Saving Torwali Music and Dance: Community Led Performance and ‘Public’ Archiving (original) (raw)

Reclaiming Culture Indigenous Performers Take Back Their Show

RESUME In August of 1982, theatre groups from around the world gathered in Peterborough, Ontario for the Indigenous People's Theatre Celebration. Some polarization developed, primarily between "culturalists" of the developed nations and the more politically involved groups of the Third World. The Celebration concluded with a concept of unity in diversity, and a recognition of the value of theatre in various forms as a means of combatting cultural genocide. En août de 1982, des troupes d'acteurs du monde entier se sont réunis à Peterborough, Ontario, pour le Festival du théâtre des peuples autochtones (Indigneous People's Theatre Celebration). Lors de cette rencontre, certaines différences d'opinion sont apparues, notamment entre les interprètes dits "culturalistes" du monde développé et les troupes politiquement engagées du Tiers-Monde. A la conclusion du festival, un esprit d'unité s'est quand même établi parmi les divers éléments de l&#3...

Indigenous protest as a performance genre

2015

When carrying out organized political protest, indigenous peoples around the world often perform traditional dance and music, as well as wear traditional attire. Rather than taking these performances for granted, as habitual acts of resistance, this paper examines the conditions of possibility that have enabled them and argues that such explicit, self-conscious cultural performance is a recent development enabled by contemporary globalization. More so, such performances have become a performance genre on their own right, a conventional style for the staging and reading of indigenous protest. Drawing from fieldwork research in the Ecuadorian highlands and aiming to provide a general theoretical framework, I examine the political work of indigenous protest as a performance genre that structures and is structured by the nature of audiences to which is geared and the alliances that it enables. From Mapuches in Chile to Kichwas in Ecuador to Siksika in Canada, indigenous peoples around t...

Beyond the Digital Memory: Folk Performances as 'Site of Mediation'

STOM: Kalabhivyakti Ka Maadhyam; Special Issue 2, 2024

The paper attempts to situate folk tradition in Nautanki performance through the legend of Reshma and Chuharmal, which is performed across Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The legend has many contestations and is performed in the folk ballad form of Nautanki named, "Rani Reshma, Chuharmal Ka Khela" every year in the Chaityamah (Bose, 1985). Among one of the versions, Chuharmal is a hero and god of the "lower castes" Dusadh community (Badri Narayan, 2003). Herein, the paper argues that with the idea of 'superfluous' narrative, myth and legends not only exchange information, but also carves out a memory of its own to life. It is argued that digital memory opens up a new ambit between tradition and technology by indicating a new performative domain of socialization, as it moves away from the notion that they are locked inside specific geography/regional topography. The legend of Reshma and Chuharmal on the one hand, explicates that a unified form of a folklore cannot be found in the same society; and on the other hand suggests, that as "site of mediation" they have a bearing of association, which is born out of a sense of-human beings as equal.

Choreographing the Self: Staged Folklore and Popular Music in Rural Tajikistan. Ethnomusicology Ireland, 5, 2017, pp. 75-100.

This article discusses the influence of staged folklore and popular music upon the musical life of a Central Asian rural community-that of the Dashtijum mountain valley in Tajikistan. I trace the musical history of the Dashtijumis across the late-Soviet and post-Soviet periods, following their experiences of migration away from and back to the mountains. In the process, I highlight how the cross-fertilization between grassroots musical practices, and staged and mediated traditional and popular musics, has offered a terrain for the articulation of collective identifications, memories and everyday lifeworlds among the Dashtijumis, illuminating more broadly their position and response vis-à-vis changing historical, technological and ideological frameworks.

A Meeting of Nations: Trans-Indigenous and Intercultural Interventions in Contemporary Indigenous Dance

Theatre Journal, 2015

Broome, northwestern Australia (1996-present). Together with Yawuru dancer and choreographer Dalisa Pigram, she leads the innovative, intercultural dance theatre company, which creates contemporary multimedia productions in remote Indigenous communities. She is also a founder and director of Stalker Theatre in Sydney (1989-2015). Her large-scale dance, circus, and multimedia productions have toured extensively, both nationally and internationally. She curates and facilitates practice-led research laboratories exploring new cultural pathways in the creation of contemporary intercultural and Indigenous dance and theatre, identifying new cultural dramaturgies in contemporary performance. She currently holds an Australian Research Council Early Career Researcher fellowship at Melbourne University.

Towards understanding the renewal of ancient song traditions through Garrwa video : an Indigenous story research study

Doctorate of Creative Arts (UTS), 2018

Indigenous knowledge journeys involve talk, story, song, dance, dream, being on country. But research carries a legacy of exploitation for oppressed peoples. Indigenous theories and methodologies open up decolonising ways to transform shared meaning making experiences (Smith 1999) (Sherwood 2010). This study explores cultural powers of Garrwa resurgence through story research renewal of Ngabaya and Darrbarrwarra traditions as music videos. Garrwa are under threat from mining in South West Gulf country, Northern Territory. This exegesis focuses on three spheres, sharing how vibrant cultural powers are intergenerational and interrelational, sourced in the Yigan (dreaming creation) and passed down through ancestors, Elders, family, clan (Hoosan 2018). It re-orientates Garrwa video practice into greater resonance with visual/aural sovereignty (Raheja 2010) (Behrendt 2016) and Indigenous storywork where interrelatedness is a “synergistic interaction between storyteller, listener, and story” (Archibald 2008:32). Yarnbar Jarngkurr is described by Elders as voices and stories that shape renewal of the relational world through song, dance, ceremony and ancient land practices (McDinny 2017). In transforming perceptions and understandings we must seek unity in meaning making (Van Leeuwen 2017). Yarnbar Jarngkurr is an Indigenous Theory of Transformation (Pihama 2018) and creative Indigenous methodology for visioning and enacting Garrwa self determination.

Performing Change on the Music Festival Stage: Indigenous Popular Music and Audience Engagement

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2022

Festivals have been credited with significant social effects: connecting people, developing audiences, linking emerging with established artists, even encouraging intercultural dialogue and participating in ongoing positive social change. At the same time, the concretization and commodification of Indigenous expressive culture is a risk in festivalized settings. Emerging from dialogue with Indigenous music industry professionals and musicians, this essay explores how music festivals that prioritize Indigenous leadership and attend to internally diverse audiences can strategically choose productive narratives for the groups they serve. While remote collaboration is not new, it became required during the COVID pandemic. With its focus on musician and audience development, the sākihiwē festival in Winnipeg, Canada demonstrates some of the ways in which First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and international Indigenous musicians are reaching audiences in challenging times. Possibilities for audience curation shift online, as do the tools available for listener engagement. Musicians continue to wrestle with questions of addressing stereotypes as well as how to inspire and educate audiences in a festival atmosphere. To these concerns, performers add the manner in which they work with streaming technology, develop professional mentorship with physically distant colleagues, and create connections with online listeners. As uncertainty continues around music festivals in the near future, this essay asks how possibilities are shifting around cultural and political change through music festival performance.