In his foreword to Kirin Narayan’s engaging study of traditional women singers of Kangra in the Western Himalayas, Philip Bohlman draws parallels between Todi, a wondrous and beguiling woman of divine creation, and her “earthly sisters”, the real-life characters who people Narayan’s book.
In Hindu mythology, Todi’s music is so enchanting that, when herds of deer hear it in the forest, they lose their way. Narayan’s book shows how the singing practices of Kangri women can also impact dramatically, bringing their lives joy, status, creativity and a meaningful coping mechanism for all kinds of adversity.
As Narayan explains, there is an obvious reason why many Kangri women empathise with the goddesses of Hindu myth: until comparatively recently, the suffix devi (meaning goddess) was routinely appended to the first names of Kangri women after they married. Consequently, the subtitle of Narayan’s book is accurate; not the stuff of mere flattery.
Early in the book, vivid descriptions of the physical geography, flora and cuisine of Kangra take us away from the rather dry heartland that can make other writers’ studies in ethnomusicology a little tough-going.
Recalling the rickety bus journey that first took her and her mother to a feast at an artists’ colony in the Kangra region in 1975, Narayan writes: “Suddenly, like spectres that might just be unusually-shaped clouds, we saw the Dhauladhar or ‘White Bearing’ mountains of the Western Himalayas. The wheat crop with spiky golden ears was almost ready for harvest, and wild pink roses and white-whorled jasmine bloomed along hedges.”
That same trip provided the half-American, half-Indian Narayan, then 15, with her first taste of traditional Kangri women’s singing. She immediately fell in love with it, and – drawing on the anthropology and folklore degree she later obtained – she has now been studying, recording and transcribing the different forms of Kangri song for more than 40 years.
Narayan notes that Kangri song enthusiasts describe their songs as pyara, meaning things that are both adorable and adored. “Singing, they insist, is a means to cultivate states of mind that might rise beyond the confinement of routines, disappointments and irrevocable events,” the author writes.
“Singing is so effective that one returns to it again and again.”
While anyone who has ever been part of a choir can likely vouch for the restorative power the author ascribes to singing, much of Narayan’s book is at pains to show how traditional Kangri women’s singing – with its close links to local flora, Hindu mythology, and the joys and travails of the gods, has other dimensions; further layers of meaning, value and resonance.
Janaka-devi, one of the elderly Kangri singers whom Narayan identifies only by their first names and “goddess” suffix, makes for a fascinating interviewee. For her – a woman “rigidly constrained by widowhood” and arthritis – traditional Kangri songs are a transporting boon when working or lying awake at night, and a way to “cultivate her dil”, to nourish her heart and mind.
We learn that the songs have countless other applications, whether social, personal or devotional. They accompany such diverse rites of passage as weddings and a boy’s first haircut. They are part of the rituals celebrating Krishna’s birthday.
The genre known as barsati or monsoon songs, meanwhile, dates from when rice was still grown in Kangra and women sang to distract themselves from the “backbreaking, bone-chilling” labour involved.
The section of the book which explores pakharu songs – the genre specifically sung for and by women experiencing difficulties in their married lives – is particularly fascinating, however.
“Pakharu idealise a woman’s relationships with her family of birth,” notes Narayan, “while a husband’s home is fraught with uncertainty: cruel mothers-in-law, tyrannical fathers-in-law, hostile sisters-in-law, dangerously seductive younger brothers-in-law, and husbands who may be absent, inattentive or abusive.”
As the author goes on to detail some of the horror stories circulating among her Kangri women interviewees – newborn baby girls being buried alive in a culture favouring male offspring; a mother-in-law who pressed her daughter-in-law’s hand against the griddle if she didn’t cook “properly” – one begins to understand the great value of Kangri women’s song, something which can offer solace; some kind of salve for great pain.
Not for nothing, it seems, are the greatest practitioners and repositories of Kangri song often women who have experienced great hardship. But as Urmilaji, a local woman whom Narayan describes as her friend and mentor notes, there is also strength to be drawn from Kangri songs which tell of the lives of Hindi gods and goddesses placed in earthly settings: “We are just humans, and when even Gods have problems we know that we can make our way through such [hard] times”, says Urmilaji. “Songs give us peacefulness. They are a way for us to gain support from Bhagavan.”
There seems to be limited solace to be gained from singing, though, when towards the end of the book Narayan tells of visiting the elderly woman Asha-devi, who has recently lost her sister Jaga-damba Mataji.
“Nobody asks about what goes on in old age/ Creator, what can we do about getting old?” begins the song that Asha-devi sings. “Skin dries out, leaving just bones/ Sleep doesn’t come through long nights.”
At one point Narayan writes: “As I prepared this book for publication, friends in Kangra marvelled, ‘How strange that people elsewhere will come to know of our songs just as they are being forgotten here’.”
She also notes that, in a country where half of the population is under the age of 26, the oral traditions of Kangra are under grave threat from more fashionable diversions such as social media, film and television.
Everyday Creativity – Singing Goddesses in the Himalayan Foothills is Narayan's passionate account of a dying oral tradition studded with meaning.
“Taking a seat inside the heart, songs can become a resource for living,” she notes. “I hope to have conveyed a little of the beauty, value and wisdom that [Kangri] singers perceive in them.” She can consider that box ticked.
James McNair also writes for Mojo magazine and The Independent.
