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The renegotiation of the performance of an instrument or genre associated with pollution or a degraded social status has been a significant theme in recent ethnomusicological literature on marginalized Indian music communities. These communities include Dalits (outcastes), lower castes, devadasis (hereditary temple dancers), women, and rural poor. Through a review of this literature and film production, I describe four positions taken by these communities and the impact on performance that these changes have brought: (i) discontinuance and rejection, (ii) replacement, (iii) maintenance of performance, yet rejection of caste or community duties, and (iv) reclamation of the music and identity as creditable.

The performance of the folk paṟai frame drum of South India is a site of religious encounter that syncretizes symbols and practices from Hinduism, Christianity, Tamil agricultural life, and Dalit liberation movements. This essay analyzes three cases of religious syncretism and indigenization of Christianity to Tamil village culture that transform the meaning of this drum from polluted to a sonic tool of liberation against caste oppression.

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