Relocating Assamese Folklore In contemporary cultural landscape: A study of Dr Bhupen Hazarika's Aert of Music CamScanner 01 18 2022 12. (original) (raw)
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Goalpariya music is a genre of folk music sung primarily by women. Common among the rural labouring classes, the songs deal with women's desires, emotions, sensuality, and longings. Since the 1950s, major transformations have emerged within the performative space of the folk tradition, especially with the coming of Pratima Barua Pandey into this field. From an original mundane setting, Goalpariya music has now moved to an international musical performance context. This article explores this transition of the music from the 'common folk' to a 'respectable' platform. The article analyses how folk traditions may undergo a range of shifts to adapt to various social, economic, and cultural forces. Paradoxically, these transformations also lead to the emergence of a politics of authenticity, leading to a questioning of the concepts of tradition, authenticity, and cultural purity. The findings of this study are the outcome of fieldwork conducted in Gauripur and Guwahati in Assam, India.
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The folk songs of Assam are mainly associated with rites and rituals; these folk songs reflect the livelihood of the Assamese community. The songs are related to Shitala Puja, Koli burhi nritya, Gopini naam, biya naam and Bihu geet, which have a unique position in traditional singing among the Assamese community. Sitala is a folk goddess and it is believed that she has is an intimidating presence who distributes infected pulses in village markets, or sends hordes of disease-demons, thus causing outbreaks of smallpox and other contagious illnesses. Only when properly worshipped she agrees to heal her victims (Ferrari 2015:2). The women sing Aai Naam to please the Goddess Shitala as she is described as the deification of smallpox. Koli burhi nritya is associated with Magh Bihu, which is a post-harvest festival, held in January. Koli burhi is an Assamese term, which means a black woman. Women put the burning banana leaves on their bodies and sing the song which is known as Koli burhi nrityar geet(the songs of black women). It is believed that burning banana leaves removes all the obstacles from their life. Durga Puja is a famous festival held in India and during this puja (The English term of puja is ritual) the Assamese women sing Gopini Naam to please the Goddess Bhagavati or Kamakhya (a form of Goddess Durga). Songs related to marriage are also very significant among the Assamese community, and these marriage songs are known as Biya naam. The song related to Bihu, which is the main harvest festival of Assam, held in mid-April, is known as Bihu geet. Merriment, love and sad these feelings are described through these Bihu geet. In this paper, an attempt has been made to highlight the traditional singing that is related to rituals among the communities of Assam, India.
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Popular singer-songwriter-composer Bhupen Hazarika has exerted enormous influence in shaping the aesthetics of contemporary Assamese popular music. As an artiste and public intellectual who often engaged with contemporary political questions, his songs have come to be regarded as a distilled expression of Assamese linguistic-national identity in postcolonial India. This paper deals with his entry into the Hindi music market in the mid-1990s, with songs for films and two music albums. Specifically, it maps the transformation of the Bhupen persona through this period as a conjuncture overdetermined by two relatively autonomous logics-first, the emerging cassette culture of the 1980s and its effects on the market for popular music; and second, the articulation of linguistic national identity in the wake of the Assam Movement (1979-85). The paper begins by showing how Bhupen's foray into Hindi music tied together the economics of bringing a regional star into the Hindi market with the ongoing reconstitution of linguistic-national identity in the post-liberalisation Indian ideology. Then, through a reading of his live performances and the Bhupen-related fan literature appearing at the time, it looks at how these ventures came to be seen by his Assamese fans, to argue that the Bhupen persona here becomes an ambivalent figure through which the internal schisms within Assamese national identity came to be articulated.
Transstellar Journals, 2019
Folk literature has come to be identified as one of the priceless resources of an indigenous community. Folk literature not only reflects but also carries special characteristics peculiar to a respective indigenous community which bears its witness since the time it has displayed its existence. In this context, Assamese Marriage songs are one type of Folk literature which falls into this mentioned description. These folk songs are called Marriage songs as they are sung or played only on occasions of marriage ceremony. It is noteworthy to mention here that there is no any specific writer of the Marriage songs. Rather it is the reflection of collective emotions as well as the collective consciousness of Assamese people surfacing as or in the form of oral literature. Like oral literature, these Marriage songs are transmitted from generation to generation. However, as these marriage songs which is used to be oral has found its written form in the recent times. So we definitely get to understand how Assamese Marriage songs' covers a broad area of study and can be relevant as a significant area of research analysis. Therefore, an attempt has been made to discover the different facets of Assamese Marriage songs which forms the basic objective of this paper titled "Mirroring the socio-cultural Ethos of Assamese life: A Critical Reading with Special Reference to Assamese Marriage Songs". The study also aims to find how Assamese Marriage songs reflect and represent Assamese socio-cultural life. One important point to be mentioned here is that Marriage songs are widely in use by various indigenous communities of Assam. But keeping in relevance to the present analysis, we just try to cover and discuss the current or prevalent Marriage songs within the sphere of Assamese language and aspects.
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