Performers and Their Arts

Folk, Popular and Classical Genres in a Changing India

Simon Charsley, Laxmi N. Kadekar, Simon Charsley, Laxmi N. Kadekar

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000084184
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Artes escénicas

Introduction Part I: Caste, Community and performance

• A ritual performance of Kerala, Vayala Vasudevan Pillai

• The Patuas of Bengal, Makbul Islam

• Bards and goddesses: The Pombalas in Tirupati, Anand Akundy

• Explorations in the art forms of the Cindu madigas in Andhra, Y A Sudhakar Reddy and R R Harischandra

• Caste identity and performance in a fisher-village of Assam, Kishore Bhattacharjee

Part II: Performance Beyond Caste

• Telugu pady natakam in Andhra: Performance dynamics, P Subbachary

• Modernising tradition: The yaksagana in Karnataka, Guru Rao Bapat

• Kalarippayatt as aesthetics and the politics of invisibility in Kerala, P K Sasidharan

• India People's Theatre Association in colonial Andhra, V Ramakrishna

• Gaddar and the politics and pain of singing, D Venkat Rao

• Reviving moghal tamsa in Orissa, Sachi Mohanty

Part III: Classical Dance and its Successors

• New directions in Indian dance, Sunil Kothari

• Transpositions in kuchipudi dance, Aruna Bhikshu

• The impact of commercialization in dance, K Subadra Murthy

• Art addressing social problems, Ananda Shankar Jayant

Part I Performing and Caste: Introduction

The performers introduced in this first part of the book are appropriately termed ‘traditional’. They have their own particular interests and standpoints. They represent a range of possibilities from different regions: from Assam, Bengal, north and south Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala, as well as some settled in Delhi; however, they are all from castes—to use this term a little loosely— of distinctively low status. Three are officially ‘Scheduled Castes’, generally equated with the ‘Untouchables’ or the Dalits of today. With the notable exception of the Brahmins of Kuchipudi, featured in Part 3 on classical dance, this has been the typical position of performers belonging to groups defined, more or less exactly, by their inherited traditions of performance.

An important lesson to be learned from this section is demonstrated by two chapters, the first by Vayala Vasudevan Pillai on sarpam tullal from Kerala, and the second by Anand Akundy on bards in the goddess festival of Tirupati in southern Andhra Pradesh—i.e., the paradox of the prominence in religious performance of those who have otherwise been regarded as polluting and marginal to the society, often in some sense excluded from it.1 Low status and religious significance seem to have gone hand-in-hand. Whether this is something characteristic of the past and threatened by developments of the present, as Pillai suggests, or something that may be strengthening in the present, as Akundy suggests, is an issue that calls for further discussion. Both these chapters show performing roles being modified by their traditional artists, at least in part with advantage for themselves. In contrast, the chapter by Makbul Islam on the Patuas of Bengal reveals a performing art on the edge of extinction, having failed, in changing conditions, to find new patronage on a financially viable scale. Sadly, this represents the condition of many others across India as well.

Sudhakar Reddy and Harischandra, with their discussion of the Cindu performance of jamba puranam, represent performing that is steeped still more intensely in caste. This is a phenomenon strong in the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh in which particular groups service the identity interests of major castes through their performance. Madigas associated with leatherwork, Goudas with toddy tapping, Chakalis with washing, and Padmasalis with weaving are some communities which maintain such service-providers even today. The chapter is a careful analysis of aspects of the art of those who perform for the Madigas, one of the two main dalit groupings of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Their Cindu performers provide caste myths in costumed style, and are also drama performers of yakshagana for a wider section of society. (Chapter 8 in the following section discusses yakshagana in the rather different style in Karnataka.) The relationship of performer and patron in this case implies a strongly subaltern stance: its form is an assertion of the superiority of their patron caste of Dalits, superior even to Brahmins.

Kishore Bhattacharjee also deals with the construction of identity in subaltern spirit, but here it is through community performance rather than a specialised caste-based activity. The annual community festival in Assam analysed enacts the marriage of Krishna, the god of the village temple, with a girl of the main but low-status fisherman caste of the village, together with the conflict that surrounds such a union. On a miniature scale the festival constitutes a counter-cultural counterpart of the great and well-known Ramlila festival cycles of northern India with their interaction between gods and humans (see Schechner 1993: 131–83).

In the final chapter of this Part, Sadhana Naithani draws attention to at best limited support often exploitation and neglect of the interests for traditional performing artists. This is shown as continuing from colonial times through to the present. The perspective here is that of the national capital, New Delhi, and of performers settled there. It argues forcefully that merely supporting such performers as a category of the poor, as has been done, is ineffective: what they need for their arts and deserve for themselves is to be recognised as skilled artists in their own right and provided for as such.

The chapters bring out a further important characteristic—the link between the production of visual and dramatic art, a characteristic that was strong in the past but has been fading in modern conditions. The first chapter displays the most intimately linked form of this, in which performers are also creating pictures which then have a crucial part in the performance. Here the initial creation defines and sacralises the performance space, but is destined to be obliterated in the culmination of the performance.² The visual art and the performance become coterminous. The classical Kuchipudi repertoire has a dance which creates a picture in this way. In it the dancer’s foot movements on the ground could draw a lion, the mount of Goddess Kanaka Durga, while the dancer performs in her praise; or the drawing could be of a peacock or Lord Ganesha (Kothari and Pasricha 2001: 109–13). In the past this creation might also have been finally obliterated. As a slightly less organically integrated example, in Chapter 2 we see bards who also paint pictures which are used to focus attention on the stories that they narrate through their songs. In this they resemble the shadow puppeteers, practising one of the most ancient and memorable arts of India, and who have also created large sets of leather puppets required for their own performing repertoire (Nanjunda Rao 2000). In both these cases, declining patronage for the performing end of their arts has led many to try to make a living by specialising in crafts, and producing, for urban, middleclass markets and the tourist trade, pictures and decorative items which exploit their old themes, design skills and artistry. This increasing specialisation is not new: more ambitious scroll painting as a visual aid for bardic narrative has long been a speciality of painters from whom the performers commission their requirements. The often exuberant painted scenes and costumes in the Parsi theatre tradition from western India should also be noted for the blending of visual and performing arts into a unified experience. This is again exemplified with striking effect by the Surabhi companies in Andhra Pradesh (Sastry 1975), and to a lesser extent in the theatrical form discussed in the first chapter of Part 2. Across this whole field there are stylistic links declaring historical influences and divergences in the changing society of recent centuries.

Notes

1. 1. In the second chapter it is performers ambiguous in their Hindu/Muslim identity.
2. 2. For another example, see Zarrilli 1990.

References

• Kothari, Sunil and Avinash Pasricha. 2001. Kuchipudi. Indian Classical Dance Art. New Delhi: Abhinav Publications.
• Nanjunda Rao, M.S. 2000. Leather Puppetry in Karnataka. Bangalore: Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath.
• Schechner, Richard. 1993. ‘Striding Through the Cosmos: Movement, Belief, Politics, and Place in the Ramlila of Ramnagar’ in his The Future of Ritual. Writings on Culture and Performance. London, New York: Routledge.
• Sastry, P. Srirama. 1975. Surabhi Theatres. Hyderabad: AP Sangeeta Nataka Akademi.
• Zarrilli, Phillip B. 1990. ‘ Ayyappan tiyatta’ in Farley P. Richmond, Darius L. Swan and Phillip B. Zarilli (eds), Indian Theatre. Traditions of Performance, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, Chapter 5.

I Sarpam Tullal: A Ritualistic Performance of Kerala

Vayala Vasudevan Pillai

India is a country with innumerable forms of performing arts. A review of the vast panorama of our performing culture across the length and breadth of the country shows us an amazing number of well-known classical forms as well as uncountable lesser-known folk forms. These traditions, whether ‘great’ or ‘little’, have contributed significantly to the cultural identity, creativity and development of the nation. It is this creative life which gave Indian folk an alternative for social expression, found in their ecstatic body movements, their singing, their expression of colour combination and rhythm, their use of musical instruments, their creativity in modelling gods, demons and humans of their imagination and acquaintance, etc. All these were integrated into a wholesome way of life, not as a particular art form for a certain commercial purpose.

This way of life was also their worldview, which was a strong fortress against all foreign or alien invasions. Here the terms ‘foreign’ or ‘alien’ stand for the socio-cultural and political structures within the country which they were either unable to understand or which relegated them. Thus the folk living close to nature, following their instinctive ways in habitual conditions prescribed by the wild earth, sky and all other natural elements, were branded as untouchable, black, primitive and uncivilised. But studies have shown that there have been close networks of organic relationships among the artistic performances of these untouchables or outcastes all over India. They, in fact, have drawn on the rich traditions flowing from the Vedas, Upanishads, Ramayana, Mahabharata and other major traditions. It was a living tradition creative enough to hold the downtrodden communities together against oppression inflicted by the upper castes and against natural calamities. This tradition has survived through oral practices necessitated by their linguistic, ecological and agricultural conditions.¹ These folk forms, whether music, dance, sculpture, painting or modelling, have been a source of sustenance for the practitioners.

Traditional performances present a complex structure of meaning, which is multilayered and multifaceted. It cannot be explained away as simple, lucid, folk, etc. Far from being simple and narrow, it codifies a system of living which speaks of the performer’s link with many phenomena of life, both natural and created. It relates to their sense of independence, courage and readiness during an emergency and in the face of all sorts of onslaughts by forces superior to theirs. The energy created by these performances pervades the entire life system of belief, sacrifice, propitiation, fertility, longevity, salvation and liberation from the shackles of illness, drought, starvation and sin. Thus, a performance stands for a spiritual declaration of freedom and is, in a way, a rebirth for both the performer and the spectator.

These performances are classified as tribal, folk and classical depending upon the style, rules and the method of imparting instructions. But a closer analysis will show that all these are knowingly or unknowingly interrelated, and while maintaining their own social identity, have, over time, drawn on other forms for their own development. The issue to be considered today is how far these performers have been able to maintain their identity against the new trends in a changing society brought about by modernisation and globalisation.

An interesting aspect is that in spite of cultural conflicts at one level and unity in other spheres, the ‘low-caste’ performers played a significant role in the total structuring of Indian society and arts. In a way it is this ‘dark force’ as the primeval energy which invigorates India even today. That is why scholars like Kapila Vatsyayan endorse the organic link between the folk and the classical Sanskrit traditions:² ‘For a fuller understanding of the Indian artistic tradition one must remember that the evidence from all these sources of high classical literature bears testimony as much to a flourishing, collective, participative, tribal-rural-cultural as to a highly esoteric, closed, sophisticated culture’ (Vatsyayan 1977: 15–18).

The two go hand in hand, reinforcing and supplementing each other, rather than mutually negating. The performances of the ‘folk’ or the weaker sections were a source of education for their community. They used different means such as folktales, parables, proverbs, folklore, songs and a vast area of knowledge embedded in the oral tradition from time immemorial, thus unravelling the inner pattern and motive of Indian society.

The folk performances of India have been highly enriched by regional variations, and those from Kerala are no exception. Kerala has the oldest Sanskrit tradition of theatre-acting still preserved in the form of koodiyattam performed by the Chakiars, a t...