, the exigency of an open conflict of valueand power. Firstly, folklore is no more a concept at thecentre of a distinct scientific constituency in humansciences. What appears under this term is nowadaysstudied under a variety of terms and with all sorts ofanalytical tools borrowed from any possible scientifichorizon as per the needs of each investigation. Let usnot any more ask, what is folklore? But concernourselves with what do we do with what is labelled asfolklore?The variety of operational and analytical terms usedduring the workshop allows us to dispensewith a word, which remains toomuch entangled in its historywith powerful gestures. Theterm proves unable to providereliable and useful guidancewhen we concern ourselves withgiving a future to folk traditionsin India. This means that we haveto construct our own operational,analytical and theoretical concepts asa result of a reflexive analysisscrutinising our cultural practices invarious fields of folk traditions.Secondly, when as cultural actors weground our initiatives on folk traditions, we cannot failto realise that our cultural practices cannot claimcredibility and dispense with a critique of tradition. Thisdemands, at the theoretical level, a collective work ofcritical interpretation and reflexively groundedreappropriation of the past. The motives of the culturalactivists need to be transparent and their strategiesjustified. This demands, at the practical level of modelsand forms of development, calculated attempts ofincorporation of basic values of the past in differentmodern civilisational set-ups. To say the least, none ofthe tasks, theoretical and practical, can be taken forgranted. They face us rather as a serious challenge. Acritical revalidation of tradition is a preliminary urgentduty.Thirdly, this urgent duty of revalidation and reactivatingtraditions actually amounts to a tough two-fold conflictof value and power for two reasons. One: The advocacyof a valorisation of the creative potential of yesteryearstraditions cannot forget that all traditions arebound to disappear withKale Doongriunavoidable civilisationaltransformations. Our ultimate aimcannot be the survival of the pastbut the assertion of values receivedthrough such traditions ashumankind’s heritage. Two: Theutopian belief in folklore as thefresh, popular source ofsalvation and counter-poweremerging from a transcendentcall to which courageousindividuals respond, I am!does not stand scrutiny.Obviously, traditions are no lesseffectively revalorised to serve the hegemonicintentions of a few in the name of Identity. We knowfor sure that documenting and reactivating traditionalpotentialities may possibly prove an asset for humanenlightenment as well. But this cannot avoid sharplyconflicting on the answers to such questions as: Whichcreativity do we decide to save from the past? Or why do weplan to look back as to dig out and save particular valuesfrom the past?25Jaisalmer fortINDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

ADIEU JAISALMERAdieu Jaisalmer: 19 February 200126Komal Kothari gave the welcome speech andremarked that the workshop was a unique learningexperience for him and it would be definitely reflect inhis future work.Chief guest address: Sharada RamanathanI just had a few thoughts in the last four days that Ihave been here. I have heard few words; I have heardsome people express themselves in different ways. Onesuch word is complexity and I was thinking to myself –and I have used the word myself a lot in the last fourdays – thinking that this field is completely uniquebecause it is subtly complex. No one has really beenterribly worried about the them and us and if they havebeen worried about the them and us then it has beenvery anti-us and them.In my little experience in the field of folklore, my ownsense is that folklorists are complex people, complexhuman beings and therefore the field itself is complex.Valedictory: Jasmine K. DharodThere has been a lot of discourse around who is afolklorist; everyone sitting in this room is a folklorist,starting from the musicians and then the storytellers,the scholars, practitioners, the experienced, the not soexperienced, intellectually and emotionally andspiritually, everyone sitting here is a folklorist. So thesituation itself represents the complexity that is what Iam trying to articulate.The second word that I have heard, particularly frompeople like Murugan, is pain and sadness. And I actuallydon’t understand it as a simple notion of pain– it is akind of pain that comes through a certain kind ofstruggle which is very cultural, philosophical, spiritual–the struggle of being a folklorist, the struggle with thefield of folklore and the pain that emerges from thatstruggle is a creative one. So folklore is also anextraordinarily creative field that comes out of a certainpain and struggle. And I have sensed this when HenryGlassie has spoken, when participants have expressedthemselves, when artists performed and then whenMurugan sort of captures it all in that one word pain.The third word that got articulated in different waysbut not quite in the way that I understood it is theword synergy. It has been very jargonised and synergyin this field is not always inside the conference hall buta lot of it can be outside of the conference hall too. SoI am just illustrating some of the characteristics of beinga folklorist or being in the field of folklore. And theseare not terms that are commonly or easily used in a lotof other disciplines. So I think there are actually threeor four important directions for the field and thereforefor the folklorist. One is to sustain the complexity ofthe homosapiens. We must never attempt at sameness,attempt at homogeneity that is causing conflictseverywhere in the world whether in the caste problemsof Tamil Nadu or the problems in Zimbabwe or theKashmir issue or Bosnia or wherever. Conflict resolutioncan happen only with the acceptance of complexity anddiversity, so that’s one of the roles of folklore.The second is therefore to serve as a resource for severalother disciplines – sociology, anthropology, linguistics,language studies, history, the development of historicityand multiple perspectives in historicity and even oneof my new favourite subjects, civilisational studies. SoI don’t see people like Komalda, Glassie and Haringand several others here as just folklorists; I see them asresources for the evolution of multiple disciplines acrossthe board, cross-sectorally, cross-regionally, transboundary,in every possible way. So I would love tosee these people not only in folklore conferences butalso at other kinds of thinking forums.The third thing that I think we should continue tostruggle with, which is an issue not just for folkloristsbut people across disciplines, is the connections or thegaps between the development of thought anddevelopment of action. This is something we shouldcontinue to struggle with.Since I haven’t been here for all the fifteen days, I wantto illustrate the discussion yesterday on disseminationand the kind of perspectives that could develop aroundthat; and the discussions about archives– what arearchives? Some of us continued to talk about it outsideof the hall, when we said multimedia means differentthings in different contexts. Multimedia here meansliterally different media, it does not mean differentbuttons within the same media, for example; it is notjust about computers, not just about websites, and itsnot about an either or. It’s about many ands. That’sthe other balance that we should continue to try to strike.I think the last point that I want to make in this fairlyunprepared speech is something that a lot ofcontemporary thinkers and intellectuals within thesedisciplines such as sociology, folklore and anthropology–they say how can you talk about the humanities withoutengaging with the human being? I have heard Henryreminded us about this and Komalda also reminded usabout this many times, over the last four days.INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

ADIEU JAISALMERSo I have been somewhat at the level of first principles,but sometimes we tend to move so much away fromfirst principles that we forget why we started; like allgood fundamentalist movements they forget where theystarted and why they started– we should not becomeone of them.Last but not the least, much as I hate clichés, I want tothank all of those participants who did not say, I thankthe Ford Foundation. The Ford Foundation is notsponsoring this event. The Ford Foundation is a resourceand a philanthropy that supports certain organisationswho represent certain causes; I would like to believethat that’s where we are. I would like to thank Muthu,Venu, Rola, Jasmine, Henry, Lee and Komalda of course.I want to thank all the participants because I have learnttremendously over the last four days from everythingthat everybody has said.Concluding remarks: Henry Glassie... What is folklore? It is the moment; and there arenumber of such moments that I remember fromJaisalmer. I remember walking in the streets, the sungoing down, the sandstone blessed with the gold ofthe sunset and the intricacy of the carving that remindedme of people now dead who blessed this city with theirtalent.It is this moment – the instant when Zakar Khan placedthe bow on the strings of the Kamaicha and was able toaccomplish a tone, a sound, a depth and a beauty thatI have rarely experienced in any musical performance.That moment is the moment I remember – that’s themoment that folklorists talk about; that’s the momentwhen the human being engages the world in sincerity.Zakar Khan sitting in his village, placing the bow onthe strings of his Kamaicha brought forth everythingthat we would need to think of what it is to be human.When our friend, B.D. Soni showed us the brand newimage of Ganesha that he had made out of gold such amoment occurred. That piece of gold captured the sunfor an instant, allowing us to know how beautifully hehad, with what sincerity he had created his piece of theworld.Or the night when accidentally the light flashed behindKharati Ram Bhat in this very place and we could seethat he was playing and dancing those puppets. Whenin the dark we see the puppets dance it was interestingbut when the light came behind him and we could seehis body gracefully moving like the most elegant of balletdancers, that was another such moment.The moments that we are searching for are the momentsthat seem simple, not because they are simple butbecause they have perfect and complete integrity. It isfor that reason that people frequently describe folkloreas being simple but Sharada is right in describing it asthe ultimate complexity. Because it is the place wherethe individual and the collective fuse; it is the placewhere the mundane and the transcendent fuse; it isthe place where the useful and the beautiful fuse; it isthe place where the sorrowful and the joyous fuse.When we can feel that melancholy surge up in the midstof joy, that’s the moment when we understand thefullness of human sincerity has been engaged oraddressed.And if anyone would like, as a folklorist, to understandwhat it is that we must do, the first thing that we mustdo is to say when we have seen, to say when we haveheard, to say when we have felt, to say that we haveunderstood those instances in which the whole of thehuman complexity had been brought into perfect focusat the very end of the bow, touching the strings of thekamaicha in the hands of Zakar Khan. It is that I honour,it is that has brought me half way around the world, itis that which I lead you, the next generation offolklorists, that’s your responsibility, to note, topreserve, to document, to transfer, to teach others aboutthose moments in which our fellow human beings hadSharada Ramanathan: Valedictory addressgiven the absolute completeness, the absolute fullnessof their humanity into the world for us to experience.Concluding remarks: Lee HaringI have been something like a folklorist for over fiftyyears, beginning with the Irish folk songs that weresung to me by my mother as I sat under the piano,carrying on with the American folk songs that I myselfsang with my friends, on into the study of Americansongs and tales and the teaching of these, throughinvolvement with the peoples of East Africa,subsequently Madagascar, subsequently other islandsin that region, including multicultural and multilingualMauritius, and Seychelles. You would think I wouldn’thave much to learn–I have had a great deal to learn inthese fifteen days. And after this workshop, I am abetter folklorist than I was before.As our time together comes to an end, I express mygratitude for having been invited to Rajasthan, the land27INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

ADIEU JAISALMER28of the kings with its battle-scarred forts, its palaces ofamazing luxury, its riotous colours and its deep,enduring traditions of honour. The workshop has givento me, an emissary from the decadent west, a new visionof folklore as the vital centre as we have visited thedesert villages and come to have insight into the centralrole of expressive culture in the lives of so many peoplein this part of India.Henceforth, I will always have before me the image ofKomalda sharing an inexhaustible store of informationabout puppeteers, singers, instrumentalists and otherartists. I will hear the music of the manganiyars who,before I came here, were only characters in a scholarlyarticle but now who are to me some of the mostdistinguished artists of the world. I will cherish thememory of all of you who are dedicated preservers ofwhat is most valuable in the life of India. For all thesethings, I thank the NFSC and its director, I thank mydear colleague Henry Glassie and I even thank the FordFoundation. Thank you.Certificate distribution ceremony: Moji Riba with KomaldaVote of thanks: M.D. MuthukumaraswamyKomal Kothari, Henry Glassie, Sharada Ramanathanand Lee Haring, distinguished participants and the greatmusicians of Jaisalmer, it is my pleasure to be with youtoday to thank all of you on behalf of NFSC.As Henry Glassie spoke to you, this is a moment, avery important moment of conversation, of folklore.We at the NFSC all the time believe in extending ourconversations beyond the centre, beyond a region,beyond the national boundaries. We all the time yearnto have conversation – it is a very important term for us– conversations that are held within the strict norms ofdialogue, the dialogue that presupposes the equality ofall the people concerned. Henry Glassie all the timestressed in all his lectures here that we should meetanother person as if we would be meeting another fellowhuman being on the surface of this planet. And that isthe exact moment of folklore we believe in.We have been doing these workshops to extend theseconversational possibilities, to extend our dialogue toour colleagues who are working in this field, not onlyin the universities but also in other non-governmentalorganisations and people who are engaged with folklorein so many different ways – to offer them a commonplatform, to come together for fifteen days in a placelike Jaisalmer – this means a lot to us. It is a conversationthat will not end with today’s valedictory function. It isa conversation we would extend all the time to be withus and to be with you.We have achieved a visibility not only within India butalso in the international arena. It is all the time difficultfor us to achieve the norms of dialogue that I talked sogloriously a few minutes ago. To engage with a regionspecificscholar, to bring in a national scholar, to bringin an international scholar and from people who areengaged in diverse ways with folklore, to bring themfor a conversation is a difficult task. It has its ownmoments of difficulty, it has its own moments ofchallenges, and it has its own moments of reward. Thereward is always the friendship, the emotions that goalong with friendship. It is important that we continueto nurture those friendships and emotions and buildcollaborations of work, build a camaraderie that wouldcut across regions, language and other invisible bordersall the time blocking the conversations.This is a very important event to have in Rajasthan andI believe that in last fifteen days I learnt a lot. I learnt alot from Komalda, from Henry, from Pravina, Lee andevery one of you. This is a moment of gratitude, whichI would take back home, which I would publish, whichI would talk about, which I would use as aconversational tool to bring in more colleagues in ourwork.I would like to thank several other people who helpedus here in Jaisalmer -Y.K. Sharma from GovernmentCollege, Prem Jalani, Nand Kishore Sharma, Vyas,Director of All India Radio, Chand, Ram Singh Mertiawho came and gave us a wonderful lecture on the Thardesert, Bhandari and his family and the musicians GhaziKhan, Zakar, Anwar, Hayad, Mehrudeen, Bhagad,Anjar, Rana Khan, Pampa Khan, Sambadar Khan, Suva,Sugini, Ajay, Anwar Khan and Jaitley.The most important people in my life are the colleaguesI work with – I am extremely fond of them, I make nosecret about it and I work towards their growth,intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. And I remainthankful to my colleagues Venu, Jasmine, Rola andMurugan who have all the time been with me. I havebeen continuously telling you that the NFSC is anegalitarian space– we do not believe in hierarchies –hierarchies do not exist in our mind, not in our practiceand we work in the spirit of collegiality. I remainthankful to them because they make my life easier,happier and they bring to me the pleasure of working,of working in the field of folklore. I hope that theyINDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

ADIEU JAISALMER / ANNOUNCEMENThave socialised well with you so that even if I did not –I tend to keep myself aloof, not because of anythingelse but that is how I am; my aloofness is for my ownreflections, my own growth – but I have wonderfulcolleagues and then if it is not possible for me to continuethe conversations I am talking about, you can alwayscontinue the conversations with my colleagues.Having a conversation with them is as good as havinga conversation with me; it is this I want to make clearto each and every one of you, because if I have notspent time with you, if I have not followed aconversation further, please excuse me – you can allthe time continue them with all my colleagues – theyare my equals, I am only the first among my equals.I should also thank Sharada who has been with us,with NFSC in all our endeavours, in all our momentsof crises, moments of challenges and moments ofhappiness. She is a great friend to have in the FordFoundation. I remain personally grateful to Sharadafor all the support she has been extending to the NFSCand to us personally.Thanking Komalda – it is like thanking myself.Komalda, apart from being the Director of RupayanSansthan, is the Chairman of National Folklore SupportCentre. As the Chairman, Komalda brings with him avision, a way of working and also a way of guidingyoung people like us. We remain grateful to him all thetime for all the work he has done, for the kind of visionhe brings along with him – this has rightly made him alegendary figure in the field of Indian folklore. And Iam most grateful, most honoured and privileged to beliving in the time of Komalda.So, thank you so much, thank you Henry, thank youLee, thank you Pravina, please carry our words ofheartfelt gratitude to Pravina also. Kapilaji is not here;the moments she shared with us were wonderful. Ithank everyone of you for taking time to come overhere to spend fifteen days of your life with us. Thankyou all.○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○AnnouncementNFSC Festival on Musical Instruments and Oral NarrativesDecember 8-18, 2001 (tentative), ChennaiNFSC is organising a folk arts festival on the theme: Musical Instruments and Oral Narratives from 8 – 18December, 2001 in Chennai. Throughout India oral narratives are being performed along with music and occasionallywith dance. This festival will bring together their unique cultures, religious diversities, different traditions andlanguages. Ten different troupes of folk artists will be invited from various parts of India to perform in the festival.This festival will feature ten major oral narratives and thematically the oral narratives can be of heroic, romanticand/or historical in nature. Along with the festival there will also be three museum exhibits:˜ Collection of various musical instruments associated with oral narratives ˜ Objects like jewellery, costumes,weapons, and other properties associated with the performance of heroic oral narratives ˜ Photographic exhibitionof historical places connected to the historical oral narratives performed during the festivalVariety of other activities will be taking place during the ten-day festival. There will be lecture demonstrations byartists, screening of ethnographic films / documentaries, puppet shows, stalls of folklore books, regional folkcrafts and paintings, folk music, and ethnic food. The festival will also facilitate artists’ collaboration-a platformwhere all the invited folk artists could meet and explore collaborative opportunities. NFSC is planning to bringout a brochure soon, which will have more detailed information. The aims of the festival are to bring awarenessto people about the existing folk arts of India by bringing various performing artists from different parts of India,especially from relatively unknown regions. This will enrich our knowledge about the various regions of Indiaand their history and also create an avenue for sharing community values in our new urban milieu. The festivalis an effort to cultivate genuine appreciation for diverse cultures. Like all other programmes of NFSC, the festivalwill also be a collaborative venture between several folklore scholars and allied institutions. NFSC would behappy to receive your suggestions and help in making this festival a success. We look forward to your suggestionsfor participation either individually or institutionally. For further information please contact Jasmine / Rola. If youare interested to become a volunteer, please send your curriculum vitae with a letter of interest to Director,National Folklore Support Centre, New No.7, Fifth Cross Street, Rajalakshmi Nagar, Velachery, Chennai-42.Tele-fax-044-2450553, 2448589,E-mail: muthu@md2.vsnl.net.in / info@indianfolklore.org29INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

PARTICIPANTS REPORTSIndividual reports of workshop participantsThe Individual presentations centred around the questions like whether participants presumptions were shaken or not,whether the workshop was helpful in charting out their future line of enquiry and what would be their present-day concernsand engagements with the larger concept of folklore and folklife. We have not received the written reports of presentation ofMoji Riba,Tulasi Diwasa and Hindu Singh Soda. Only excerpts from other individual reports are presented here…Editor30It was certainly a pleasure when the question of relating social reality to aesthetics came up right in the inauguralsession. And since then, it has been a course of gaining knowledge and insight intothe processes of bringing out individuals creativity through their lifestyles. I havecome to know a lot about what could be the basic principles for documentation, inwhat manner one may go about it, and how one has to guard the dignity andselfhood of the people in concern. Glassie’s lectures actuality charted out the stepsby which one should take up the task, and his reiterated emphasis upon the purposefor documentation and the circle of responsibility was really a heartening boost towhat we believe in. The discussions with him and the group-colleagues, where wediscussed the narrative traditions among a community to its historical and sociologicalbackground, have opened up possibility for me to get engaged further in this topic. I wish to study how anarrative may perhaps travel across geographical regions, languages and communities, acquiring newer formsand significances that are associated with the collective experience of the communities, yet one presented throughindividuals imagination and expression. A close discussion with Komalda further encouraged me to take up thisengagement, and I aspire to live up to my commitment, in my own humble way. In every group discussion aswell as in open discussions, arguments were carried over various positions on issues of immediacy like the notionof tradition, contexts, continuation of tradition, market economy, individuality, feminism and self-awareness,spirituality and science, pedagogy and alternative learning, decontextualisation and its relevance, and a lot more.One of these discussions has actually made me work upon the possibility of a study of various patterns or waysof learning out of pedagogical system, relevant to my work situations.As for the group discussions I have enjoyed a relaxed and intimate relationship with participants. It helped theparticipants to know one another and build-up contacts both individually andinstitutionally. This is most unforgettable experience in this workshop. The fieldvisits were a bit disappointing for me. I was looking forward to learning about howfieldwork could be done. Instead it was merely field visits and when everybodycrowded at one place and clicked photographs and got around the performer orartist and learning came to a stand still. Perhaps if the four groups were sent to fourdifferent places we could have documented or presented the material culture andthe social culture of the people we visited in a more comprehensive manner. But stillI could experience the splendid performances of the desert culture in a nutshell.Definitely this workshop helped me in grasping new ideas about documentation that will be useful in my futuredocumentation projects particularly in the systematic documentation of material culture and oral traditions.As I do not have the luxury of time to bring out all that I want to say, I will restrict my discussion mainly on folkperformances and consequently its documentation. Let me begin by the bewildermentI experienced when I saw the folk performances at the workshop. It made me feelthat each performance is a creation as well as a pointer to its history. It also seems totell the story about its genesis, narrations and inter-cultural borrowings that it mighthave undergone through its long historical journey. What are those heterogeneouselements, which might have contributed in their origin, growth and the plane ofmaturity it might have achieved at some point of time? What kind of explanatorymethods will help me to write the history of these art forms? It is a similar situationof how we could explain the fast movement of a cloud or weather or even a sunset.Further, how do these musicians on movements achieve a kind of harmony and by what means? What is thenature of this convergence of collective and the individual happenings in front of our very own eyes? The idea oftolerance, compassion and the need to have new conceptual tools is the need of our times. Moreover it places anethical demand upon us. The experience has been singularly close to me and I hope we will be able to train oursenses for seeing/hearing the creative expressions of folklore in future.INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

PARTICIPANTS REPORTSNepal is a multilingual, multiethnic and multi cultural country where several traditions are on the verge ofextinction. Though the scholars from different groups are documenting various itemsand genres of folklore all of them are not well trained in the methodologies ofdocumentation. As a teacher and researcher, I have done some field works anddocumented materials. Participation in this workshop has made me aware in someaspects of fieldwork and documentation and has helped me update my knowledgein the field. I feel that the workshop is very helpful in charting out my future line ofenquiry. Haring explained some of the key terms like Creolisation, Diaspora andEthnopoetics while Glassie and Shukla concentrated on the basics of folklore,performance theory, material culture and creative process as well as requirements of documentation. Interactivesessions with Vatsysyan were very stimulating for everyone. She made everyone creative asking him or her tonarrate personal experiences of the field trip. Komalda enriched the participants with his vast and in-depthknowledge of Rajasthani folklore. The group discussions were useful as the faculty was always active in initiatingand continuing the discussions.I am hoping to apply the methodology and the model outlined by the faculty in the workshop to produce a booklength report on Katha performances of Karnataka. Hybridisation in art forms isinevitable. In the process of change something dies but a new form arises. AlthoughI am reflecting on these ideas, I need to construct my own model to suit my project.At present I am working with six different communities and sung narratives. Mymain concern is to bring out their oral performances into a coherent book. I recognisemany points and contact between the discipline of folklore and ethnomusicology.Perhaps the stress on the collective in folklore supplements the emphasis on theperformer and the music in ethnomusicology.In the group discussions the participants at length discussed how tales began and how tales ended, the place ofProverbs and Riddles it brought together many pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together.When Kerati Ram explained how he measured the puppet with the palm and theenvironment in which Dhokla (the light wood) is grown I could relate maths,geography and history very well to his story. He traced the origin of his heritage andthe genealogy and what better teacher can you find than him. I reconfirmed tomyself that folk artists and folklore is the only answer to make subject and artinteresting for the children and it is the only answer for a holistic education. I wasleft thinking about how folk awareness could be spread over more schools in Indiaat the national level. And how this in turn can create awareness in the younger generation to sustain the folklore.And how can we give it back to the community? I believe that folklore is becoming all the time just as storytellingis becoming all the time. They are not things of the past. It takes a brave Individual to make a collective decision.A sage once said: The world is only the size of each Man’s head.31It was a delightful experience for the last fifteen days I had with the faculty as well as with participants. It isdelightful in terms of the ideas shared in the group discussions, lectures by faculty,subtle observations during the fieldwork, and the idea of developing a creativefieldwork manual. The caution, repeatedly from Glassie that we encounter theintended consequences of our vision and for a detailed transparency call from LeeHaring with the object we study are some of the positive indicators in that direction.The idea we need to look for the multiple layers will be a moving principle in NFSC’sfuture research work. The inadequacies of our own fieldwork at NFSC done duringthe Visual Art Traditions of India series are an indicator in this direction. Often, Ifeel that it is a question of seeing what is not easily visible in what we see. I feel it is a way of looking at differentlayers of truth to see the creativity of religious expression, possibility of creating new ways of fieldwork that isdevoid of hierarchical values, and perhaps what Komalda would like to call, to question what is already stated. Iam sure this entire workshop will help me to articulate my fieldwork research in new dimensions. Also I am notable to pinpoint all my shaken presumptions. But above all it is a kind of reassurance what Komalda would liketo call that we could change our ways of looking at things, and thereby modify the processes we study.INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

PARTICIPANTS REPORTSMadhyam deals mainly with communication, development, culture and media. My work centres on the streettheatre and cultural media. I write scripts, direct plays and conduct workshops forthe upliftment of folk artists. The theme of my plays mainly revolves around Karnatakafolklore. As my first priority is on performing arts, I really got myself carried awaywith the puppetry, music and dance performed during the workshop. I was able tointeract with the performers and learn a lot about their art form. My experience inthis field has been encouraging. All lectures by the faculty have been informativeand helpful to me. All field visits have been places of interest and importance andare correlated with the topics discussed in the lectures. As a street performer, I amgoing to take these colours and music of Rajasthan and bring them out in the form of street plays in Bangalore.Kherati Ram’s puppetry has been a great source of inspiration and I am looking forward to work with hispuppetry in my street plays.32A varied and rich program planned during the workshop exposed me to a better appreciation of the vitality of ourculture by learning about the documentation of different aspects of folklife andfolklore. This understanding can help us to critically assess the processes ofdevelopment related to Indian pluralistic milieu. An enquiry into the complexities ofhuman behaviour, specifically in the plural context of South Asia, can give us sharperinsights by examining the phenomena in terms of a cross-cultural continuum. Integralreality gets manifested in various hues and shades of colours like cultural rainbowcharacterising fuzzy and fluid cultural and linguistic boundaries in contrast to sharpdichotomies and the fixity of languages. I came across vivid instances of such fluidcontinuum in the Sindhi spiritual singing of the manganiyars in Jaisalmer and across the border in Pakistan, andalso in the convergence of dhati, meghwari and Jaisalmeri vernaculars mixed with Sindhi and Marwari languages inthe Barmer region. Communications in such a milieu are pronounced by variability, covering a range of meaning,supported by the creative processes such as implications, synergy, serendipity, and so on. We can gain a deeperunderstanding of the phenomenon of cultural development when looking at the living reality in a perspective offuzzy becoming, rather than treating culture as an artefact, as a crystallised being.It was an excellent opportunity to listen to the great folklorists of our times. The lectures and field visits helpedme to observe and relate to certain immediate concerns of folklore in the modernworld. The arguments related to the question of contextualisation and thematisationwas also a useful engagement as far as folk performances are concerned. The ideathat folklore is situated in a linear development graph is also a moving idea forfuture documentation research. How do we analyse social narratives, traditionalconflicts, the absence of women behind wheels also intrigues me. During field visitsI could document few hours on Video, which will surely help me to see, what couldhappen in an unstructured way of showing and seeing things. During our fieldworkvisit to Kale Doongri Rai temple, people objected to any kind of documentation of sacrifice of goats. After enormousamount of persuasion and promising them that the footage will not be used for any other purpose they allowedme to do document. This instance is an indicator of the necessity of developing mutual trust and confidence inwhat we do. They believe that the goddess will protect them from natural calamities like famine. It is equallyimportant to know how certain cultures have very distinct ethos.I have been associated with this field for more than a decade. I received this workshop experience as a creativeprocess that would stimulate, inspire me to explore in my research activities further.I believe that any vibrating experience has creation and reception at two levels. Onceone goes through that, one can never be the same as before. I felt that more areascould be brought into my research studies, in terms of representing people anddocumentation. I could see now more ways of exploration than before. I take thisopportunity as a refreshing, a process of relearning, relocating in terms ofprofessionalism. This workshop opened up the possibility of more publishingavenues. To me, culture specific demands and disciplinary demands are not distantrelatives. I always seek a balance that avoids sliding to any one extreme. My only regret is like it could have beendone is some sort of a documentation project that could have been made during this period. I was pleased to haveINDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

PARTICIPANTS REPORTSan ideally designed program everyday that consists of lectures, small group discussions followed by fieldworkand folk performances. Equally important is the way in which the folk artists created the great musical movementsand I was immersed, lost myself.Before attending this workshop I had no idea about what is Indian folklore. So, I came here with a lot of curiositiesin my mind. I asked myself: Indian Folklore – What is it? How does it transmit? Onlyone thing I was sure that I am going to discover one of the rich cultural treasures of theworld. In the village Khuri, where people make pottery, When I saw three womenwere sitting on the ground and drawing the pots, their children were sitting nextplaying with these pots, on the yard there were two goats, and further behind the hutstanding a camel. People, cattle and nature presented a wonderful picture of peacefullife. I wondered at the creativity of Rajasthani folklore when from this conference hallI saw Suva’s dance. She is so charming and is talented. After the performance I had asmall talk with her. She told that she had been to many countries for performances, but now she does not want totravel so much, she want to stay at home in Jodhpur to lead simple life with her husband and their three children.It is the powerful life of Rajasthani folklore with its deep roots, and Suva is one diamond treasure of Indian folklore.During the workshop some lectures, small group discussions helped me to clarify many questions about the creativeprocesses of folklore, about documenting material culture. Especially field visits are helpful for me; they gave medeep feelings and knowledge about Rajasthani folklore. The Folk performances enriched my experiences. It is alsointeresting for me that, I am a Vietnamese came to India to learn documenting creative processes of folklore, and Ihave learnt not only from Indian experts, but also from Henry Glassie, Lee Haring and Pravina Shukla. About themethod of the workshop, I would like to say that if the lectures were more related to the field visits, it would havebeen more meaningful.Most of the suggestions for the creative documentation of the folklore processes came from the group discussions.I was happy to hear other people give opinions especially through stories, like Geethadid. In fact group discussions are more helpful. The fieldwork would have beenmore meaningful if it was analysed later with the help of the faculty. When I saw theevening performances I felt a sense of sadness. I felt that the music was so closelyattached to the landscape and this could not have been possible without Komaldawho connected everything and explained things in detail.33While working with the tribal artists of Chhotandepur region of Gujarat, I had gathered that the study anddocumentation of folk art has to be done in the close regional and socio-culturalproximity of the community we study. This workshop has only made me believemore strongly in that, in the fact that you have to go into the depth of the ways oflife of the people and study them in the totality of the multiple contexts.Understanding the complexity of a folk art and its transmission from one generationto the other involves being with people as well as considerable amount of time weneed to spent with them. And, Komalda’s deep insights on the Rajasthani folkmusic and his tremendous work of documentation is enough to inspire and encourageall of us who want to honestly and sincerely put forward the truth of our subjects inone way or the other. Whether it was Glassie’s model for documentation or Pravina Shukla’s presentation of slidesof the Brazilian carnival, I not only learnt more about the technique, but also about the enriching personal andemotional experience that a field worker goes under. As a linguist, I could fully relate myself to Haring’s lectureon Creolization. For me the field visits were like the first step in documentation. The creative processes of folkloreare happening not only with a Rathwa tribal there in a remote village, but also with me when I am reading outthis report. I am wondering if there could be a series of workshops – not exactly in the framework of a course forthe young and mid-career scholars. There may be two workshops a year for two consecutive years. I missed theShillong workshop on From Field-work to Public Domain. The next workshop could be on Translation and Transcriptionof Folklore. I do hope that the participants of the present workshop will be selected to attend the next one. I endmy presentation with many thanks to the people of Rajasthan, especially the artists for making this a memorableexperience with the glimpses of their rich cultural heritage.INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

PARTICIPANTS REPORTSFifteen days for a workshop! Frankly, this was my first reaction when I got invited for the workshop on DocumentingCreative Processes of Folklore. As a film- maker, I have been in several situations whereI have documented creative processes. What this workshop brought into focus is amultitude of issues while dealing with documentation of creative processes. Moreimportantly, the interactions in the workshop have extended the boundaries of thenotion of creativity and the possibility of my intervention as a film maker/documenterof folklore. What came across repeatedly in the workshop was that creativity infolklore draws from tradition that is fluid, unfrozen and flexible. It’s the constantnegotiation between forms, as being simultaneously fixed and variant that forms thecore of creative processes in folklore. The workshop forced us to interrogate our own complicity in representingfolklore as expressions of fixed and reified tradition. As documenters, we need to recognise folk artists as individualswho are negotiating collective experiences with their individual subjectivities. We need to document the processesof transformation that are linked with modernisation. How do we do that? I think the best way would be to lookat community’s expressions in whatever form they might be on these transformations. There are wonderful songsthat people sing in the Chota Nagpur region describing the coming of railways or the coalmines. Why can’t welook at these industrial folksongs? What happens when women who have migrated to the cities visit a doctor ina public hospital? How do they communicate with the Doctor? How do meanings get created in this encounter?Have they composed any songs describing this encounter? I would like to deal with some of these issues in myown future line of inquiry. Lastly, I also want to respond to some of the gender issues that got raised or perhapssorely missed out in the workshop. When we saw langa and manganiar boys performing on stage, I could see thejoy that they experience while performing, striving for excellence. (Komalda told us that women had composedmany of the songs that they were singing) I couldn’t help thinking about the female siblings of these boys whoare being denied this joy. Perhaps, these issues need to be raised in a future workshop dedicated to the theme ofGender and Folklore.34From the beginning of the workshop, one of the key issues discussed was documentation. I feel it needs to bediscussed in the context virtual libraries, method of cataloguing, archiving etc. Theethics of the user and the systems user friendliness is a matter of serious concern forfolklorists and anthropologists. This imperative need to be conceived and properlyarticulated in future workshops on folklore. This workshop is a right step in thatdirection.I have attended this workshop with an intention of acquiring and refining my skills in ethnographic documentation,as I am engaged in ethnographic fieldwork since last eight years, as a student ofSocial Anthropology. But these lectures and deliberations in the workshop, helpedme to focus on particular themes and make a coherent presentation, using visualand textual material. Though I am delighted with the structural analysis of mythsand exploring the logical constructions of human mind, this workshop made me tothink from the multiple perspectives other than structural to see life in its fullestsense. One such important aspect is Biographical aspects of individual artists andperformers and inclusion of their own creative processes. Particularly I am convincedthat this method will help us in bridging the gap between the observer and theobserved, as both will be partners in discourse, or rather collaborators, but not hierarchically positioned humanbeings. Further presentation of visuals, as naturally occurring phenomena and looking at things, as lively objectsof value, contributed to my understanding of the discourse on material culture. The other concepts discussed inthe workshop, with regard to ethno musicology, and ethno poetics, informed me quite well, in recording thenarrative processes of the people.INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

ANNOUNCEMENTAnnouncementIndian Folklore Resource Book: Scholars and Engagements 1900 – 2000.National Folklore Support Centre proposes to publish two volumes of resource books on Indian scholars whohave made significant contributions to the field of folklore in the twentieth century. As the discipline of folkloregrew in India as an offshoot of regional languages study we seem to have different perspectives and engagementsexisting in different states at any given historical period. A compendium that offers a comparative perspective onthe eminence of folklore scholarship in different Indian states would enhance possibility of dialogue within thisnation.These books with their accessible presentation are also conceived of as an exciting new series of cutting edgeresearch and studies for wider readership across the most topical areas of Indian folklife and folklore. One of thekey aims of the series will be to focus on the interaction of the theory and practice, exploring the application ofinternational research to assess the seminal contributions of Indian folklore scholarship, and the scholars whohave creatively and singularly helped to define the practice of Indian folklore for the twentieth century. Uniquelydrawing together within one single cluster of titles, this high profile series, we hope, will offer an importantcontribution to our present day scholarship.This project is conceived as a new venture in bringing together contemporary writers of different discursive fieldsand folklore to produce collective work. The book will attempt to find fascinating indices of our changing attitudesto folklore and folklife, the extended and multi-disciplinary approach to tradition, history and development ofIndian folkloristics. Posing challenging questions, the distinguished contributors need to critically acknowledge,and throw light on the profiles of Indian folklore scholarship during the period 1900-2000. The books need toprovide the following:35-------- Biographical sketch of scholar(s) worked in vernacular languages-------- His / her seminal contribution to the discipline of folklore, innovation and development of his / her ideas-------- Bibliography / discography of his / her published and unpublished works and works on him / her byother scholars-------- Situating his / her work historically, chronologically and in relation to other works of that period andScholars perception about multiple existence and variation of Folklife and Folklore and the dynamics ofcultural mediation of that time-------- Translation of his / her representative work into English with critical reflections on the newness ofhis / her ideas-------- Concise historical introduction of folklore scholarship of that region / language-------- Maximum length of each study should not exceed ten thousand wordsThese volumes are considered as easy-to-use sourcebooks and the format need to be accessible to specialist aswell as non-specialist readers. Reinterpreting seminal regional ontology, variously reporting and situating theirwork, the sourcebooks attempt to provide an illuminating perspective on a richly varied selection of Indianfolklore scholars of the last century.We are looking for regional compilers and editors who would work with regional scholars to produce theseseminally important volumes. Scholars interested in this exciting publication venture are requested to contactDirector, NFSC or Program Officer (publications) at the earliest as the project is set to commence by July 2001 andthe books are to be printed by December 2001.INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

ON CREOLIZATIONCreolization: creativity in cultural convergenceLee Haring is Professor Emeritus, Brooklyn College of theCity University of New York, USA36I am going to be speaking twice today, now and inthe afternoon, and I am going to make repeatedreferences to work that I havedone in the islands of thesouthwest Indian Ocean. So, Iwill begin with my work, aboutMauritius in particular; then I willgo into the theoreticalimplications.My project is a study of folkLee Haringnarrative as one topic; thecolonial encounter, that is theengagement between Europeans and non-Europeans,is the second topic; and third is what I call culturalcreolization in the western Indian Ocean. The materialscome from many years of study and fieldwork, first inMadagascar and then in Mauritius. My proposition isthat in a region where many peoples of differentlinguistic and ethnic backgrounds come together, whathappens is that they renegotiate their cultures. Theytry to hang on to what they have had, but what theyend up doing is renegotiating their cultures. This processis demonstrated in the collecting of folktales.Mauritius lies in the Indian Ocean several hundred milesoff the coast of Africa. Mauritius is very denselypopulated today. It was uninhabited until the 17thcentury and this is very hard for people to imagine,that any place has remained uninhabited so late inhuman history. But Mauritius was uninhabited untilthe 17th century when the Dutch attempted to coloniseit with what they called the Dutch East India Company.The Company set up this settlement in the 17th centuryand brought in slaves to work for them; the slavesrebelled, escaped and burnt down the settlement. TheDutch had to leave. Thus the descendents of thoseslaves from 1694 can claim to be the earliest settlers inMauritius. They came from Africa andMadagascar. Subsequently Mauritius was colonised byFrance under the name of ile-de-France, island ofFrance. The French in the 18th century planted coffeeand then sugar which became the main crop of theisland. For the coffee and sugar plantations it wasnecessary to have a labour force. The French importedslaves for this purpose from Madagascar and East Africa,which was then Portuguese East Africa, and which wenow know as Mozambique.Looking at a map and marking the points from whichthe slaves could be shipped from E. Africa andMadagascar, it is easy to tell the geographic and ethnicorigins of the slaves in Mauritius. But many people inMauritius do not know anything about their historyand background though nowadays it is easy forhistorians to make out where the slaves camefrom. Another irony is that some of the slaves in theFrench period, the 18th and some in the 19th century,actually came from West Africa. Again, looking at themap one would ask, why would somebody go all theway around the Cape of Good Hope to fetch slaves, towork in an island lying off the east coast of Africa Ibelieve it was done largely because Gor*e and its relatedslave posts were by then well developed and an activeenough place for putting out slaves. So it made somesense for French traders to go all the way around theCape of Good Hope to fetch slaves and thus, there werea few people in Mauritius, way out in the Indian Ocean,speaking the West African language Wolof, which is amajor language in Senegal.The sugar export business in Mauritius was a big successand still is. The island itself, however, was lost to theFrench at the end of the Napoleonic wars. In 1815,Mauritius became a British colony and remained so foraround 150 years, until it gained independence in the1960s. As a British colony, it came under the influenceof the growing anti-slavery movement, the movement○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○Creolised languages were usuallycalled broken. Mauritian Creole isstill regarded as brokenor bad Frenchto abolish slavery that grew all over the British Empire.Finally slavery was abolished, only 20 years after theBritish took over, in 1835.○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○The sugar plantation owner’s thought that they coulduse the slaves as labour on their plantations, only theywould now have to pay them. But the slaves wouldnot want anything to do with them and walked off theplantations. The planters were now threatened with atotal lack of workers. As it was in the interest of Britainto keep the sugar business flourishing, it turned to Indiafor the labour force. In the next decades, manythousands of Indian men, subsequently women,principally from Calcutta and Bombay, were exportedto work on the sugar plantations of Mauritius asindentured labourers. That is, they were contracted tothe planters in Mauritius in a system which one leadinghistorian refers to as oa new system of slavery. Theirworking conditions were not very different from thatof the slaves. They were often strongly oppressed. Thesugar business picked up again, and Mauritius was theprincipal exporter of sugar to the British Empire allthrough the 19th century.The Indian population grew, mainly throughimmigration, and near the end of the 19th century, theybegan to prosper. There was a division of land, due towhich some Indians could own property. About twothirdsof the islandAEs 1.2 million population is madeINDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

ON CREOLIZATIONup of people who came from India, now Pakistan. Letus call them Indo-Mauritians. They run everything; theydominate the nation in every way. The other majorstrand in Mauritius is formed by the descendents ofthe former slaves who came from East Africa andMadagascar, who make up about a quarter of thepopulation. This group is referred in the census as theogeneral population,o as though they did not have anidentity of their own. There are two other strands ofpopulation: Chinese, who came in the 19th century asshopkeepers and spread out all over the island, andthe Europeans who were the descendants of the Frenchsettlers. These Franco-Mauritians own the sugar estatesand usually keep to themselves. They live in beautiful,elegant houses that are set inside the sugar estates, andone does not see them much.Thus there are four strands in the Mauritian population:people of African and Malagasy background, of Indianbackground, of Chinese and of European background.This in an island of 720 square miles. Each group hadto necessarily come to terms with each otherAEstraditions, each otherAEs languages and ethnicities.The first product of that was the local language, Creole,which brings me to the topic of linguistics. Now I gofrom Mauritius to theoretical considerations.Mauritian Creole grew out of the impact of theEuropeans and the slaves. That is, the language cameinto existence because it was necessary for the ownersand overseers on the sugar estates to communicate withthe slave population, and vice versa. The languagehas contributions from French, from the languages ofPortuguese East Africa such as Yao, and from Malagasy.Languages that result from the contacts of people fallinto two classes, pidgin languages and Creolelanguages. Pidgin languages tend to be simpler andless elaborate than Creoles. A creole language is fullydeveloped; it resulted from the kind of contact andconvergence that I have described for Mauritius. Theprocess whereby a creole language comes into existencehas come to be called creolization. I am going to befocussing on that process.There has been a lot of research in the last 30 or 40years on creolised and pidginised languages. There isso much continual contact in the world today betweenpeople of different origins and backgrounds thatlinguists and anthropologists have set aside ideas ofcultural purity and ethnic isolation in favour of ideasabout contact. These types of languages develop, asmy sketch of Mauritius has shown, through theconvergence of several different and diverse linguistictraditions. One of the characteristics of thatconvergence is that it happens because of certain socioeconomicand political forces. That is, a creolisedlanguage, like Mauritian Creole, can only develop withina specific situation of social contact. All recent researchpoints to this fact.Creolised languages were usually called broken.Mauritian Creole is still regarded as broken or badFrench. Another negative associated with creolisedlanguages is that they are regarded as hybrid, implyingthat they are somehow inferior. The linguistic modelused until recently, has on the one hand a pure nationallanguage, and on the other hand broken or hybrid formsof that language which need to be suppressed ifpossible. This is visible in the Caribbean island of Haiti,for instance, where the entire population speaks HaitianCreole, but Creole speakers are strongly discouragedfrom speaking Creole; they are encouraged to go upthe linguistic scale, as Creole is an inferior language.So the usual characterisation of creole and pidginlanguages as hybrid, broken and inferior in relation tosome established national languages which aresupposedly pure, is a politically motivated one andtotally unrelated to linguistic development. The factsof linguistic development about creolised and pidginisedlanguages are surprising. For one thing, instead ofdeveloping continuously, unbrokenly from the parentlanguage or languages, a creolised and pidginisedlanguage actually breaks off. It is historicallydiscontinuous, it is autonomous, and it has its ownintegrity, its own reality. That means it changes a lotand changes fast. We had a student at the Universityof Pennsylvania who did work on street language in○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○So the usual characterisation ofcreole and pidgin languages ashybrid, broken and inferior inrelation to some established nationallanguages which are supposedly pure,is a politically motivated one andtotally unrelated tolinguistic development.○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○the city of Nairobi in Kenya and he began to documentthe existence of a Nairobi street language called Sheng,which is a mix of Kiswahili and English. In the fewyears that he has begun to study it, he has alreadynoticed and documented changes in Sheng.Now we come to the connection with folklore. Linguistsstudy the system of written and spokenlanguage. Sometimes they do not study what peopledo with language. We who are interested in myths,folktales, legends, riddles, proverbs, know that theseare things that people do with language. If you want tounderstand their uses of language, you have to studywhat they do with it.A critical feature of creolised and pidginised languagesis that they have new functions, social and linguistic,which are different from those of their contributinglanguages. A creolised language is appropriate to thenew community for which it is formed. So what I amcoming to is that creole and pidgin languages are new,in both structural and functional terms. Of course,they are built up from previously existing languages,but they are not dependent on the contributinglanguages. Rather they take on new social and linguistic37INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

ON CREOLIZATION38functions. They grow out of the specific situations ofsocial contact in which they are. Creole linguisticshistorically is a sub-discipline of linguistics, but theperspective it has developed reaches far beyondlinguistics. I took the linguistics detour to say that it isnot a detour; what we are looking at in these languagesapplies directly to what happens in the artistic use oflanguage.The attention in folklore studies, or in sociology or inanthropology, in the attention to who says what towhom, when, where and for what purpose, isfundamental to sociolinguistics. But it is alsofundamental to folklore, because we are beginning tolearn a lot about the rules that come into play whichgovern the performance of certain kinds of folklore.Certain stories can only be told at certain times of day,for instance. And such socio-linguistic rules are partof the picture that is being filled out by the study ofCreole and Pidgin languages. So we are moving farbeyond the limits of national or ethnic folklore, just aswe move beyond the conception of a pure nationallanguage.Let me use a small parenthesis here. A group of peopleclaim their folklore as only theirs; they use theirtraditions, their stories, and their songs as the strongestmarker of their identity in their own eyes. You taketheir word for it until you discover that they in factshare a lot of it; similar words, similar tunes, similarstories are being told by another group as well. That isyour first step out of the notion that folklore is thepossession of a single group.When we study creolization in folklore, we discoverthat the kind of folklore that results there is not thepossession of a single group but is created because ofthe situation and social contact. So one has to let go ofthe idea that songs and stories are the exclusive propertyof one people, they are shared but then I also have toacknowledge that those are of great importance tothem. When people adopt a tradition, a song or a storyas their own, you cannot take it away from them. Butyou can map and document its distribution outside theirterritory. Thus creolization is way beyond linguistics,it is what people do with language and proverbs, riddlesand tales. It is what folklore they create as a result ofspecific situations of social contact.So, by creolization do I mean just any mixture of culturalelements from two or more different sources? Forinstance, in France periodically there are protests aboutthe number of words that are added to the Frenchlanguage from English. Some people who want topreserve the purity of French as a national languagefind it objectionable that words such as weekend showup in their language. Would I say weekend in Frenchis an example of creolization? No, I would not. Wedo not use creolization to describe just any culturaladmixture of any sort, because the term creole carrieswith it a historical burden. Creole people historicallyare always regarded as somehow inferior to other partsof the population. The term creole therefore carrieswith it a burden of class difference, or more broadly,socio-economic or politico-cultural conditions.Here’s an example of what I am trying to refute. It isfrom a Swedish anthropologist, Ulf Hannerz. Creolecultures like creole languages are those which draw in someway on two or more historical sources, often originally widelydifferent. They have some time to develop and integrate, andto become elaborate and pervasive . . . . There is a sense of acontinuous spectrum of interacting forms, in which the variouscontributing sources of the culture are differentially visible.Now this is what I am objecting to; this anthropologistis using creole to mean any kind of mixture of any twocultures. The trouble with that is when all culturalmixing is included within the compass of the termcreolization, the socio-economic conditions under whichcreolization actually happens get obscured. The realityis that Creole languages get created predominantly insituations of dominance and oppression. And if youleave out the dominance and oppression, if you leaveout the power differential between the two contributingsources, then you are eviscerating the whole picture.Because the phenomenon depends on I am the boss, youare the worker, and you get to follow my orders. So inMauritius in particular, and in other slave-keepingsocieties, the kind of cultural mixing that occurs betweena slave population and a dominant, invading population,will lead to creolization. But the use of English wordsin French nowadays is not an exampleof creolization. In my own country thebiggest source of information aboutcreolising of languages comes fromAfrican-American English. A great dealis now known about creolization inAfrican-American English.Culture, as you know, is very muchavailable to change. We know thatculture is always susceptible tomodification and the other interesting thing aboutculture is that it is portable. For an indentured laboureror a slave, probably the only thing that is portable isculture, because he has left everything else behind andis separated from his family as well. The portability ofculture and its susceptibility to change help usunderstand the African diaspora and the Europeandiaspora, which Pravina Shukla will be talking aboutlater.Syncretism is a term used in religious studies to meanthe mixture of two or more religious traditions orcustoms or observances. It is amazing how the word isregarded in many religious studies as a cursed ornegative word. Syncretism means that people are notobserving religion in the right way. Religion issusceptible to that kind of thinking because religiousstructures are centrally controlled andorganised. Dogma, orthodoxy come out of a centre anddisseminate outwards. This dissemination allows forchanges to be introduced and we get things likesyncretism. African Christianity has been studied forits syncretistic elements, which are regarded in differentways by different people.An Indian merchant starting on a voyage asks his threedaughters what they want. The first one asks for aINDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

ON CREOLIZATIONdiamond necklace, the second asks for a blue velvetdress, and the third daughter, who is reading a bookand is not paying much attention, says, Sobur, meaningWait. But the merchant thinks, that is what she wantsand goes on his journey. On the way, he meets a princecalled Sabour and shows him a picture of hisdaughter. The prince falls in love with her immediately.The merchant has bought the first two presents, thenecklace and the dress, but he cannot proceed home,because his elephant will not walk until he has finishedall his errands. It is a wise animal. He discovers froma passing woman that Sabour is the name of the localprince. So he goes to this prince to explain hispredicament. On seeing the daughter’s picture, theprince falls in love with her and gives the merchant amagic fan to take as a gift to the girl.The elephant is now content to go and takes themerchant home. When the girl is given the fan, Sabourappears on it and proposes marriage. She accepts, andso does her father. The girl’s elder sisters claim theright, according to custom, of making the bridal bed.They spread ground glass on the bed; Sabour’s skin isruptured, and he starts bleeding. He asks his wife togive him back the magic fan, and using the fan, hedisappears.Time passes. Six or seven months later, the unhappywife learns that Sabour is lying ill in his country, andhis father has promised half the kingdom to whoeverwould cure him. So the wife disguises herself as aMuslim priest with a false beard and sets out to Sabour’sland. The journey takes three months. One nightwhen she is resting under a tree, she overhears twobirds discussing Sabour’s illness. The birds say, Themedicine is not hard to find. If Sabour’s body were rubbedwith the droppings we are leaving at the foot of this tree, hewould get well right away. So she picks the droppingsand goes to the palace and offers to cure the prince,accepting to be beheaded if she fails. She rubs Sabour’sbody with the droppings, the glass comes out of hisbody, and he is cured.The wife, disguised as the Muslim priest, asks for theprince’s hand in marriage for his daughter. The kingaccepts, but Sabour does not. The king gets angry andSabour reluctantly explains that he is already married.Then the wife removes her disguise and the couple fallinto each other’s arms. The king gives a big banquetand the story is over.I have not researched this story, but I know a Bengaliversion which is much more elaborate. This versionwas collected and published in Mauritius in the 1880s.It appears in the only collection of Mauritian folktalesfrom that period. In the Bengali version of a few yearsbefore that, there are a number of episodes that takeplace before the Sabour story comes. There is a lotmore elaboration. Very crudely put, one bit ofcreolization in the arrival of the story in Mauritius isthe simplification and shortening of the story.I want to draw your attention to the endpiece of the Mauritian story. Here is the translation:The king was so pleased that he gave a banquet. The biggestbanquet ever. After desert, I asked for some extra cakes totake home for my children. They grabbed hold of me, draggedme into the yard and gave me a kick in the pants, and that ishow I come to be here today to tell this story. The closingformula is the place where we can see the substitutionof one unit for another, which is what establishes theparallel between linguistic creolization and culturalcreolization. In both, you look for and find thesubstitution of one unit for another. In the Bengaliversion, for instance, the story closes thus: The princetook his bride to his palace in his far-off kingdom, forgave hissisters-in-law, lived happily for scores of years and was blessedwith children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. Theclosing formula in the Bengali version rapidlysummarises the rest of the prince’s life. The formulain the Mauritian version draws attention back to thestoryteller. The storyteller brings I back into the story.The most important thing is that it echoes the favouriteformula of Creole storytellers in Mauritius. Here aresome contemporary examples from Creole performers:I asked for just a teeny glassful and that was when theykicked me in the pants and I fell down right here. That isfrom one of the stories. Here is another: I went up tothem and asked for a tiny little glass of liquor and they putthe dogs on me. I had to run away. Here is yet anotherexample: When I came to sit at the table, they pulled mychair out from behind me and I felldown and rolled all the way here.From those three examples ofclosing formula from Mauritianfolktales, you can see that Creolestorytellers are fond of this kindof a device as a closing formula.The interesting thing is that thestoryteller of Sabour in Mauritiuswas not speaking in creole; he was speaking in Bhojpuri,which is related to Hindi. The Bhojpuri storytellerundoubtedly acquired the formula from the otherstorytellers around him who are of African or Malagasybackground, who were speaking in Creole. It is wellattested in the study of the language that MauritianBhojpuri speakers regularly use Creole words.Religion is the most prominent evidence of culturalcreolization in Mauritius and the other islands of theSouthwest Indian Ocean. Many Mauritians participatein multiple religious traditions. Creole people, who arenominally Roman Catholic, will turn up at Hindutemples and shrines; they observe customs that havenothing to do with their religion. Hindus and Muslimscross the supposed barriers between religions frequently.The most interesting example of this is there are twomajor pilgrimage sites in Mauritius. One of them is thegrave of the 19th century French priest Pere Laval, whois revered in Mauritius. His grave is a pilgrimage sitefor members of every religion in the country, not onlyCatholics, also Hindus, also Muslims and evenChinese. So, in the religious realm there is a lot toconsider.Historically, folktales like Sabour have been regarded ascontinuities, as a single story that recurs in differentplaces among different speakers in different languages.39INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

ON CREOLIZATION40When you replace that question into the history of aspecific people like the Indo-Mauritians, it begins tolook more like a socio-linguistic problem, because youhave to examine the specific social conditions underwhich the development has occurred. Most important,though, is that we have to have adequate evidence ofthe socio-economic, political, cultural conditions inwhich people acquire each other’s traditions. Indo-Mauritians, Afro-Mauritians and Malagasy arrived inMauritius under entirely oppressive socio-economicconditions. We know a lot about the variety oflanguages among, for example, Indian indenturedlabourers; it has been well researched and documented.The status of the basic language for Indo-Mauritians isBhojpuri, which is a derivative of Hindi, and is spokenby a large number of Indo-Mauritians. I am told thatnowadays Bhojpuri is disappearing in favour ofEnglish. It is not rare to meet a middle-aged man whosemother cannot communicate with his daughter becausethey do not have a language in common; the daughterspeaks Creole and English and mother only Bhojpuri.Let us focus for a minute on the status of Bhojpuriamong Indo-Mauritians. In Mauritius, Bhojpuri isspoken by a fairly large number of people; it is alsospoken in Trinidad and in Guyana but it enjoys a higherstatus in Mauritius. It is associated to some extent withculture and religion. Indo-Mauritians tend to disregardtheir own culture in favour of Indian culture. That is,they tend to look to India for reference points as regardsculture and religion. But it is also true that Creole isprevalent and English is accorded a lot of prestige.English happens to be the official language of the nation,even though only few people have much command overthe language. So what I am coming to say is thatBhojpuri flourishes in a limited domain. The messagefor the folklorist is that in that limited domain, whatflourishes is not just any use of Bhojpuri, but the art ofthe word—in other words, proverbs, riddles, jokes,songs, folktales. These are the predominant constituentsof the domain of Bhojpuri. These are the things thatpeople let go of very slowly; they will hold on folkloreforms, forms of verbal art most retentively, because forordinary communication they only need Creole. So itis exactly in the realm of folklore or verbal art thatBhojpuri will flourish.This brings me to political implications. Bhojpurispeakers are aware that their language is on the way tobecoming a minority language with the passage of timedespite large numbers speaking the language. It isinteresting to think of the possibility that things likerumours, gossip, folktales, jokes, songs, rituals,euphemisms and other expression are a form of politicsfor the support network. It may be relevant to thework that you all do in the various parts of India thatthese arts of the word of the minority or threatenedlanguage are not merely survivors of something old,but are a form of politics. A great American folkloristused to refer to folklore as unofficial culture. Maybe thatis a relevant concept here. Unofficial culture has itsown history, its own literature, its own poetry; this isthe culture that is the province of the folklorist. So,you are entitled to look for the political implications ofthe arts of the word when studying people analogousto the Bhojpuri speakers in Mauritius.One last point. It is likely that folklore in Mauritius,and in creolised situations generally, exists in a situationthat is analogous to what linguists call diglossic.Diglossia is a fancy word for something that you arefamiliar with, namely a situation in which there is ademand for a universal or a national language, foruniversal literacy and unification of language. With thiscomes a division of opinion as to whether the high formor the low form should be used as the standard. Thesame kind of division of opinion is also seen withfolklore: on one hand, the disregard or scorn for folklorein comparison to high literature; on the other hand,the insistence that, as the Irish poet Yeats said, Folkloreis the soil within which all great art is rooted. But we usecreolization to describe what happens in a contactsituation between a ruling minority and a subjugatedmass; we do not use it to refer to just any mixing ofculture. In relation to official culture, it is likely thatfolklore exists the way diglossic languages exist, sideby side. This means that there is always going to be astruggle between the advocates of one and the other.You, the folklorists of this country, whether you like itor not, are advocates of minority culture. Many of youare sensitive to the political implications of the culturalexpression of the people whom you study.Despite the hundred and forty years of British rule inMauritius, Catholicism is especially prominent; thebishops and priests are quite influential. As I saidearlier, the most saintly figure in Mauritian history isPere Laval, a nineteenth century French Catholicmissionary, whose grave was visited by the Pope inNovember 1989. The grave is considered a pilgrimagesite not only by Catholic Creoles and Catholic Chinese,but also by Hindus and Muslims. It is a place wherepeople make what is called in Creole a promesse, a vowto perform a ceremony if your prayer isgranted. The custom was probablybrought to Mauritius by Hindus, not byCatholics. One can pray to the saint ormake offerings for being healed, whateverreligion one belongs to. You can call thisa case of syncretism, or you can call itcultural renegotiation, because it is aconscious adoption of someone else’scustom for your own purposes. To goanother step here: Hindu folk religion came intoexistence in Mauritius in the era of the indenturedlabourers. It is quite distinct from Hindu orthodoxy andthe Arya Samaj; it develops its variety according tolanguage so that folk Hinduism is distinct in Hindi,Tamil, Marathi, Gujarathi and Telugu, at least in thesefive groups; there are a number of sub-sects as well.In this case, religious differentiation follows linguisticdifferentiation.INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

ON FOLK ART MUSEUMFolk art in the museumPravina Shukla is Assistant Professor, Department ofFolklore, Indiana University, USANot all results of fieldwork are presented in booksof ethnographies or depositedin archives, generally for limitedand privileged consumption.Rather much of the information,and especially objects collectedand documented, are presentedin public exhibitions inmuseums, accessible to thePravina Shuklageneral public, beyond thescholarly realm. For this veryreason, we should pay attentionto not only how we document traditional culture, butalso more importantly, how we present the culturesstudied in the context of a public display. This paperwill consider some possible directions for the future offolk art in museum exhibitions. Our collective goalshould be to bring the ideas, the theoretical andintellectual perspectives of folklore, out of the textbookand into the museum, whether the museum is dedicatedto history, anthropology, folk art, or even fine art.When exhibited, so-called folk art is often regarded asthe art of the common man (literally man, as displaysare frequently gender biased). Other implicit andexplicit assumptions are that the art is anonymous anduntutored (with a complete disregard for a notion offolk ateliers and rigorous systems of learning andteaching the traditional arts). Even though someexhibitions of folk art today may highlight individuals,most exhibitions still present the artist as rooted in heror his community, and not as an individual of strongpersonality, innovative and rich in personal aesthetics,the way in which artists are regarded in museum offine art.Broadening this discussion in an attempt to understandcurrent trends as influenced by historical practices ofexhibition, we should look at current thinking aboutart, folk art, and display, both by scholars and museumpractitioners. There is still much preoccupation withthe definitions of folk art versus fine art. Ethnographicobjects are shown primarily in their function as culturalobjects; what matters is the function of the object in thedaily life of its user. Unintentionally, this presumptiontends to lower the aesthetic standards of museumpresentations, causing a glaring dichotomy between artmuseum exhibitions, where objects are chosen for theirbeauty and aesthetic excellence, and exhibitions inethnographic museums, where culturally meaningfulobjects may or may not embody the aesthetic excellenceof the culture that they are meant to represent.What are directions that museums should take in thefuture, while utilising new general paradigms of artand culture? First of all, when possible, museumexhibitions should display the objects using nativesystems of organization. Instead of taking tribal orvillage art and fitting it into our urban way ofunderstanding — for example, in the contrast of craftand art — we should understand how the peoplethemselves conceptualise the art, its meaning, its beauty,its functions.Secondly, curators and scholars should acknowledgethat objects are engaged in multiple moments of creation –therefore many of the people who come in contact witha specific object can be seen as artists. An object is madein the atelier, then it is beautifully displayed in a marketstall, then it is bought and artfully displayed in anassemblage in a home. Not only are these differentcontexts of use, they are actually different contexts ofcreation, incorporating and adhering to differingaesthetic criteria, maintaining simultaneously a veryindividual and idiosyncratic choice, while conformingto a set communal standard of display and meaning.The study of folk art, among other things, has yieldedan understanding of how the personal biography of an○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○Museum exhibitions should presentnot only the object in context, but inmultiple contexts. The same objectshould be shown in different contextsto explain that not only does anobject take meaning in relation to aperson or a situation, but alsoobjects take on meaning in relationto other objects. Museums then cancombine different perspectives, tocreate a holistic view of the nativesystems of organising, understanding,making, using and constantlyrecreating the art in ritual andmundane daily life.○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○artist should be used to appreciate the object properly(for example, works by Ralph Rinzler, Henry Glassie,Michael Owen Jones, John Burrison, Terry Zug, and41INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

ON FOLK ART MUSEUM42John Vlach, among others). Many scholars havefollowed the model set by these studies in capturingthe life history of an artist. Other scholars, such asChris Steiner, seem to have beeninspired by Arjun Appadurai in lookingat the life history, not of an artist, butof the art. What we need is to combinethese two methodologies andunderstand the complete process bylooking at the biographies of artists andthe many lives of the art they havecreated. This approach would provide both scholarsand the general public with a broad comprehensive viewof how and why objects are made and conceptualised.This broad context of art would also shed light on howmuch of the initial perception is inherent in the object,physically inscribed and therefore carried by the bodyof the art, and how much of it is ascribed by eachindividual in each interaction and context of use, andsubsequent contexts of creation.Museum exhibitions should present not only the object○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○Our goal should be to display thepeople, their art, the way they make,use, and view their objects of art, bethey secular, sacred, utilitarian,decorative, or most likely, all of theabove – simultaneously splendid andpart of common life.○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○in context, but in multiple contexts. The same objectshould be shown in different contexts to explain thatnot only does an object take meaning in relation to aperson or a situation, but also objects take on meaningin relation to other objects. Museums then can combinedifferent perspectives, to create a holistic view of thenative systems of organising, understanding, making,using and constantly recreating the art in ritual andmundane daily life. The exhibition medium with itspossibilities of creating three-dimensional spaces andenvironments, of incorporating media, of providing amulti-sensory experience of art and culture, lends itselfnaturally to this cause.We need to expand our notion of a museum. Museumprofessionals and scholars take ethnographic objects andplace them in our framework of what a museum is,how it should look, who it serves, and how it functions.We need to encounter as museums temples andmosques, markets and tea stalls, homes, and even thebody as a walking museum of the self — all of thesecan be seen as self-conscious creations, a curated displayof values, traditions, and aesthetics. This perspective,this expansion of the notion of museums and nativeways of seeing, ordering and displaying art, will yieldrespectful exhibitions. Our goal should be to displaythe people, their art, the way they make, use, and viewtheir objects of art, be they secular, sacred, utilitarian,decorative, or most likely, all of the above –simultaneously splendid and part of common life. [Thispaper is an excerpt from an oral presentation delivered at theNFSC’s workshop on Documenting Creative Processes ofFolklore, panel on The Presentation of [Fieldwork] Results:Scholarly Situation and Cultural Comparison, in Jaisalmer,Rajasthan, February, 2001-Editor].BibliographyAppadurai, Arjun. The Social Life of Things. London:Cambridge University Press, 1986.Burrison, John A. Brothers in Clay: The Story of FolkPottery. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1983.Burrison, John A. Shaping Traditions: Folk Arts in aChanging South. Athens: University of Georgia Press,2000.Glassie, Henry. Turkish Traditional Art Today.Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.Glassie, Henry. Material Culture. Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press, 1999.Jones, Michael Owen. Craftsmen of the Cumberlands:Traditional and Creativity. Lexington: University Pressof Kentucky, 1989.Karp, Ivan, and Steven D. Lavine. Exhibiting Cultures:The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display. Washington:Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991.Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. Destination Culture:Tourism, Museums, and Heritage. Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 1998.Rinzler, Ralph, and Robert Sayers. The Meaders Family:North Georgia Potters. Washington: SmithsonianInstitution Press, 1980.Steiner, Christopher. African Art in Transit. London:Cambridge University Press, 1994.Vlach, John Michael. Charleston Blacksmith: The Work ofPhilip Simmons. Columbia: South Carolina Press, 1992.Zug, Charles G., III. Turners and Burners: The Folk Pottersof North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of NorthCarolina Press, 1986.INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

ON DOCUMENTARY ACTPerformance theory and the documentary actHenry Glassie is College Professor and Chair of Near EasternLanguages and Culture, Folklore Institute, Indiana University,USAFor thirty-five years, in American folklore, asingle idea has dominated our thought. We call itperformance. The word is imperfect,misleading, but we use it because abrilliant theorist, Dell Hymes, madeit central to his argument when hewas developing a new concept ofsociolinguistics in a series of articlesin 1964 and 1965. His ideas havebecome basic to folklore as well asHenry Glassielinguistics. Any American folkloristwould hold that the theory ofperformance lies beneath and behindthe folkloristic scholarship of the contemporary UnitedStates. Performance is a theory of creativity. For thirtyfiveyears, American folklore has been primarilydedicated to an understanding of creativity. Thisworkshop, in Jaisalmer, has been given to creativity andits documentation, and the theory of performance is, Ibelieve, necessary to our practice. To say itschematically, performance unifies structure andfunction, reconciling two anthropological schools,structuralism and functionalism. Philosophicallyspeaking, performance merges the aesthetic with theinstrumental. From the standpoint of communication,it conjoins self-expression with social action.Performance is a generalising theory that works as wellfor high art as for folk art, for written literature as wellas oral literature.A liberating dimension of performance theory is that ittasks the folklorist with the development of an approachto the world that is useful far beyond the customarylimits of the folklorist’s discipline. We are developinga superior theory of creativity beneficial to art historiansand literary historians, to anthropologists andsociologists, as much as to folklorists. No matter therealm, the most complete and effective theory ofcreativity available, I believe, is the idea Dell Hymeshas given us, which folklorists in the United States callperformance. My topic is how performance theoryconditions the practice of documentation. What arethe implications for documentation that are the naturaland necessary result of the adoption of the performanceapproach to folklore? My first job is to situateperformance theory historically, so that you willunderstand the enthusiasm of American folklorists. Iam not coming to you as a colonial agent, demandingthat you adopt our paradigm.Instead, I am saying that if you make the mistake ofinviting American scholars into your midst, then theywill, inevitably, speak in terms of the theory calledperformance. And the reason performance theoryinterests us is that it is based upon a view of humannature, situated in the existential philosophy of thetwentieth-century. The theory promises to account forhuman beings, how they exist in the world, how theyare doomed through their humanity, their geneticmakeup and material circumstances, to create. InAmerica, we accepted the idea quickly but we have notbrought it to full maturity. The reason for our failingis that we have not effectively linked theory to method.We have not adequately considered performance theoryin relation to documentary protocols. That is mymission today.The chief issues are two, and the two lie in the title ofour workshop. Our topics are creativity and howcreativity can be documented. Let us return to historyto understand the significance of our enthusiasm. Wecan describe folklore scholarship as having been based,through time, on three views of humanity. The firstone, an old one, is no longer seriously to be considered.It reduced people to bearers of tradition. People wereseen as carrying folklore as though it were a burden ontheir backs. The metaphor suited an elite view of thepoor who led their nasty lives, trudging witlessly underthe weight of ancient traditions. The scholar’s job waslike that of a tax collector, to intercept the bearers oftradition and take valuables from them. They wanderedthe world unknowingly carrying stuff the scholar knewto be folklore. Our job was to stop them in their tracks,gain something we called rapport, distracting andtricking them, so that we would rifle their burdens,extracting the bits that would prove useful to our○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○Philosophically speaking,performance merges the aestheticwith the instrumental. From thestandpoint of communication, itconjoins self-expression with socialaction. Performance is a generalisingtheory that works as well for highart as for folk art, for writtenliterature as well as oral literature.○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○schemes. Folklore scholarship was collection, a taxingby the rich of the poor, an extractive industry. Thedocumentary task, when we thought of people astradition-bearers, was text collection. We wished topluck from people texts that were examples of folklore,and our documentary responsibility was nothing more43INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

ON DOCUMENTARY ACT44or less than the accurate recording of texts. I think,and I will always think, that one of the most importantmissions of the folklorist is the accurate recording oftexts. As a survival from our earliest days, as aresponsibility to the future, we are dedicated to theprecise recording of texts. The latest stage in thisprogressive trajectory is ethno poetics, an improvedmeans of the representation of the accurateand exact text. This responsibility is ancientin our practice. One of the great, forgottenmasters of the discipline is Charlotte Brooke,who had effectively argued before the end ofthe eighteenth century that folklorists areobliged to record lovingly and scientifically,accurately and completely. That was ourmodel, more than two hundred years ago.People had received texts from an earliergeneration. We lifted the texts from them and renderedthem on paper as well as we could. In time, folkloristswould use and invent more and more elaboratemachinery, devices that enabled us to fulfil ourresponsibility of accuracy with greater and greaterprecision. Thus, we advance along the old track.But when we think of people as bearers of traditionand our task as collecting and recording andrepresenting texts, then creativity is not part of thepicture. There is no creative energy in the people westudy; they are human, forgetful, confused, and bestwhen they are passively, non-consciously carrying andtransferring texts through time.The more that we did fieldwork, getting to know realpeople, the more it became obvious that our notion ofpassive bearing was wrong and our task of accuraterecording was insufficient. As we began to understandthe singers and dancers, the weavers and storytellers,we learned that they were reworking, redeveloping,and reinventing the folklore they had received. Theylearned from many sources, combined in many ways;they were always improvising and innovating. Folklore,we came to understand, is always in a state of change,and tradition, the key term in folklore, was ever in afluid state of transition. Not long ago, my colleaguesin Indiana’s Folklore Institute were asked to make astatement to represent folklore. Most chose some versionof the sentence, Tradition is not static; it exists in a fluidstate of change. That notion, I guess, seemed original,though William Morris had fully articulated the sameidea in the 1880s. As soon as we describe tradition asfluid, we need a source. Why is tradition fluid?Because it exists only in the mind, and the mind isperpetually awake, active.The folklore we study is the consequence of mentalactivity. And the second historical vision of humanityin folklore holds that people are not passive bearersbut active creators. In the second phase, we folkloristsbecame interested in the human process that generatedfolklore. Now we have creativity in the picture.Instead of people bearing from the past a text for us toextract and commit to paper, we have people who arecreative. Our task is to record texts and to understandthe process of creation that leads to the acts we recordas texts. So the student of art would not only studythe resultant object, but as well the creative process.So the student of stories would understand that everystory is unique, that stories are not texts in the mindthat pop out of the mouth. Stories result from peoplelearning, processing, composing, and performing intothe world a tale that is at once traditional, fresh, and fitto the moment.The text always differs from other texts. Texts are alwaysin some ways like other texts. Texts in analysis urge usto the simple, yet profound idea that every creationcombines the variable and the invariant. Something haschanged, because all people and events are unique.Something has not changed, because people shape theirthought for social exchange. If, in the text, all werenew, communication would be impossible. It isaxiomatic that in creation, there must be at once changeand stability. I cannot say to you something I havesaid before, in exactly the way I have said it before, orI would not be adjusting my thoughts and words tosuit my needs and yours. At the same time, I cannotsay something absolutely new, with thoughts neverbefore thought, words never uttered, or I would not becommunicating. So, in every created text, there issomething new, something old; it can be described as amerging of the variable and the invariant. Recently, youand I have shared a marvellous musical experience inthis room. When the singers were performing, all ofthem accepted and repeated a single melodic line. But,in order to make the event exciting,each singer varied the ornamentation of that line, sothat we could follow as the men and boys played backand forth, copying, transforming, and innovating. Thethrill of innovation was built upon the stability of themelody. The melody was invariant but theornamentation was variable. The performance blendedthe old and the new, the stable and emergent. Therewas no other possibility. Every time the melodyappeared it was the same, and it was not the same.You understand the paradox. And this is not merelythe nature of folk performance. If there were notsomething stable, some deep essence or flicker of style,in every French impressionist painting, we would notbe able (as we surely are) to locate the pictures in timeand place. Stand far away, and every tradition-Frenchpainting or African sculpture or Indian music-seemsrepetitive. Go close up, and every work is the peculiarcreation of an individual in motion in place.When, in folklore, we begin to understand people asprocessing and reinventing their traditions, we havebegun to move toward a full idea of creativity. Infolklore’s third phase, which is the phase I will callperformance, we understand that the individual isprocessing folklore information in the mind, changingand rearranging, but we also understand that theindividual is processing information, altering andinventing, so as to place a new creation back into theINDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

ON DOCUMENTARY ACTworld. The individual creator is the one who takesideas from the world and cycles ideas back into theworld. The individual artist operates at the nexus wherethe world is created. Performance is an existentialproposition, which establishes people as intelligent,sentient beings who receive and process and compose,and as beings who occupy and act upon the real worldwith all of its pain and wonder.I realise the abstraction in all of these words, but theabstractions are nearly over. Here is my point: theidea we call performance represents the third and lateststage in the evolution of a folkloristic vision of humannature. It situates real people in the real world. Whenwe ponder our documentary work, performance canbe understood as the unification or two processes.One is a process of design. It is the way the mind getsand transforms information. The second is a processof situating. It is the way the human being, existing inthe world, composes the information to suit the scene,to alter circumstance for the better. Every folklore textcan be imagined as the result of two, simultaneous,intermeshed processes. One of those processes is themind’s process of learning, storing, and reworkingexperience. The other is the human process by whichthe old and the new, the remembered and imagined,the fantastic and pragmatic unify in the things that comenew to the world. Everything we study-story or song,pot or temple-depends upon the human being’s capacityto transform, and to transform in such a way as to haveimpact upon the world.Every object of folklore study is doubly unique. It isunique because it is the result of a particular mentalprocess of design. It is unique because it is situated ina new scene. Creation sets the creator in the world, asreceiver, as transmitter, as performer. The process ofcreation situates folklore in the world, solidly,inescapably, so the creator, you will understand, isnecessarily involved with the world during creation,○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○Text means textile, something woventogether out of distinct threads.When we call a story a text, weemploy a metaphor form the weaver’sworld. It is less strain to think of apuppet as a text than it is to thinkof a string of words as a text.○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○with the environment, with the economy, with politics.Life unifies tremendously in the act of performance.When we thought of people as tradition-bearers, theycould be isolated from the world, set away from historicforces. But if folklore is the natural result of theexistential location of human beings in the world, asactors in situations, then folklore can no longer beconceived as a collection of items, of texts in isolation.Instead, texts must be understood as the consequenceof a double process. One is a process of design, orexpression; as I express myself, I express my ability tograsp and transform. The second follows: as I expressmy transformative ability, I am in a scene,communicating, and in communication, I entanglemyself in webs of connection that ramify to the ends ofthe earth.We might say that performance theory has as its goalthe complete understanding of the text. Every proverbor story, every textile woven, every puppet carved andstitched, every object of folkloristic study expresses theself, the individual, the one who processed receivedmaterials; and it expresses the society among whom,and for or against whom, the individual operates; andit expresses the world, the place the society occupies;and it expresses some relation to the ultimate, thecosmological ground upon which all moves. Maybethe cosmological is expressed in scientific terms, moreoften it is framed religiously, but it is the case that thecreation we take as the object of folklore study mustbear within it an individual, a society, a world, andsome transcendent possibility that relates the thing westudy to principles of the ultimate.How does all this fancy talk relate to documentation?We wish to be complete and systematic, at once scientificand properly connected to an acceptable concept ofhuman nature. Suppose I were to document KheratiRam Bhatt, master puppeteer of Jaisalmer. These arethe things I would have to document, being an adherentof the performance school. First, I would documentthe text. In his case, the text would be a puppet. Hemakes puppets. I would record them accurately; thegoal of accuracy being that the record is so completethat a new puppet, exactly like the old one, could becreated from the recording. A digression might benecessary. Why call a puppet a text? Why call astream of words a text? Text means textile, somethingwoven together out of distinct threads. When we calla story a text, we employ a metaphor form the weaver’sworld. It is less strain to think of a puppet as a textthan it is to think of a string of words as a text. A textis an object composed of parts that we perceive to havebeen the unified creation of another person. It is whatwe are obliged to document: units other peoplecompose out of discrete parts, units that are limitedbits of the real world.In the case of Kherati Ram, he takes wood, carves it,paints it, he takes cloth, he takes different elementsand puts them together in such a way that in the endthere is a thing, a creation that had not been there before,an object with edges, separable from its situation. Youcan pick the puppet up and take it elsewhere. That isa text: a unit made of parts by someone else that canbe moved from one situation to another, an entityapprehensible as separable. So for me, for him, thetext is a puppet. My job is to record it. That was themain command in the days of tradition-bearers. I take45INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

ON DOCUMENTARY ACT46a photograph, but a picture is never enough. I takemeasurements. I draw details. I sample the wood,the cloth. I make a representation so accurate it couldbe used to reproduce the original. That is the goal,but it is only the beginning.The second thing to documentis space. Where does thepuppet happen? We talk ofthings as being out of context,but all things are in context,always, and that context mustbe described. Let us say,Kherati Ram’s puppet is in amuseum exhibition. Well, we would document it,recording where the puppet is hung, how it relates tolabelling, lighting, and the other exhibits. If we chanceto be at his home where the puppet is made, then Iwould not only record his puppet, I would record itssituation, making a measured plan of his house, thecourtyards front and back, to locate the puppet in space,carved by the front gate, painted in the courtyardbehind, stored in a chest beneath the front window inthe bedroom. Spatial positioning is my seconddocumentary job.It sounds simple, but I find many of my friends infolklore still do not understand. They talk about contextbut forget to document context. They record stories butdo not record with the same interest the place wherestories are told. Performance theory remainsunaccomplished. So we record the puppet, and werecord the places where the puppet exists, the place ofmaking, the place of storage, the place where it is putinto action. That leads us forward, but let us pause atstep two: the puppet, a puppet of certain materials andform and colour, is in a box, the box is in a room, theroom is in a house, the house has a yard in front whereKherati Ram’s little daughters are sanding the heads ofother puppets.The text, the puppet, is not floating in the air. It is inthe world, exactly here. The third things I mustdocument are the social arrangements that surroundthe text in its place. Kherati is carving. Near him sitsPapu, his brother and colleague. They collaborate inpuppetry, and now they chat while Kherati hacks aface out of wood. He works as the leader of a familialunit. I need to situate Kherati among people as I situatethe puppet in space, so I document who is present,where they sit or stand, how they move, while hemoves, carving a puppet’s head. The fourth thing Ineed is a complete biography of Kherati Ram Bhatt.Not a few facts, but an autobiography that will permitrich interpretation. I need to know where he was born,when and how he learned his trade, how he improvedhis work. I need his understanding of the history ofthis tradition, his understanding of the aesthetic andeconomic and social aspects of his practice. I need, inshort, to have a long discussion with him about hislife.The first things that I must document are sensate. Isee the puppet, I see its physical setting, and I see itssocial setting. These things are visible. A camerawould catch them. Often we think all documentationcan be done by technological magic, but the mostimportant documentary acts elude technology. Theyare ultimately invisible. We have to know the interiorof Kherati Ram’s skull if we are going to understandthat puppet. So having recorded the text, its physical,and then its social settings, we record the fullness ofthe creator’s biography. By that I do not mean a fewfacts as in a census-father’s name, mother’s name, birthdate. I mean a conversation of, say, three hours intwo separate sessions. During that time, storiesemerge, and slowly the distance between the parties,the one being documented and the one doing thedocumentation, breaks down. Friendship becomespossible, collaboration becomes possible, and the ethicaldimensions of ethnography gain natural, human shape.The next thing I must document is the artist’s vision,not my vision, but the creator’s vision of creation.Generally, this involves at least three different aspects.The first is the process by which the text has beencreated. Obviously in the case of the puppet, I watchwhile Kherati Ram makes one. I watch several times.At last I think I understand the process, and I askquestions to be sure I understand and to learn things,such as the name of the wood, that are not visible.This is the easiest step: the documentation would allowsomeone to use my words and images to replicateKherati Ram’s process. And my questions allow us tounderstand with his understanding. His wood is foundonly in a certain part of Rajasthan. Called aakre lakri, ithas ideal properties for puppet-making: it is soft whengreen, easy to carve, and it dries hard and light, so thepuppet can be moved easily and confidently by thepuppeteer. Studying a craft seems easy. The processis externalised, visible. How could such a thing bedone for a storyteller? One of our failings as analystsof performance is that we have theorised much butrarely asked the performers about their theory ofperformance. I have found that storytellers can talkabstractly about story telling, and it is a pitiful bit ofarrogance that leads us to believe that we understandperformance better than the performers. ManyAmerican analysts seem to me to be meditating upontheir own failed careers as folksingers more than theyare investigating the mature performance of theaccomplished artists they write about. I abandon thatdigression to say that when I questiontraditional artists they seem to have already solved manyof the problems that have bedevilled a century ofAmerican folklore scholars.Is folklore stable or changing? Once we said stable, nowwe say changing, but the creators know what is variable,what is invariant in their performance. Artists knowtheir art, and we must be patient enough to learn thelanguage in which deep discussions can occur. First inour documentation of the artist’s vision is process. ByINDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

ON DOCUMENTARY ACTwatching and talking, we develop a full account of theway in which the creation is created. Second is form.In some areas of folklore scholarship, this would besubsumed as an issue of genre, and it connects to thecrucial matter of repertory. In the old days, we thoughtwe understood genre, but the performers did not.Then, at last, we asked and very often we found thattellers of tale had ideas of genre superior to those of theacademy. The artists know what they are doing. Oftenthey have conducted a kind of structured analysis ontheir own repertories enabling subtle judgments. Thatis surely what I found in ten years of research in acommunity in Ireland. The tellers of tale had developedtheir versions of the theories we consider to be the rarepossessions of professional folklorists andanthropologists.We must document form, genre, and repertory. And Ihave found that the people we are studying can helpus, for among them there are thoughtful individualswho have understandings concerning those veryissues. They can speak of form, genre, and repertory.In working with women who weave carpets in Turkey,I found a few who could talk aesthetic theory at thelevel of the trained art historian. I am not overstatingit, but it does take a long time to learn the language theartist’s use, even when we think we are speaking thesame mother tongue. Once communication has becomeeffective, then our informants become our teachers. Irecall one young woman, Nezihe Ozkan, a weaver in aremote mountain village. I had known her for yearswhen at last I asked her for the key to the aesthetics ofthe oriental carpet, unquestionably one of the greatestcreations of humankind. She was a master weaver, anddid not pause, but responded quickly that the key wasthe development of an interesting relation between abusy, active border and a quiet, serene centre. Look atan oriental carpet. Why are one good, one poor, andone splendid? It is the alternation between action andrepose, excitement and serenity. Nezihe, the traditionalartist, knew, and she put quickly into words the aesthetickey to one of the world’s great creations. In all theirbooks, the art historians have never written it so clearlyas the village woman spoke it. But, remember, I hadknown her for years. We were comfortable with eachother, had developed a way to speak Turkish that suitedus.In documenting the artist’s vision, we watch and listen,learning about process, about form, and then we cometo the hardest task. We must learn the artist’sinterpretation. We have entered the realm of meaning.Generally, scholars have seized the right to interpret,reducing artists to suppliers of materials, making themplay the role of the working classes with respect to theelite position of the interpreting scholar. They makethings, but we know the history, we know the meaning,we do the interpretation. You have learned my position,my politics, so it will not surprise you when I say thatI have found among the artists some people whoseinterpretations are subtler, richer, and finer than thoseof scholars. Mehmet Gursoy in Turkey, Haripada Pal inBangladesh are the two of the artists I could namewho surpass the thinkers of the academy in theirinterpretive panache. That is, if I take the time to getto really know the artists of a place, I will find one,maybe two, whose courageous interpretations sailbeyond my own tepid imaginings. My job is only tostay long enough, to know the language well enough,to have developed a sufficiently affectionate relationship,and then, at the right moment to make the rightrequest. I do not undervalue my role in the work.So, let me recapitulate. There are physical things torecord. There is a text, an object that occupies the sensateworld. It has dimension, size, duration, shape; it hasa beginning, an end; it has parts, segments, notes andepisodes. It needs to be recorded, documentedcompletely and accurately. The text is a puppet ofwood, paint, cloth and string. It only exists in somephysical setting. It is separable, yes, but it is alwayssomewhere, and that place must be documented. Ithas a physical environment, the puppet is in a box, orit is hanging on the back of a stage, ready to be put intoplay. In a physical location, it is in a social location.Someone is there. Maybe it is only the observer, maybeit is the man, Kherati Ram, bent and carving, who madeit, or maybe it is Kherati Ram, turbaned for performance,who picks the puppet from a post and drops it,whistling, to dance on the stage, while his brother seatedto the left, sings a welcome.Now the text, object, puppet, is in its physical and socialscenes, and we are documenting them. The peoplewho comprise the text’s social context are not stones orbirds. They are human beings, and since they are,since they are beings of memory, imagination, and will,they have biographies. The biographies must berecorded so the objects we study can be understood asthe products of intention, of retention and innovation,and not as the natural spill of instinctual behaviour.Once these people have biographies, and we haverecorded them, we have begun to connect with themon the basis of a shared humanity. Kherati Ram is aman as I am a man. He is the yieldof his past, and dreams, as I am. Aman with a biography, he is a manof attitude and opinion, ofinformation and theoretical insight.I need to learn from him at least thesethree things: Process; how is the textcreated? Form; what are the formsand categories in his full repertoryof creation? Interpretation; whatare the meanings of the puppets, who is portrayed andwhy, how do they combine in the drama? Watchinghis amazing play, I am stirred to a wild assembly ofinterpretations, and I expect they would prove amusingto other scholars, but taking my documentary roleseriously, and working toward the fulfilment of theperformance theory, I would want to ask Kherati Ramfor his interpretation, puppet by puppet, scene by scene47INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

ON DOCUMENTARY ACT48in the drama, and I would want to accept him as a criticand colleague, soliciting his opinion of myinterpretations. I have the right to develop my owninterpretations, but I have the obligation to test themagainst the richer knowledge of the creatorsthemselves. Not by simple interviewing, but throughcolloquy, through trades of insight in a collaborativeframe, the artist and the scholar come toward thedeepest levels of meaning.The last thing to be documented might be called culturein general. Culture as entailed byperformance theory differs from theculture spread through the classicethnography. When I was trained inanthropology, the idea of ethnographyinvolved going among a group ofpeople, treated as a collective. Theassumption was that they were alikein fact and attitude. From them yourecorded data that fit in mastercategories, facts about the economy, about socialstructure, about religion. Then you came home. NowI think of culture as an array of issues toward whichpeople orient in performance. The texts created inperformance raise the issues, and the problem for theanalyst is to relate the issue in the text back to theexperience of the participants. So we need to know asmuch as possible about their experience, what it is liketo live where they do, as they do, with their terrors,their delights, in their economic and politicalcircumstances. Our hope is to catch their references,understanding their creations, as much as it is humanlypossible to do, as they understand them. There is nolimit to this work. But every minute in the field withthe creators, eating their food, feeling the itch of theirplace, is an invaluable addition to our effort atunderstanding. In essence, we must trust our humanintuitions, recording everything that strikes us, takingphotos, rolling tape, and above all filling page after pageof our notebooks. The most important of alldocumentary technologies is the cheap pen and thecheap notebook, tools for recording our own reactions,which, it is to be hoped, are parallel enough in fellowfeeling to provide us a ground for mutual understandingand interpretation.Other people create the things, stories or puppets thatwe record as texts. The texts refer to their experience.Sharing experience, joining the artists in talk aboutprocess, form, and meaning, we gain the right to createour own texts. Our texts must be full of their texts.Our interpretations must be chastened by theirinterpretations. But our texts will be, at last, ours. Thehope is that our texts will be worthy of the people wehave struggled to understand.A few simple notions can I believe, advance thatstruggle. Creativity can be imagined as a combinationof two processes. One is the mental process by whichform is designed. The second is the bodily process ofputting form into the world, adjusting it to have positiveimpact. To make the distinction clear in folklore terms,consider the proverb that is, as proverbs generally are,repeated verbatim. In repetition, apparently, there isno creativity. But there is creativity in situating theproverb in the world in the right way, locating it in theflux of the instant so that it has consequence, function.By contrast, let us say, the creativity of the epic is thecreativity of the mind soaring beyond merememorisation, winging free while the eyes are closed,the audience forgotten, and the problem of creation issufficient unto itself. I sketch the extremes, one ofrepetition in a new context, one of a creation breakingfree of contextual constraint. In the telling of a story,the creativity might be in composing the tale, or it mightbe in fitting the tale to its scene. Most likely it lies inboth at once.In most creativity, in most of that which draws thefolklorist, the two processes fuse. The mind’s capacityto make form becomes one with the desire to situateform in the world as a communication, so that thecreation will usefully rearrange the conditions of humanexistence. The creation is structured to function, andthe double process is essential to performance theory.The processual conjunction might be called situatedintention or competence in context or art. The languagedoes not matter, so long as the idea is clear, and if it is,then the implications for documentation should beclear. As has been the case for more than two centuries,our first job is to record texts, but now recognizing thattexts do not travel on their own through space andtime, recognizing that texts are created by individualswho use their unique skills of learning andtransformation in order to compose, and their uniquesensitivity to situation, as well as their own opinionsabout social order political purpose, to put theircompositions into the world, then we must do muchmore than record texts, completely and precisely.And I suggest, as a start, a little documentary list tocheck off while you do your work. Document the text.Document its physical setting. Document its socialsetting. Record the biographies, in their words, of thepeople involved, members of the audience, consumersas well as creators. With the creator, you need todocument the process of creation, the forms that makeup the full repertory, and you need to documentparticular meanings and general interpretations. Thenyou need to document, intuitively, emotionally, as fullyas possible, the experience you share with the creator,gaining a general feel for culture. At last the goal is toknow enough to be able to understand the text, so asto derive a full account of its creation, and you do that,we do that, so as to live with respect, usefully andhonourably among the people with whom we sharethis earth.INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

ON FOLK NARRATIVESFolk narrativesKomal Kothari is Director, Rupayan Sansthan, FolkloreInstitute of Rajasthan, Jodhpur, Rajasthan and Chairman,NFSCA study of folk narratives can have many, manydifferent directions. One could study the problem offolk motives, or study tale types tointernationally put up the narrativeinto a particular socket – one shouldchoose one direction to work. Oneworks in the field of folk narrativesto gather interesting stories, to writeand publish them; another decidesfolktales are very interesting lessonsin our jobs as teachers; yet anotherwants to collect stories and see whotells the story, why, and for whom,Komal Kotharias well as the type of socialsignificance or social message itcontains. So, there are hundred of ways in which folknarratives can be studied, there is no one fixed way.Some people do not work with folk narratives as adistinct discipline. Rather, they collect whatever folknarratives they find interesting and integrate them intheir work.I believe that whatever one studies, one should try toget the whole out of the whole and from what remains,which is also a whole. This is apparent in folk narrativeswhere even after studying it any number of ways, whatwill remain is a total whole. There would still be thingsto be told about it. What I shall talk about folk narrativeshere is the sum of my experiences after entering theworld of folk narratives. The first important factor forme is: who is the narrator? Who is the teller of the tale?I shall list out people of different types of folk narrativeswith whom we worked in Rajasthan and collectedstories. I begin with professional storytellers. Theyexpect some remuneration, some fee, and areprofessionally engaged in the job of storytelling. Shiftingfrom this description, we have an entire class of peopleknown as bhat, the genealogists. The role of these peopleis to keep track of your family line, specifically the maleline. There are two types of bhats – mukhavancha bhatand pothibancha bhat. The mukhavancha bhat maintaingenealogy records orally, not in writing. The pothibanchabhat keep a bahi or record in which they write downnames.Each family has to pay the pothibancha bhat for the writingof their names, without which their names will not beentered into his bahi or into the bhat’s memory. Thepractice in Rajasthan is that the bhats visit families everythree years and record in the bahi the names of childrenborn, if any, in the families in the interim years. Peoplethink that this kind of record of family history is keptonly for kings and jagirdars and such, but that is nottrue. Any group in Rajasthan that claims a caste statushas to have a genealogist. Today, this institution ofrecording genealogy is strong in the so-called low castegroups. Most of the art forms, too, are alive todaybecause of this system which somehow or the other,has kept many traditions alive for us.During their visit, the bhats stay for two or three dayswith a family or in the village and go from house tohouse. In the evenings, they tell stories. This is actuallya full performance – they sit at a designated place, thereis an audience comprising men and women, and theyuse highly ornate speech. There are also variousformulae in the storytelling – for example, when theytalk about a king, there is a lot of material about theking’s appearance, the way he sat on his horse, aboutwhat happened to him, the ornaments that he wore.When they talk about a queen or a heroine, they usemany formulae to describe her beauty. There are alsoornamented descriptions of horses, camels, of drinkingand of the elements.The mukhavancha bhats are only available with in thelow caste groups. They are generally nats or acrobats.All the acrobats that we see on the streets are oralgenealogists of other caste groups in Rajasthan. In theirpractice of genealogy, these bhats start with stories abouthow the birth of the Sun, the moon and the trees, howthe various activities in society came into existence andhow natural phenomena occur. We have recordings ofsome mukhavancha bhats and one can see a relation tothe organisation of the puranas. Puranas have fivechapters and the oral genealogists follow exactly thesame format while narrating stories. As no society orgroup will survive without their own mythology, thesestories are about low caste people.Our problem while working was finding the mythologyof the low caste people in society. Can their mythologybe the same as classical mythology? They too surviveon their mythology. Our general reaction was that itwould be difficult for them to survive on classicalmythology, so what do they have with them? This ledus to the institution of the mukhavancha bhats. Thesemukhavancha bhats have hundreds of stories to tell inthe course of telling the genealogy of people. I shall tellyou one about a tribe known as the rauts, a small groupin the Mewad region. We heard the story inadvertentlywhile passing through the area. There was this acrobaticgroup reciting the genealogy of the rauts. There was acrowd of about five hundred men and women. Thestory went thus: there was a person named Punia. Atthat time, nobody knew agriculture. For the first time,Punia sowed the seeds of corn and it turned out to be asuccess. When he was to harvest his crop, the Sun and49INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

ON FOLK NARRATIVES50the Moon came and said, Punia, you have grown somethingand it has turned out well. But would you have been able todo it without us? Punia says, No, I would not have beenable to. So they asked for their share in the yield. Puniatold them that the whole field was theirs. They movedthrough the field and saw the beautiful flowers at thetop of the corn plant. They also had not seen agriculture;they said they shall take the upper part and the lowerpart shall belong to Punia. So the sun and the moongot nothing and Punia got the full crop as the corngrows on the middle part of the plants.Next year, Punia sowed sorghum or jowar. Again, theSun and the Moon came by. They said this time theywould take the middle part and Punia can take the upperpart. Punia again got all the grain and the Sun and theMoon got none. At this part of the story, the storytellerbeat his drum very vigorously and asked if anybodycould tell him who is Surya (the Sun) and Chandra (theMoon)? The audience answered in one voice that theywere Chandravanshi and Suryavanshi. These were therulers of that place. In the twelve hours of recordingthat we have(at Rupayan Sansthan), there are manysuch tales – if the high caste people listen to them, theywill be angry and unhappy. So, one way or the other, atype of a big narrative lore of very important life aspectof lot of people is available at this point. We considerboth types of bhats as professional storytellers – theyprepare themselves for the job, the particular way ofstorytelling is transmitted to them, they learn it, andnarrate it. So, bhats form one group of storytellers. Thesecond group is made up of the known professionalstorytellers. But we found in Rajasthan that these peoplemostly work at night – they have to work for the entirenight and they have a lot of free time in between. Whenthe people gather before them, they tell stories to passthe time. Not everybody can tell these stories, there area few people in the village who specialise in narratingthem. And they are always long – the stories last for anhour or two. Similarly, when people in the villages aresitting and doing nothing, waiting for something or theother, they will ask the storyteller from that place tonarrate a story and he would do so. These are verycompact stories. Again, these storytellers also useheightened speech as well as theatricality, a sort oforganised performing situation.The third situation is when we ask anyperson to tell a story, he says that he doesnot know. Have you listened tosomething? He says no, I have not. Butthe same person, if some occasionhappens, would tell a story to establishhis point. Out of many stories that cameto mind, I tell you this story.Somebody has taken a loan from another person andhe was unable to repay. In Indian situations, when aperson takes a private loan, it is repaid even in fourteengenerations or twenty generations; they do not feeltotally free until they repay the loan. The loan,indigenously given, is on exorbitant interest. I mighthave taken a loan of Rs. 200 and I might have paid Rs.2,000 or Rs. 20,000 on interest but yet another Rs. 2,000might be left to repay. This is the situation today, I donot know about any other parts of India, but it is so inRajasthan. So, people feel that if we have taken a loanfrom you, we would repay by washing in the milk, andthis would be the expression they use.So, this is the situation for the person who has takenthe loan. And then, somebody would come up with astory. The story would be: a person who took a loandied and the person who gave the loan also died. Theperson who took the loan was reborn as an elephantand the person who gave the loan was reborn as a bull.Both of them are in the same kingdom. It so happenedthat one day, the elephant became mad and startedkilling people and rummaging through the kingdom.So, the king offered half of the kingdom to any personwho would be able to tame this elephant. Everybodywas afraid of the mad elephant but the bull told thepeasant who owned him, Let me go. I shall go and defeathim. The peasant was sceptical but allowed the bull totry. As soon as the elephant saw the person who hadgiven him the loan in the form of a bull, he ran away. Anumber of stories are told in this way to establish somepoint or the other. But these stories will never come tous if you ask them to tell a story. Most of our collectionsare from my friend who works, writes and publishesfolktales – he has published fourteen volumes offolktales collected from various places. Most storiesactually come from situations where the storytellers tryto make a point. When we were living with them in thevillage, such situations would arise.We see a lot of proverbs used in similar situations. Mostof the proverbs actually have stories behind them – wecall them proverbial tales. Let me tell you a story thatcomes to mind: there is a proverb in Rajasthani thattranslates to, I am the person who can say no, who are youto say no. This is used in a number of situations.Proverbs, like words, don’t have a single meaning, andthey are used according to the context and give meaningto that particular situation and the context is never thesame. The story in case is that of an old woman whohad gone to the jungle to collect firewood. As she wascoming home with a heavy load on her head, a sadhupassing that way saw her and said, you are an old ladyand you are carrying so much weight. Give me the load; Ishall carry it to your home. She appreciated his gestureand said, carry it for me, and when we reach home, I shallgive you something for it. When they reached her place,she went inside and did not come out because then shewould have to give him something for helping her bringthe wood. Meanwhile, the old woman’s daughter-inlawcame out and the sadhu asked her for something.She said, No, we would not give you anything. Then theangry mother-in-law came out and asked, what rightdid you have to say no? Only I have the right to say no.Hence the above-mentioned proverb.INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

ON FOLK NARRATIVESThere is another proverb, Even when a doomani weeps,there is some melody in it. (A doomani is a woman fromthe musician community). But the proverb is notrestricted to women and musicians. For example,somebody meets me and I immediately start talkingabout folklore, and even if he or she talks aboutsomething else, I bring the conversation back to folklore.The person might recount that whenever you meetKomal, he talks about one thing only. And then theperson might quote this proverb. Then there are thejokes that are prevalent in hundreds of ways in thevillages. Some are honourable; some can’t be talkedabout freely. These again fall into the category ofnarrative. And then we have the women’s narratives ofstories. The women tell stories to their children. In thisway, we work a little more in detail. Again the problemthat comes up is about who is the bearer of the tradition,as was discussed in our first lecture by Henry Glassie.In my childhood, too, I heard stories – if I stress mymemory, I might be able to remember a few, may be ina skeletal form. Every child hears stories. As far as ruralRajasthan is concerned, no child grows up withoutstories. It is as important as mother’s milk. But a childwho never retells these stories is not the bearer of thetale. The other important thing to remember is thatwhen women tell stories to their children, it is an adultaddressing a child. The format of the story is adultformat, not children’s format. Therefore, the child wouldnever be able to express himself or herself through thatstory. Up to the age of seven, we found that childrennever tell stories to other children or to anybody else,so they never become the bearers of the stories.What I tell you now is absolutely personal. Whenever Itry to work in any particular field, whether it is folknarratives, or songs or gods and goddesses, the firstthing I do is to do it in my family and try to see thesituation there and try to ascertain because I can askthem hundreds of questions in hundreds of ways and Iwould get some kind of reply or no reply at all. I startedtrying to remember stories I’d heard in my childhood.I was brought up in my maternal family. I mostly grewthere and it was in the Mewad and Udaipur region.Only one story comes to mind, and my maternal aunttold me that one. I remember we were a lot of boys ofthe same age in my group and we would ask her to tellthe story again and again and therefore it might haveremained in my memory. The story was simple andshort. There was a pair of birds. They decided to putup a swing on a well. The birds used to swing on it.But it was made of very thin thread and the thin threadbroke. She never said anything more than that. But wealways felt sorry for this pair of birds. After a very longtime, when I was working on folktales, this story cameback to me. By this time I was about fifty-five yearsold. When I retold the story to myself, I realised thatthe birds did not fall in the well but they flew away. Assoon as I realised that the birds flew, it was as if a greatburden had been taken off my heart.I enquired why people who tell the story do notimmediately tell the moral of the story. This puts up avery different attitude to the women’s storytelling. Theywould never, never tell the moral of story to the child –they will leave it to the child to grow and understandnot only one moral but different shades of meaningout of a story. This is what was happening in thetraditional society. But when we tried to bring thesestories to the schools, we found that we begin with themoral of the story, and then tell the story. Or after tellingthe story, we try to explain the moral. Not only that,the children never retold the stories they had been told.The format was such that it was not possible for thechild to come out with the story; like the lullaby that issung to the child by an adult and cannot be sung by achild to another child. Nowadays, we tell a child a storyin the night before sleeping and in the morning, atbreakfast, we ask the child what the lion did and whatthe fox did. If the child is able to answer, we feel veryhappy that the child has learnt the story. But this wasnot the purpose in traditional society – to examinewhether the child knows the story or not. Now, welearned that no child under the age of eight or nineever gets a story that has to do with religion. It mayappear in some families – may be Brahmin families.But, in general, only after the child is seven does religion○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○Every child hears stories. As far asrural Rajasthan is concerned, nochild grows up without stories.○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○appear in stories. The child never retells the story. So,again, who is the bearer of the tale? In the case of theprofessional and other storytellers, they have a particulartype of recruitment for particular types of tradition. Theylearn the stories from those sources. But these storiesthat women narrate, how do they move on?We found that mothers in rural areas are neverstorytellers. We also found that the grandmother doesnot tell stories if the grandfather is alive. Then we lookedinto the way of life in which the mother is engaged forthe evening – prepare food, wash things, ready the beds,do the things necessary for the next morning and soon. This is the time when children would sleep andshe had no time to attend to the child. So, she nevertold stories. Most adults, when asked to rememberbedtime stories they’d heard in their childhood, wouldsay, who will tell us stories? Mother would give us a goodslap and ask us to go to sleep. But this is not true. Theywere told stories. They need to be goaded again andagain to remember something.In such a situation in rural areas, we found that if therewas a widow in the family, she is the one who tells thestories. She is usually the one who looks after thechildren in the family after the husband’s death. She isin contact with the children all the time. Any family we51INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ON FOLK NARRATIVES52visit, we learn about the family members. If there is awidow, we ask her to tell us stories. She is able to tellus many, many tales. So, here is the bearer of a verydifferent generic type of a story. We ask these widowsthe source of these stories. They say they heard thestories from their families. But they had also collectedstories later on. When asked if she told the stories whenher husband was alive, the answer is no. Another thingbecomes important: when a professional storyteller talksto other people, he is professionally prepared and tellsthe story to many people. But it is different in storiesnarrated in houses. For example, if a mother tells astory to her five children – say, three daughters andtwo sons– all five may not come and listen to the story.They may be of different ages. And even if all of themare present, only one or two might be listening. And itis a personal, conversational mode of storytelling. Adifferent type of language is used – the theme, the wayof talking, how the story begins and ends. This is thetype of stories children hear from women in the family.Then there is another genre of stories narrated bywomen. These are the vrat kathas. There are certainfasting days in a year, certain time cycles, in whichthey eat only once a day or not eat throughout the day.○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○Most of the time when I am in myvillage, I do not wear a watch. I donot even know the date or the day. Itis not needed there. But when I cometo Jodhpur, date does matter.groups of Indian society? They might have a weeklyvrat, a Monday vrat or a Saturday vrat – it will appearevery week. Some vrats are done, say, on the eleventhof every fortnight, so there would be two vrats in amonth. Others are observed on amavasya or the nightof no moon. Then, the vrat would be once a month.Then we have vrats that move in two-monthly, threemonthly,four-monthly, six-monthly or yearly cycle.Finally, we found that the vrat is the absolute clue tothe working timeframe for the women. It is this thatkeeps them aware of what we call date. Most of thetime when I am in my village, I do not wear a watch. Ido not even know the date or the day. It is not neededthere. But when I come to Jodhpur, date does matter.So, the vrat stories are to be looked into in conjunctionwith the tithis. There are also many folktales that referto this type of time division in people’s lives.So far, the narratives I have been talking about are theprose narratives and normal speech. There are sungnarratives, as well. There are ballads. Unfortunately,in Indian folklore studies, we do not see the properunderstanding of the ballad type. People only talk aboutthe epic type where there is a long narration and thecanvas is bigger. But, ballads receive the least possiblecognisance. Among the women’s songs are hundredsof ballads. In one of the studies we are conducting nowabout women’s songs, we came across a particularceremony called night-wake (ratijaga) done in familiesat childbirth, marriage and death, in which these songsare sung. Some of the songs are lyrical, but some aretotal narratives. These songs contain a story line, butthere is no mention of the name of the place, or namesof characters and there is no time prescribed in the story.They have to observe certain rituals, such as they’d eatonly after the moon rises. The vrat stories are told onthese occasions. The same story is narrated every yearfor that particular vrat, but there are variations accordingto the region. This type of storytelling led us to anothertype of problem. How is time divided in a given societyor group? My wife and I use different calendars. In hercalendar, it does not hold that one has to get the salaryon the first day of the month or that Sundays or secondSaturdays are holidays. She is always working and thereare no holidays for her. She lives according to the Indiancalendar, which is the tithi. She has to have a calendarof her own in which she sees the eighth, ninth days ofthe fortnight or that the eleventh is cut off, only twelfthday is there and on these calculations, the vrat day isdetermined.The format of vrat stories is that a situation arises inwhich a family gets into difficulty because somebodyin the family was not observing this vrat. They have toface a lot of tragedies, but finally the gods would comewhen this particular vrat is observed, and everythingwould be alright. So the vrat is something to please thedeity. The factor that became important for us in thestudy of the vrats is the time divided among the women’sOne of the most popular songs is the panihari. Anywherein Rajasthan, if you request, he or she would sing thissong. Panihari is a narrative song. The story line issomething like this: A man riding a camel came to awater hole, nadi as we call it, where anyone could comeand drink water. A girl is also drinking water there,and the camel rider asks her some questions and praisesher beauty. The girl gets angry that a stranger shouldtalk to her in this manner and goes home ruffled. Theman follows her. Reaching home, she complains to hermother that the man has been harassing her. Her mothercomes out, sees the man and finally says that this is theman to whom the girl has been betrothed. This is thestory – no place is mentioned, no names of the persons.We asked the people what other songs they sing aboutin the night-wake (ratijaga) ceremony, and they said theysing about gods and goddesses. We came across sixteensongs about gods and goddesses. We didn’t get intothese gods and goddesses, but we went into the detailsof the whole-night sessions. We found that right up tomidnight, people would sing songs related to gods andgoddesses. After that, they would sing singaru songs,or songs of romance. One story comes in here: A girl isbeing married off. Her father wants to give her dahej(dowry). He tells her to take gold, take cattle, takeINDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

ON FOLK NARRATIVESbuffaloes, take ornaments or take money. All the time,the girl says she would not take any of these, that shewants only one thing. When the father asks her what itis, she asks for her beautiful maidservantwho works for the family, with whom thefather had got involved. So, to save hermother and to give her mother a good life,the girl asks for the maidservant. The fathersays okay but warns her that she has to becareful. The girl insists, and so she takesthe maidservant along with her. The newbride prescribed a lot of rules for themaidservant; the maid was not allowed totake a bath everyday, she could not weargood clothes or ornaments nor could shewear any makeup. And she kept a strictwatch on the maid to see that the maid followed allthis. But one day she was invited to attend a night-wake(ratijaga) ceremony that she could not avoid. Beforegoing, she again instructed the maid not to do anythingthat would make her look beautiful. At the ceremonyat around midnight when she looked at her palace shesaw lights in the part of the palace where she slept.She rushed back immediately and found her husbandinvolved with the maidservant.These types of stories come in the nature of a ballad.Why are they sung? What is their message? This isdifficult for me to discuss now.In another situation, another story is about a girl whogets married and goes to her in-laws’ house. The nextmorning she goes to a small lake near her house tofetch water and she sees a peacock. When she tries tofill her pot, the peacock comes and puts its feathers atthat spot and does not allow her to fill water, and says,you are a beautiful bride. Why don’t you come with me? I,too, am beautiful. The bride decides to elope with thepeacock. But her younger sister-in-law, who has comewith the bride, goes back and tells everyone that thebride has eloped with the peacock. The people pursueher, kill the peacock, and bring the new bride backhome. In the evening, she is served food. After shefinishes eating, they inform her that she has eaten thepeacock’s meat. This is another night-wake (ratijaga) song.We now have more than forty songs in our archive. Asfar as the narrative part is concerned, these ballad typeshave not been studied generically in any part of India.We have hundreds and hundreds of ballads. In ourcollection, would have five hundred. Otherwise, mostof the time, these stories rarely get into folk songs andthey fall into categories other than merely folk songs.The narrative element starts guiding them in a differentway.Let’s come to oral epics, again narrative. There aredifferent types of oral epics. We have oral epics wherethere is a long scroll, nearly two hundred episodes ofthe epic painted on it – a man and woman sing beforethe particular scroll and tells the story of Pabu. Themusical instrument played along with it is theRavanhatha. Then there is another scroll that goes bythe name of Bagdawat or Dev Narayan, and theinstrument played with it is the jantar. These stories arevery long. In our recordings, we have about five, sixversions of the Pabu story. None of them moves for lessthan twenty to thirty two hours. The Bagdawat movesfrom thirty to forty eight hours.There is this particular epic of Heer and Ranjha, sungin the eastern parts of Rajasthan like Alwar andBharatpur. It is also found in Haryana, in Agra and inManipur. As soon as I say Heer Ranjha, everybodythinks of a romantic tale. A Sufi poet Wajid Ali Shahtook this story and wrote it in the Sufi mould. That isthe Heer-Ranjha story that became famous from Punjab.It is sung for not spreading the cattle epidemic. Thereis a particular disease that affects cattle, buffaloes andhorses, in which the foot splits into two. It is contagiousand moves quickly like an epidemic and affectsthousands of animals. In this region, the people wouldsay that when such an epidemic occurs, we do the pathaof Heer-Ranjha. Now this patha is very peculiar. Usuallyit is the patha of Ramayan or the patha of Mahabharat orthe patha of Geeta – only religious treatises are knownas paths. But here, they talk about the patha of HeerRanjha. This story is sung for this purpose byprofessional musicians of a particular caste of that regionas well as by peasants. An important group of this kindis the jogi. This leads to another problem. The area thatI am talking about is Mathura, Brindavan, Bharatpurand Alwar. This is the area of the cows, the area ofKrishna. But for curing the cows today, Krishna is notthe effective god. So, who can cure a cow or a buffalotoday? It is Ranjha. Ranjha was Mahiwal, which meansmahish paal, the buffalo-keeper. He became the saviour○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○Unfortunately, in Indian folklorestudies, we do not see the properunderstanding of the ballad type.People only talk about the epic typewhere there is a long narration andthe canvas is bigger.○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○of cows and buffaloes. He is also a flute player likeKrishna. Then there is another situation. Which are thesocieties that consume the milk of buffaloes. If you goto Manipur, Meghalaya, China or Tibet, the people theredo not consume buffalo milk. Here, the buffalo is mainlya sacrificial animal. Gradually, we found that we candivide even the peasant groups depending on whetherthey rear cows or buffaloes. Now, we have startedtalking about buffalo culture and cow culture. So, thisHeer-Ranjha is sung in a particular way and this versionis not well known. It is very different from the WajidAli Shah’s version.53INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

ON FOLK NARRATIVES54In the same category comes the tradition of Dewal orPandav or Mahabharat stories. But except for the namesand characters, the stories have nothing to do with theMahabharat. All stories of Dewal or Garath or Pandavactually begin after the end of Mahabharat. A newsituation turns up, a new story unfolds, while thecharacters remain the same. These type of stories arecalled Pandavon ki Katha, Pandavon ki Phaliyan and Pandunke Kade. They run absolutely parallel to Mahabharatsituations.One story is known as the Drupad Puran. The GreatWar is finished. The Pandavas are in one camp and theKauravas in the other, and everything is fine. In thePandava camp, Draupadi arrives. As soon as she enters,Yudhistra gets up and touches her feet. Bheema getsangry and says that whatever Draupadi is, Yudhistra isher husband. Why does he touch her feet? Yudhistratries to calm him down. But Bheema wants anexplanation. Knowing Bheema’s anger, Yudhistra doesnot want to get into an argument. Instead, he asks Bhimaif he has heard that in a particular forest there is a demonthat comes every night and destroys the people there.Bheema immediately gets interested and wants to knowwhere the demon is. Yudhistra tells him where the forestis and tells him that the demon would come at midnight○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○Most of the time, I feel that what isour world but a narrative. Can wesurvive without stories?○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○and that Bheema was to destroy it. Bheema goes to theforest, climbs a tall, thick tree and waits for the demon.But at midnight, he sees a big group of people whoclean a spot, spread beautiful, costly carpets and arrangechairs made of gold, silver and precious stones. All thegods and goddesses start coming and they take theirrespective places. Bheema, who is watching from thetree, sees that a lady arrives and occupies the mainchair. The lady is none other than Draupadi.As soon as Draupadi takes her seat, the gods startcomplaining that she had taken birth in the world todestroy the Pandavas. But theMahabharat is over and the Pandavas arestill alive. She had taken a vow in Vaikuntto eliminate the Pandavas. Draupadiadmits this fact and says that she couldnot do it because whenever she saidanything, the five brothers accepted it likea law. So, she did not get a chance to beangry with them or do anything to them.But she asks the gods and goddesses not to worry andsays that only that morning, Bheema tried to questionYudhistra for the first time. Now the time has come forher to destroy them. The story goes on – it’s a longstory. But it adds a whole frame of such a story to thePandava tale that moves on a very different line. Thenarratives that I describe are what I could remember atthis moment. There are many other ways in whichnarratives are told. Most of the time, I feel that what isour world but a narrative. Can we survive withoutstories?To conclude, let me tell you a story. There was a kingand he wanted to be told a story that would tire him ofsaying yes, what we call the hoonkara. He promisedhalf his kingdom to any storyteller who could do thisto him. One storyteller approached. He started by sayingthat a peasant had a big house and grain was stored inone part. The king said yes. Then a bird came and tookone seed and went off. The king said yes. Then he saidthe bird came and took another seed, and then another.The king said alright the bird came and took away allthe seeds. The storyteller said the bird came and tookaway all the grain in the granary and I shall proceedwith the story. So, I end here – the story would neverend. [We are thankful to Sopan Joshi for editinghelp......Editor]Dholki Murli SurnaiINDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

REFLECTIONSReflectionsInterview with Kapila Vatsyayanby M.D.Muthukumaraswamy and VenuKapila Vatsyayan is President of Indian International Centre,New Delhi and distinguished author of many booksVenu: First of all, let me thank you for coming andsharing your thoughts during travel, during field visit,in-group discussions and duringthe dinner table discussions – itwas really a kind of movingexperience for all of us. You weretalking about some kind of loadfolklore carries within it. What isthat moment in folklore, whichyou find very singular, whichKapila Vatsyayan could be beneficial to folklorists intheir future exploratory research?Kapila: I first want to thank NFSC for having thoughtof me and to Muthukumaraswamy who kept insistingthat I should come. I am grateful – it is like a piece ofarchives that has been taken out to participate in thepresent. It has been a great learning experience forme. When I said that folklore carries a moment of history– it has two dimensions. One dimension was a purelyacademic or the dimension of the evolution of certaindisciplines and in that one statement what was I reallycontaining? I was really eluding to a more extensive asalso a deeper and a complex discourse. Westernisationis a limiting word but let’s understand it as that.The disciplines of archaeology, anthropology and thenature even of historical studies came into being as adirect concomitant of the evolutionary paradigms. Whathappened in the field of the natural sciences, in theemerging new philosophies of Western Europe and atthe level of our relations is something that has beendiscussed at great length. Perhaps still discussedinsufficiently –was what we call the era of enlightenmentand I was situating folklore at that moment where theEuropean psyche was aware simultaneously ofascensions on the one hand and divisions that had beendone in knowledge but also aware of a sense of lossand it was in that that these early ethnologists in thestudy of smaller societies came into being. And asdistinct from another civilisational trend which wasmoving people to homogenisation and we’ll leave theEuropean situation there.Now we come to whether the Indian or the situation inwhether you call it in geographical terms South Asia orSouth East Asia or extend it to Africa and portions ofLatin America, or use another appellation in a wayapplicable to some or most countries but not all – thatis, those countries which were colonial territories earlierand which have received political freedom. Thesecountries show two simultaneous threads – one, all thatthey absorbed from the colonial rule and what happenedwith the expansions which came with the era ofenlightenment and furthermore what Edward Said hastried to argue in his book on Orientalism and theconstruct of these cultures. And on the other, there isthe phenomenon, unlike in Europe, of the continuitiesof those, call them by the category of indigenous or callthem native category or call them the social structurewhich continues.We are going through a transformation, at least somepercentage of Indian society is going through atransformation of becoming again a homogenised globalsociety and then the parallels are that on the one handyou are moving towards that; on the other you have asense of loss or you are at least aware of the fidelity ofthe existence of the plurality of your cultures and thattherefore which you have rightly said folklore as adiscipline comes into India in its Indian historical,sociological situation and carries with it another momentof history.Venu: Is this process available to us in a lineardevelopment graph? How are they related to forms ofquality of life in our times- whether we may call themaesthetic or ecologically sustainable?MDM: In the modern interpretations of folklore, wehave abandoned the evolutionary paradigm on the onehand and the western theoretical models that areimplicitly colonial on the other. I am also so glad thatyou brought Edward said into our discussion. In thiscontext, your ways of using natural categories tointerpret and theorise on cultural phenomena – forinstance, your use of time as a category to bring togetherdiverse Indian cultural instances under one paradigm/continuum –are amazingly insightful. But suchtheorising has the inherent risk of dehistoricising anddecontextualising cultural happenings. How would yourespond to such demands of theorising? Are there notmany, many ways a theorising?Kapila: Let me say that both of you have really madevery valid and perceptive statements – I have very littleto add to that. May I take up the few issues, which Ihave comprehended; then I will come to the point youmade in terms of theorising. There are two aspects ofthis – one, that unless you have at least tried to observeand comprehend, how do you act? Because if yourown perception is a derived perception, that is by otherpeople’s writings or other people’s conclusions, thenwhen you are in the area of action or decision-makingor policy-making you would go by that, to give a verycrude example if administration is to be done on the55INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

REFLECTIONS56basis of which we all use, I have used extensively, censuscommission reports, gazetteers and so on and so forth,we begin at the very root of data collection.Now at that point we have to see whether that modereflects the kind of phenomenon we want to captureand therefore this whole process of what you arelaunching on documentation is a new methodology forunderstanding and comprehending that phenomenonfirst. Because I can only talk about any kind of reorientation– first let me understand what the existentialsituation is and the understanding of that existentialsituation does become a Roshomon story. Long ago whenArjuna was asked about what does he see in that fish –and there my stress is that the moment of our seeing isalso that moment or attitude of our seeing without ourknowing it because we are empowered in a certain way.Regarding the question about structures or to modifythe existing structures of self-governance that is whereI think that India both faces a challenge as also India issingularly competent to evolve models which wouldbe applicable not only to India but to the other colonialcountries. I tried to convey this argument throughdetour routes in my presentation too – but both of youwere very perceptive and you got that. Instead of havingstandardised models of development – I have been part○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○Folklore is both the reflector and themediator. It is a part of our socialstructure – you cannot look at itonly as an artistic form.○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○of the nuts and bolts of that machinery, I know how itworks, whether it is the question of water or grains oreducation most of all, that you sit in planningcommissions and then you evolve a model which isgoing to be applicable from Arunachal to Kerala. Folkloreis both the reflector and the mediator. It is a part of oursocial structure – you cannot look at it only as an artisticform.Therefore romanticisation of the artistic form is not goingto enable you to get into this. So if we do that then thestudy of what we are calling folklore, let’s forgetappellations and labels, whatever we are doing to studylocal cultures in all their complexities can bring outprototypes of developmental models. Plural modellingis what I was getting at. Biodiversity and culturaldiversity are primary in this perception. Not only weare a multicultural people but we are also a multi-identitypeople and that each one of us has multiple identitieswithin us. And I was talking of an in-built frameworkof both autonomy or self-containment andinterconnections.What was the burden of Komalda’s most beautiful andmoving presentation on folk narratives today? (See KomalKothari’s article in this issue-Editor) Every single story hetold you did have, interconnections andinterdependence. If from all these, we are able to throwup even three or four models of development or selforganisingsystems, then I think that our task is done.In this process you also are looking at yourself. Theory,in the last analysis, is not a goal; after all it is only aframework of enquiry, it is also a tool in which whetheryou go by the normal way of exposition of a thesis andhypothesis and so on and so forth or any other way. Inthat, in my very small way in which I have beenstressing, is that as the world developed, and this isnot an evaluative statement, and just as I speak theEnglish language and a number of other Indianlanguages and I see the integrity of each of theselanguages, when I speak English I use my nouns andmy verbs, my conjunctions and prepositions in one wayand that is what is given to me and when I switch toSanskrit, Hindi and Bengali, it is not only in the languagebut it is in the thought language that I switch.Although we are speaking the two languages of thoughtand semantics, we have to be careful. The secondlanguage is also permeating at the lowest levels, hencewe are a minority and that minority is claiming to bethe mainstream and I was warning against that. I wascautioning against because since we have been giventhat empowerment or privilege, and we are a privilegedeven now not more than 3% of India. And by thatprivilege it is for us to learn those other multiplelanguages rather than impose our language of thoughtand perception in even theorising into when you’remaking any kind of abstracts on the phenomenon –this is one part of it.The second part of it is to get back to where I said thatthere are two systems of thought and it is not good togive names as East, West and Occident, Orient and soon; I have problems with it – but it is true that a constructwas made related to the power of knowledge andeverything that folklore discusses. However, when Iwas saying this, all I was saying was on a primary levelthat there are cultures and civilisations, which havedeveloped on the basis of this integral relationship ofman and nature and environment. Again, everythingthat Komal said was a substantiation of what I had saidat a theoretical level. What are these reptiles, what arethese cattle doing and you get to the Todas – I havebeen instrumental in the making of a film on them –they have names for their animals, not names for theirhuman beings. This integral relationship of nature,both outside and inside, was something that wasmentioned.The possibility of mutation of life forms gave rise to avery different worldview. The whole idea of the pindaand the brahmaanda, the idea of jeev and that jeev is asmuch in the ant as in you or in God. The myth is notthat the gods are sitting out there, the gods are sittingright here and they are also changing; they are as muchvulnerable, there is no completeness in any one of thosegods, they are full of flaws. You know the famousstory of Indra and Brahma; Indra is always in power andINDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

REFLECTIONSalways in trouble. So he went to Brahma and askingabout a lot of things. As he was talking, there was thiswhole line of ants that was moving and he got veryirritated and he told Brahma, What’s all this? I can’t besitting here in this dirty place with these ants. Brahma smiledand said, you know who those ants are? Those are all Indrasof the previous births. The entire mythology is in termsof where you are incomplete and completeness. Fromthat man and nature as also jeev and the idea of theinanimate and animate, you are also getting to anotherlevel in which there is a gradation and that gradation isa consciousness which emerges from the principle ofmutation, a consciousness of this that is the gross thatcan become the subtle, that which is the unrefined whichcan become the refined, a purely chemical processwhether materially or physically or spiritually.You are also getting to your never being complete. Thewhole of the Upanishads and all the stories – GeetaRamanujam just now told me a story about the crow –and all those stories in Tamil Nadu, everywheresomeone is dependent on someone else. Like the fivesenses had a fight with each other, ultimately theyrealised that they were all disabled without the other;the five elements had a fight, Agni said I am supreme,etc. What are all these? And then every time, whetherit is folklore or the Upanishads, what are those storiesabout the breaking of the fig and you go on breakingthe fig? What are the stories of the salt doll that getsimmersed in the ocean and then, you know, where thesalt is or not the salt is but where the doll is. So (a)interconnection and (b) that you are part of a largeruniverse, which is what the social system is trying totell you.The third then that the divisions are not in terms, tocut a very, complex concept, of binary opposites inconflict but these are in triads – you have threes, youhave fives, you have sevens, and therefore thesenumbers, whether it is the seven sisters of this localmyth, you can carry it through any part of India and atany level, tribal or anything like that. There are eitherseven brothers or seven sisters and this can beinterpreted at the cosmological level or at the sociologicalor the anthropological level, or in terms of caste andclass structures, and the whole gender relationships,which come to play a part in it. These are verticaldivisions; at the horizontal level there is a question ofboth space and time. Now you have the four directionsand the multiples of four, which becomes eight, sixteenand so on. Because then life is governed by thosesixteen’s. That is, abstraction is done, categories aremade and those categories are inter-penetrativecategories.So you cannot talk of high philosophy, something thatis what we have done of an insulated textual tradition,unrelated to everything that you were doing of the oraltradition, so those hierarchies cannot be established.In fact, it is a constant movement – that is what I cameto yesterday but did not elaborate – that at the level oftheory, marg is not something which is a superiorcategory at all; it is a directional route, it is a route whichconveys from the etymology of mrig, it is the directionof the mrig and while this is something which is formedin time and space, and can again flow into the marg.So the marg can become desa, the desa can become marg.When we talk about only the sophisticated, about thetextual and there is this whole debate of what constitutesthe textual and what constitutes the oral, because onceagain we have taken those developmental issues andplaced them in the unsaid hierarchy of the pre-literateto literacy. On the other hand, we have gone by thefact that we think that the oral belongs to just all thisthat we are studying and the textual belongs to somebrahminical business.So the other point that I was making was that the oralis as ballad in that which you would call the brahminicaltradition in old history terms as it is in these levels.There are distinctions and those distinctions as muchas the great example that you heard the other day wasin music. It wasn’t that there was no melody there andit wasn’t that there was no tala there; structures weredifferent but those structures in terms of we have saidthat there is a raga and a tala system which we call theclassical system. But if we say that that is not related toall that langas and manganyars were singing, we wouldbe totally wrong. In fact, I would say that at somepoint in history, it is just these that got crystallised intowhat we recognise as the more structured systems inwhich individual performance takes place and therefore,for me, music is a great indicator and a reflector oftheoretical constructs.MDM: I am familiar with some of your work, not all ofthem. To put you a question of my own reading ofyour work and what you just now spoke about, firstly,you seem to carry a Benares with you all the time, aBenares that erupts in contrast to the theoreticians offolklore who believe in hierarchy. But they have madethe systems, the texts, the interpretative modes andthe interpretations – you talked about the Upanishads– there is a definitive point in the historyof Indian philosophy where the mind issupposed to be the supreme over theother senses. Later on, when you look atit, the hierarchy of the senses in relationto the mind became the social hierarchyand what are related to the mind, whatuses the mind becomes the classical andwhat is related to the senses, what use the other sensesbecome the folk. The social hierarchy and the hierarchyof the senses in the process sometimes have a definitivecorrelation in terms of theorising about Indian life. Inthis background, how do you see your past and alsoyour future work?Kapila: There are a series of questions on differentlevels here that you have asked. I have not done anygreat theorising – I have some perceptions, I try to gaveexpression write them not because I was part of anacademia or anything like that. Moreover it pleased meto keep myself engaged, probably a waste of time but I57INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

REFLECTIONS58have done it for some decades of my life. The momentyou say that you carry a certain Benares in you thatmeans you say that I also carry a Harvard and a Michiganand I carry many masters within me. In thisconversation, yes, I mentioned the Upanishads to you –but that does not mean at all that therefore I amconsidering either the Upanishads or theVedanta – I did not mention the wordVedanta, remember that and I want to bevery clear and unequivocal to you on thisbecause it is your association that themoment the word Upanishads come, awhole series of secondary writing onUpanishads gets internalised within you –I have read the Upanishads outsidephilosophy; I have read them as I read my folktales;that is why I mentioned all the parables and not whatthe beginnings of philosophical systems are.You made another observation that as we went alongthat there was a dichotomy that took place between themind and the senses – that the mind became the classicaltradition and the senses became the folk tradition. Iam not sure whether, as they say in America, I buy thatargument or that historical perspective at all becausemy understanding of this tradition is – for whatever itis worth, I may be wrong in many ways and tomorrowmorning I might have another view and have anotherinsight. At the moment, I think that this traditioncelebrates the senses in a manner, which very few othersdo, and I use the word celebration with purpose. Becauseif it did not see the interrelationship of the senses andmind and soul, three-fourths of the literature of thiscountry would have to be put down in the well. I amnot talking about Khajuraho – and that there is only aminor philosophical stream that is negating the senses,either negating the senses or subordinating the senses.Look at the whole of the Buddhist tradition; please readthe Abhidharma Kosa; look at the vajrayana tradition; lookat what metaphors are used for the concepts of upayaand prajna. Look at the Jain tradition and you will findthat at no time is this aspect of the relationship of themotor and the sensory, and the outer and the inner, isnegated in the tradition right up to the fifteenth century.And the two examples that I can give you of that issomething that I have studied for a few decades of mylife and in the work that I have done on the Gita Govinda.This is a post-Upanishadic twelfth century text. How doesthis text travel to all parts of India and receives thekind of dimensions and the purely metaphysical,theological, artistic levels? How is it possible for it totravel from Nepal to Kerala? Indeed it is not at the levelof what we call classical. In Kerala, I have recordingsof ten different types of singing the Gita Govinda andinterpretations of that, from the ambalavasis to the peoplesinging in the Guruvayoor temple. So for me, there isno classification of classical and folk.MDM: Yes, I see what you mean. But these socialcategories of hierarchy are not intrinsic to art formsthemselves.Kapila: Exactly, so that it becomes an outer sociologicalcategory rather than an artistic category. Therefore, wehave to find some other appellations and I accept thiscriticism but since now those books have gone into thehistorical mythology of writing, I cannot do anythingwith them – the Publications Division wanted to doanother edition, I suggested can we have another titleand gave them one or two but they said, No, no, Kapilaji,it is this book which has to be…Venu: You have rightly pointed out about certain kindof cultural dynamics, which is taking shape over thecenturies. If you look at recent works happening inthe South Asian cultural scene, it is no more a spacewhich colonial power occupies completely and wherethe colonised merely accept it. May be all South Asiantraditions which are closer to UK has also moved theUK cultural space in a different way. I am not sayingthere is an overwhelming work from South Asians inLondon, but sometimes it has also moved their culture;always there is borrowing and deeper encountersbetween cultures. May be it could happen even withour own folk traditions too, for example Kabir is a kindof summation of a long oral tradition at a certain pointin history. May be one should look closely at theperformances we had during the workshop. Thedistinction between classical and folk is too rigid or notuseful for our explorations. May be this kind of culturalencounter and borrowing takes place all the time; thenthe question is how do we account for that culturaldynamics in relation to certain concerns of folklore. Yourown work might have gone through meaningfultransformations in the last fourty years. Maybe youare looking at those works differently now. This kindof reflection happens after considerable amount of workdone by someone. If you could elaborate on what arethose present issues you are engaged in, which mayhelp young Indian folklorists also to have a meaningfulencounter in their researches?Kapila: In fact, if anyone has been reading my work, Ihave been trying to say that even though I happen tobe the unfortunate writer of the two books called IndianClassical Dance and Classical Dance in Indian Literature, Iquestion that categorisation now. That’s what my laterwork and all the volumes on culture and developmentshow – I have questioned this and as I said yesterdaythat margi and desi become merely categories of formwhich you see at a particular time and that these arenot sociological categories nor are they categories inwhich one text is being carried further. Therefore, yes,I used those words but remember that–Venu isabsolutely right–that one goes through differentjourneys and I would be hard put to find anotherappellation.I was saying that yes, I wrote Classical Indian Dance andIndian Classical Dance – a) perhaps it was not as much ofan awareness or call it a maturity, not that I am maturenow, but I think for lack of a better English word. Thisword classical and the word medieval are two major wordsthat we need to discuss and to find a viable workingINDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

REFLECTIONSEnglish word for it – just as we have had a problemwith folk because we are translating one reality intoanother reality. To take the argument of the absurdityof using the word classical – when it gets re-translatedinto at least Hindi or what we begin to call music orIndian music, one kind of Indian music, shastriya sangeet– now can you tell me of one single shastra in this countrywhich has got a category called shastriya sangeet. Yes, ofcourse, not only borrowings but the fact that we arehere together, each one of us will have acceptedsomething from the other which we may not consciously○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○Later on, when you look at it, thehierarchy of the senses in relation tothe mind became the social hierarchyand what are related to the mind,what uses the mind becomes theclassical and what is related to thesenses, what use the other sensesbecome the folk.○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○recognise at this time but which will filter into ourselves.Yesterday we saw the spectacular performance ofkalvelia–now this performance was her performance, itwas a performance which has been taken into a filmand it is a performance which is after her originalperformance had been taken into a film and re-presentedto you now. Can it ever be the same? It cannot be thesame and the nature of that influence, now one wouldhave to go in to it – was it in the costume? No. Was itin this, yes; was it in the way she took her chakkars or Iwas also trying to see here. And for me it was a greatlearning experience, it was not a response experienceat all, I mean, I responded negatively to the techniqueand so on, but it was a great academic experiencebecause I respond most negatively to the nature of bodylanguage I see on the TV today. I think that is pollutingto a point of… I mean, I am physically sick seeing thatsometimes.When I watched this yesterday I realised whatexaggeration of locomotion can do to bring about certainemotive responses and how this performer in herinnocence was using certain parts of the body inexaggeration but she was in control. And to me, thiswas a great discipline that even if by training my eyesand my spinal cord and everything else would tell methat I would rather not use these parts of my body orthese joints. But I was fascinated with the flexibility ofher pelvis and I realised that when those people ontelevision dance, they are unable to have either thisflexibility or the inner control which she was doing byplacing all weight on one foot. This has influencedand formed what we are today seeing as high mediaperformance.I cannot chart out, nor is it my business and I couldtake a project to chart out, how exactly this travellinghas taken place. I can identify what has happened tobhangra when I see some of Bollywood versions. Now,this is not only borrowing but a journey from what youwould call desa to the highly modern, because all thatwe call modern we call that contemporary, and someof it was also evident in the dancing of our owncolleagues and I as a technician of dance, watched theirmovements. When you transfer this situation from apurely agricultural society to decontextualised form ofappearance in urban India, something is happening tourban India but something is also happening to theperformers. Now these forms travel not only to London,or the carriers of these forms go to Silicon Valley – whereI stayed last year to teach a whole semester there –naturally they are affecting that and specially as far asUK is concerned, the situation in UK today is a differentsituation than in my student days.When I spoke about colonialism, I was talking about itin terms of dating, where we would put it in 1950 andcertainly not in 2001. Because the changes that havetaken place are not only very significant but the pace ofthat change is remarkable. I am in touch with a wholegroup of people who are dealing with south Asian artsin three major societies, Manchester, Sussex andLondon, and I know that some of these things arepermeating not only into what are known as SouthAsian or African communities in terms of ethnicity butinto mainstream Anglo-Saxon society. This is not so,surprisingly not so, in America.The question of folklore, now lets get to Eastern Europeand the Soviet Union because there it acquired a verydifferent meaning. It acquired a meaning because nowit was the nation state which wanted to, on the onehand, have a national dominant Russian stamp andthen there was the whole movement of a construct.Edward Said should look at what happened in the SovietUnion, because that construct was through theestablishment of folk dance ensembles and music andthe study of these communities while at the same timenot allowing them to use their own language, notallowing them to have that in their own homes. Whathas happened in Australia is a very different thing. Andin Australia, it is also different from central Australiathat is the whole of the Alice Springs, the desertaborigines from the northwest coast and in each time,interaction takes place.And you think that the coloniser was not affected byhis study in India – the British, you think they were,despite all official dictates and despotic orders to keepaway from natives and things like that, but whatpenetrated from India into Britain is as important aswhat Britain did to us. It may have done so in certainsections, not so in others, those are something that canbe discussed. So at no point can I say that there issomething as either insularity or purity despiteMuthukumaraswamy talking about my Benares and Ican tell you about ten different Benares’.59INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

REFLECTIONS60Let’s get to Kerala, you say the Namboodris and you saymy friends the Marars and the people of Paavakoothuand so on and so forth. I have to tell you one storybefore we end. You know the story about Paavakoothu,you know how they started to do the Ramayan and thetholpaavakoothu in Kerala? You have to hear this story –this will tell you all about classical and folk traditionsand it will tell you everything about borrowings. Thisis the most amazing story – you see, this Kali woman isvery strong; friendly but she is always having fightswith Siva or someone. Once she had a fight with Sivaand said, Look, I got left out – I hear there were a Ramayanthat took place and Ram fought with Sita and all this happened.Where was I? Siva said, you were busy fighting Darika andtherefore you missed out. And in the meantime all thisRamayan took place. She said, I have to see it, I have to seeit. Siva said, I can’t do anything for you. You can’t see it;but there can be a shadow, I can re-create a shadow for you.So then he re-creates and shadow is naturally intholpaavakoothu but where do we do this and with whattext. In malayalam there is no text, what to do? Sothey got hold of Kamban and they have the KambaRamayanam. But there is a whole solid indigenoustradition and what do we do with this and there is theDevi cult and so on and in between come Ram andVishnu, what to do? So he said since you are the personwho always wants all these things to see again and youhave all this sense and you want to gratify your desire.So what we will do is do it in the Kali temple. So nowlet’s interpret this - a) Kamban – high tradition, outsideKerala, Tamil – the purest Kamba Ramayanam just if it isrecited anywhere it is in the tholpaavakoothu and nowherein Tamil Nadu but, in Palakkad. So transfer takes place– they have to do an assimilation, what is the strategyof that assimilation – they have to give it sociologicallya lower position, therefore it is a non-Brahmin tradition– they assimilate it there. Then it gets assimilated andthen it travels. So in India there are so many ways ofthis legitimisation and borrowing but you have to finda raison d’etre for it, not to speak about whom the chakyarsare.MDM: A few remarks on Kamba Ramayanam andtholpaavakoothu of Kerala’s Palakkad district which StuartBlackburn recently studied. One of the things he studiedwas how the purity of the text by Kambanbeing retained in a culture outside TamilNadu. Western scholars interpret theretention of the pure text as an indication,of being unchanging society, or thechanges in the society take place only inthe periphery, that is why this cultureretained a pure text. Is this an observationby an outsider? The other question may be tangentiallyrelated to all the natural phenomena you see betweenman and nature and in their relationship, time seemsto be a major concern and is there any particularpreference for you to be meditating over time?Kapila: No, no, it is not my concern at all. But let’s talkabout this business of the text being fixed and if thetext is being fixed, therefore it is an unchanging society–Blackburn’s theory or his deductions by looking attholpaavakoothu, may I put a rhetorical question – thenis this unchanging society with four hundred andtwenty one recorded versions of the Ramayan. Thereforeyou say that in the tholpaavakoothu there is a fixed textand everything else, as one knows it, one has had thatperformance in different ways and long before theorisingon that began I published a book. The mere fact ofeither something being fixed for certain duration orunchanging or changing, does not therefore extend tothe society, that the society is therefore unchanging.When you look at the texts of Kathakali: some texts donot change, some others change. When you look atthe traditions of Ramayan, every text changes. You knowthat the work of Richard Schechner in terms of the TulsiRamayan, yes, it is and there is an invariant and, what Ihave been saying, there is a level of constant and thereis a level of variation. So far as time is concerned, andsince we are running out of time, I shall be very short –I can only say to you – Komalda has just left – whatwas he telling you when he said that there were thetwo calendars; what was he telling you when he saidthat he left the clock when he went to his village andthat he put on the clock when he went to the city; whatwas he telling you that she looked at the thithis and thesun and the moon and so on. It has come to me bylooking at the phenomenon and I realised that we wereon two different types of sense of time. I have justspoken to you about multiple languages and alternateknowledge systems, similar and basic to that, is thetwo fundamentals of the understanding of the spacetemporalreality or existence.Continuity is a beastly thing because it has also madeIndians inefficient in certain ways because they just donot know how to fall in to linear time and that there isa very different sense of time or that there is a doublesense of time that in fact we are moving by. And thatsense of time, I am concerned with that in terms of myunderstanding of what one would call the textualtradition; when I look at Sanskrit drama, when I lookat the Gita Govinda, when I look at literature till I cometo the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries where adefinite discontinuity and a change takes place. Whenthe novel comes into being and when even BankimChandra in Bengal comes into being – there is a definitediscontinuity that has taken place. And get in all thisthat you are looking at in the broad appellation offolklore I think that it is that other sense of time, ofrecurring time, of no time, of no beginning and no endtime. If it were not part and parcel of our living at somelevels, then I would not be talking about it, may be Iwould talk about it as a historical thing. But what arewe doing? You have legitimised that in your Diwalis,in your Holis, in your Pongals… and I am only bringingto your attention that. Alright, you do not want to metalk about time, in that case don’t talk about Pongal.INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

FOLKLORE READINGSFolklore readingsI. Folklore as Cultural Creation: Text, Tradition, Performance, Communication, Culture, History------ On PerformanceBauman, Richard ed., Verbal Art as Performance: Prospect Heights, Wave land Press, Illinois, 1977.Bauman, Richard, Story, Performance and Event: Contexual Studies of Oral Narrative, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,1986.Briggs, Charles L., Competence in Performance: The Creativity of Tradition in Mexicano Verbal Art, University of PennsylvaniaPress, Philadelphia, 1988.Degh, Linda, Folktales and Society: Story Telling in a Hungarian Peasant Community, Trans Emily M. Schossberger, IndianaUniversity Press, Philadelphia, 1982.Glassie, Henry, Passing the Time in Ballymenone: Culture and History of an Ulster Community, University of PennsylvaniaPress, Philadelphia, 1982.Hymes, Dell, Foundations in Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia,1974.Lord, Albert B., The Singer of Tales: Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass; 1960.Narayan, Kirin, Storytellers, Saints and Scoundrels: University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1989.------ On FieldworkAgee, James & Evans, Walker, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1960.Alver, Bente Gullveig, Creating the Source Through Folkloristic Fieldwork: A Personal Narrative, Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia,Helsinki, 1990.Briggs, Charles L., Learning How to Ask: A Socio linguistic Appraisal of the Role of the Interview in Social Science Research,Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986.Georges, Robert A. and Michael Owens Jones, People Studying People: The Human Element in Fieldwork, University ofCalifornia Press, Berkeley, 1980.Glassie, Henry, All Silver and No Brass: An Irish Christmas Mumming, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1975.Goldstein, Kenneth S., A Guide for Field Workers in Folklore: Folklore Associates, Hotboro, 1964.Ives, Edward D., The Tape Recorded Interview: A Manual for Fieldworkers in Folklore and Oral History, 2 nd ed. University ofTennessee Press, Austin, 1974.Jackson, Bruce, Fieldwork, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1987.Levi-Strauss, Claude, Tristes Tropiques, (trans) John and Doreen Weightman, Atheneum Press, New York, 1955.Lewis, Oscar, Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Cutlure of Poverty, Basic Books, New York, 1959.Lomax, John A., Adventures of a Ballad Hunter: MacMillan Publishers, 1971.Murphy, Michael J., Tyrone Folk Quest: Black Staff Press, Belfast, 1981.Synge, John Millington, The Aran Islands: John W. Luce, Boston, 1911.61------ On The IndividualAbrahams, Roger D., A Singer and Her Songs: Almeda Riddle’s Book of Bllads, Louisiana State University Press, BatonRouge, 1970.Azadovskii, M.K., A Siberian Tale Teller, Centre for Intercultural Studies in Folklore and Ethnomusicology, University of TexasPress, Austin.Cochran, Robert, Singing in Zion: Music and Song in the Life of on Arkansas family, 1999.Glassie, Henry, The Potters Art, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2000Ives, Edward D., Larry Gorman: The Man Who Made the Songs, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1964.Ives, Edward D., Lawrence Doyle: The Farmer Poet of Prince Edward Island: A Study in Local Song Making, University ofMaine Press, Orono, 1971.Ives, Edward D., Joe Scott: The Woodsman Song Maker, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1978.Jones, Michael Owen, Craftsman of the Cumberlands: Tradition and Creativity, University Press of Kentucky, Lexington,1975.Morton, Robin ed., Come Day, Go Day, God Send Sunday, Routledge & Kegun Paul, London, 1973.Oring, Elliot, The Jokes of Sigmund Frend: A Study in Humour and Jewish Identity, University of Pennsylvania Press,Philadelphia, 1984.Pearson, Bary Lee, Sounds So Good To Me: The Bluesman’s Story, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1984.Roberts, Leonard W, Up Cutshin and Down Greasy: Folkways of a Kentucky Mountain Family, University Press of Kentucky,1988Vlach, John Michael, Charleston Blacksmith: The Work of Philip Simmons, University of South Carolina Press, Columbia,1981.INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

FOLKLORE READINGSII. Folklore as a Political Stance and an Academic Act: Affirmation and Critique in Romanticism;Situation and Change in Disciplinary History.------ On FolkloreBausinger, Hermann, Folk Culture in a World of Technology (trans.) Elke Dettker, Indiana University Press, Bloomington,1990.Brunvand, Jan H., The Study of American Folklore, 3 rd ed. Norton, New York 1986.Dorson, Richard M, ed., Folklore and Folklife: University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1972.Dundes, Alan ed., The Study of Folklore, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1965.Dundes, Alan ed., International Folkloristics: Classic Contributions by the Founders of Folklore, Rowman & Little FieldPublishers Inc., Boston, 1999.Glassie, Henry, The Spirit of Folk Art: The Girard Collection at the Museum of International Folk Art, Museum of InternationalFolk Art, New York, 1989.Paredes, Americo & Bauman, Richard eds., Toward New Perspectives in Folklore: Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 84, 1971.Toelken, Barre, The Dynamics of Folklore, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1979.Sydow, Carl Wilhelm Von, Selected Papers on Folklore Published on the Occasion of His 70 th Birthday, Rosenkilde and Bagger,Copenhagen, 1948.62------ On History of the fieldBronner, Simon J., American Folklore Studies: An Intellectual History, 1986.Brown, Marry E., Burns and Tradition: University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1984.Cocchiara, Giuseppe, The History of Folklore in Europe: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, Philadelphia, 1971.Dorson, Richard M., The British Folklorists: A History, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1968.Dow James R. & Lixfeld, Hannjost, German Volkskunde: A Decade of Theoretic Confrontation, Debate and Reorientation(1967-77), Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1985.Gillespie, Angus K., Folklorist of the Coal Fields: George Korson’s Life and work, Pennsylvania State University Press,Philadelphia, 1980.Goldschmidt, Walter ed., The Anthropology of Franz Boas: Essays on the Centennial of his birth, 1959, American AnthropologicalSociety, San Francisco, Ca, 1969Holbek, Bengt, Interpretation of Fairy Tales: Danish Folklore in a European Perspective, Suomalainan Tiedeakatemia, Helsinki,1987.Nowry, Laurence, Marius Barbeau: A Biography, Canadion Museum of Civilization, 1998Thompson, Stith and John H., McDowell (ed.), A Folklorist’s Progress: Reflections of a Scholar’s Life, Indiana UniversityPress, Bloomington, 1997Whisnant, David E., All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region, University of North CarolinaPress, Chapel Hill, 1986Wilson, william A., Folklore and Nationalism in Modern Finland, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1976.Wilgus, Donald K., Anglo American Folk Song Scholarship Since 1898: Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, 1959.Zumwalt, Rosemary Levy, American Folklore Scholarship: A Dialogue of Dissent, Indiana University Press, Bloomington,1988.III. Form and Meaning: Structure------ On StructureAarne, Anti and Thompson Stith, Types of the Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography, Folklore Fellows CommunicationNo.184, Helsinki, 1961.Dundes, Alan, Morphology of North American Indian Folktales, Academia Scientiarum Fennica, Helsinki, 1964.Glassie, Henry, Folk Housing in Middle Virginia: A Structural Analysis of Historic Artifacts, University of Tennessee Press,Knoxville, 1976.Hansen, William F., The Conference Sequence: Patterned narration and narrative inconsistency in the Odyssey, University ofCarolina Press.Levi-Strauss, Claude, The Raw and the Cooked: Introduction to a Science of Mythology 1983, University of Chicago Press,Chicago, 1993Levi-Strauss, Claude, The Way of the Masks (trans.) Sylvia Modelski Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1982.Levi-Strauss, Claude, The Story of Lynx (trans.) Catherine Tihanyi, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1995.Propp, Vladimir, The Morphology of the Folktale, (trans.) Laurence Scott, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1968.Rosenberg, Bruce A, The Art of the American Folk Preacher, Oxford University Press, 1980INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

FOLKLORE READINGSIV. Form and Meaning: Genre------ On GenreBen-Amos, Dan, ed., Folklore Genres: University of Texas Press, Austin, 1976.Finnegan, Ruth, Oral Literature in Africa, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1970.Haring, Lee, Verbal Arts in Madagaskar: Performance in Historical Perspective, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia,1992.Sokolov, Y.M., Russian Folklore (trans.) Catherine Smith: Macmillan Co., New York, 1950.------ On Oral LiteratureAncelet, Barry Jean, Cajun and Creole Folktales: The French Oral Tradition of South Louisiana, 1994.Bauman, Richard, Story Performance and Event: Contexual Studies of Oral Narrative, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,1986.Boas, Franz, Tsimshian Mythology 31 st Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology: Govt. Printing Office, Washington,1916.Child, Francis James, The English and Scottish Popular Ballards 5 vols.: Cooper Square Publishers, New York, 1962.Crowley, Daniel J., I Could Talk Old Story Good: Creativity in Bahamian Folklore, University of California Press, Berkeley,1966.Degh, Linda, Narratives in Society: A Performer Centered Study of Narration, Suomalainen Tiedekatemia, Helsinki, 1995.Dundes, Alan, Sacred Narratives: Readings in the Theory of Myth, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1984.Holbek, Bengt, The Interpretation of Fairy Tales: Danish Folklore in a European Perspective, Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia,1987.Hymes, Dell, In Vain I Tried to Tell You: Essays in Native American Ethnopoetics, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia,1977.Jacobs, Melville, The Content and Style of an Oral Literature: University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1959.Seitel, Peter, See So That We May See: Performances and Interpretations of Traditional Tales from Tanzania, Indiana UniversityPress, Bloomington, 1980.Thompson, Stith, The Folktale: University of California Press, Berkeley, 1977.Wilgus, Donald K., Anglo-American Folksong Scholarship Since 1898: Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, 1959.Yeats, William Buttler, The Celtic Twilight: Maunsel, Dublin, 1902.63------ On Material CultureBascom, William, African Art in Cultural Perspective: An Introduction, W.W. Norton, New York, 1973.Briggs, Charles L., The Wood Carvers of Cordova, New Mexico: Social Dimensions of an Artistic Revival, University ofTennessee Press, Knoxville, 1980.Bunzel, Ruth L., The Pueblo Potter: A Study of Creative Imagination in Primitive Art, Dover, New York, 1972.Burrison, John A., Brothers in Clay: The Story of Georgia Folk Pottery, University of Georgia Press, Athens, 1983.Evans, E. Estyn, Irish Folk Ways, Devin Adir, New York, 1957.Ferris, William, Local Color: A Sense of Place in Folk Art, Mc Graw Hill, New York, 1982.Fry, Gladys-Marie, Stitched From the Soul: Slave Quilts from the Ante-Bellum South, Dulton Studio and Museum of AmericanFolk Art, New York, 1990.Glassie, Henry, Turkish Traditional Art Today, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1993.Glassie, Henry, Art and Life in Bangladesh, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1997.Glassie, Henry, Material Cutlure, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1999.Levi-Strauss, Claude, The Way of the Masks, Trans Sylvia Modelski: University of Washington Press, Sseattle, 1982.Newall, Venetia, An Egg at Easter: A Folklore Study, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1989.Rinzler, Ralph and Sayers, Robert, The Meaders Family: North Georgia Potters, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, 1980.Roberts, Warren E., View Points on Folklife: Looking at the Overlooked, UMI Press, Ann Arbor, 1988.St. George and Robert Blair ed., Mateiral Life in America 1680-1860: Northeastern University Press, Boston, 1988.Sweezy, Nancy, Raised in Clay: The Southern Pottery Traditon, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, 1984.Upton, Dell and John, Michel Vlach eds., Common Places: Reading in American Vernacular Architecture, University ofGeorgia Press, Athens, 1986.Zug, Charles G. III, Turners and Burners: The Folk Potters of North Carolina, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill,1986.[The remaining part of Folklore Readings will be published in the next issue (July 2001) of Indian Folklife......Editor]INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001

64Printed and published by M.D. Muthukumaraswamy for NFSC, # 7, Fifth Cross Street, Velachery,Chennai 600 042, Ph: 044-2448589,Telefax: 044-2450553, E-mail: info@indianfolklore.org (For free private circulation only)Printed at Nagaraj and Company Pvt. Ltd., #153, Kalki Krishnamurthy Salai, Thiruvanmiyur, Chennai 600 041.INDIAN FOLKLIFE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 5 APRIL 2001