January 15, 2002
Rajasthani Folk Dance; Lest We Forget Pragya Paliwal Gaur*
Rajasthani folk music with its deep-rooted tradition has the potential to communicate far and wide. Rajasthani folk music groups in the last few decades have been appearing on the national and international arena. They have participated in the Festivals of India in France, Russia, America and Japan and made a deep impact on the international audience. Folk musician groups have performed at the Kennedy Center, Washington and at the Carnegie Hall, New York in America, at the South Hall in London, the Opera House in Paris and at the Kremlin Theatre in Moscow. At the national level too, the Rajasthani folk music gained in importance and there have been several live programmes in every cultural zone of the country with great success.
Two instruments- the Sindhi Sarangi and the Kamaicha are integral parts of the Rajasthani folk music. Their role is immense, not only from the viewpoint of their being good accompanying instruments but also due to their contribution towards the use of improvisatory techniques during the renderings of melodic or vocal compositions. As these instruments can render the folk melodies independently and with a variety of improvisations, they initiate and create a constant dialogue between the vocalists and instrumentalists.
Sindhi Sarangis are traditionally played by men of the Muslim community of Langas while the Kamaichas are tuned by the Manganiars, also a Muslim community inhabiting mostly the desert districts of Barmer and Jaisalmer in Rajasthan.
In the early seventies it was realised that this rich tradition was on the verge of being relegated to obscurity, their fate sealed and their contribution forgotten for posterity. The grim reality was that the instruments in the hands of musicians had already lived a life of at least for 100 years. Twenty-seven strings and guts stretched to full tension have been pulling at the old wooden bodies for long. Komal Kothari, a veteran folklorist, realised that these instruments had achieved enough age and there was a dire need to revitalise their tradition by making new instruments to keep them away from being pushed to oblivion or totally forgotten.
But the real problem was whether an expert carpenter could make an exact replica of the instrument that would serve the purpose of keeping the acoustics of the instrument intact. The answer was in the negative because these instruments could not be made by just any general craftsman. Such a work needed a basic understanding of musicology on one hand and technical knowledge about filming of different parts of a particular musical instrument on the other. Each instrument needed different treatment.
The search for a specialised craftsman started and Kothari came across Ridmal Khan Langa of Jodhpur district who belonged to a musician’s family but also had achieved proficiency in carpentry. A proposal was prepared and sent to the Sangeet Natak Academy, New Delhi which was accepted.The Academy desired to get a set of five instruments- Sindhi Sarangi, Gujratan Sarangi, Kamaicha, Surinda and Ravaj. The Academy provided funds to buy carpentry tools, wood and strings sand it also fixed the price for each instrument. All these instruments had one thing in common. They were all crafted out of a single block of wood. A lot of wood had to be scooped out off the block to form the belly, the neck and head. A certain proportion had to be maintained between different parts of the body of the instrument while carving it out from the wooden block. All measurements were derived from the human body i.e. the forearm (hath), the spread of palm (baint) and the fingers (anguls). When the body is ready, pegs are fixed on the neck and head of the instrument. The pegs governed the strings of the instrument. The bellies had mainly four shapes : Circular (Kamaicha), hourglass-shaped (Sarangi) long baul shaped (Chikara) and conical hourglass-shaped (Surinda).
Ridmal Khan did make all these instruments but he was an old and slow worker. Years rolled by and finally Ridmal expired. While he lived, he did make a good number of Sindhi Sarangis for individual Langas who had waited for long periods of time to get their instruments made.
Though an attempt was made to revive the tradition of making these instruments which had been lost for the last hundred years, this attempt was very small to accomplish the larger objective.
With this greater objective in mind, a project was prepared by Rupayan Sansthan for crafting 100 Sarangis and 100 Kamaichas. The cost for each instrument worked out to be around Rs. 5000. Hence the entire project was to cost ten lakh rupees. The National Folklore Support Centre Board gave a grant of Rs. 5,00,000 for half the work. Later the Sangeet Natak Academy, New Delhi provided Rs. 50,000 and the work started. A young person, Dhananjay Kumar, who had the latest manual and electric tools in his carpentry workshop took interest in the project. Alongwith a few accomplished instrumentalists of the Sarangi and Kamaichas he started the work together. The instrument- making process witnessed a metamorphosis. This time it was not an individual who was making an instrument but a whole team of people with different types of expertise. They used electric- powered tools to expedite jobs such as scooping out of wood from the logs, filing and polishing and making holes for pegs. During the process the drawbacks in the previous instruments were also taken care of and the instruments strengthened accordingly.
After having made 50 instruments successfully, they were handed over to young musicians at a grand function organised in Jaipur recently with a condition that none of the instruments would be sold or given away to museums or to art collectors. The entire venue of the ceremony echoed with the magnificent sound of all the 50 instruments being played at the same time.
This is how the efforts to revive the tradition of instruments-making went on. Kothari feels that once an adequate number of instruments is made, the major issue in future will be the transmission of folk musical tradition among the musicians. The older generation of folk musicians is getting older and the new generation is not finding an opportunity to acquire new instruments. If we do not want to lose the knowledge and expertise of older musicians it is the right time to enter into pedagogy of transmission of folk music traditions among the musicians of Rajasthan and keep the rich heritage alive for future generations. (Kerala Monitor.com) (PIBFeatures)
