5. Note to Self: What Marathi Kirtankars’ Notebooks Suggest about Literacy, Performance, and the Travelling Performer in Pre-Colonial Maharashtra

Novetzke, Christian Lee

doi:10.11647/obp.0062.05

Cited by 17 publications

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“…The local literary sources, such as kulavrittanta rely heavily on oral and aural traditions as the cursory study of these sources suggests. In his thesis on the Maharashtrian quotidian religious tradition based on aural literacy (Novetzke, 2007;Novetzke, 2015), Novetzke elaborates aural performative traditions as the background for Bhakti literature of the medieval period. Sahyadri Khanda and later regional texts in both Sanskrit and Marathi emerge as invaluable resources for the study of lesser-known deities and their aural traditions along the western coast of India.…”

Section: Creation Of a Local Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

Vocalizing the “Local”: Exploring the Cultural Milieu Along Coastal Maharashtra

Kale¹

2019

JCRS

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The return to the study of localized aspects of culture and tradition is unravelling the various layers of a regional cultural milieu in academic study. Following the vein of regional exploration, this paper explores the case of Konkan, along the west coast of India, for the vernacular religious traditions. The mythic hero Parshurama mentioned in the text of Sahyadri Khanda features as a prominent hero along the Konkan coast and numerous places and performative traditions have retained the mythical base of this narrative as a part of local history. Ritual significance of naming certain sites and the connection between temples and other archaeological material sources with a narrative thread form the crux of this discussion on local culture in Konkan. The aspect of orality in the narrative scheme is often overlooked in the study of regional culture, and this exploration makes a case for the interdisciplinary approach of textual sources, ethnographic and oral accounts along with the data pertaining to material culture in such a study. The paper offers an entry point into the examination of religious texts and local performative tradition hinged on narratives of space that have shaped the vernacular culture to this day. This exploration will offer a case-study for an interdisciplinary investigation into local cultures that in turn enrich the knowledge on popular socio-religious currents.

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Section: Creation Of a Local Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

Vocalizing the “Local”: Exploring the Cultural Milieu Along Coastal Maharashtra

Kale¹

2019

JCRS

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“…For Finnegan (2014), this approach is underpinned by technological determinism, and it fails to grasp the diversity of ways in which different communications technologies (speech, writing systems, print or digital) develop in different historical circumstances. More recent studies generally accept that most literary performance traditions develop out of patterns of interaction between written texts and oral performance, effectively collapsing the opposition between these two modes of creativity (Novetzke 2015;Widdess 2015). As the early twentieth century Uyghur scholar Mohammad Ali Damollah explains:…”

Section: Text and Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Text and Performance in the Hikmät of Khoja Ahmad Yasawi

Harris

2019

rastmd

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In this chapter I discuss an aspect of Uyghur religious practice, which is at the time of writing under severe threat in the Uyghur homeland. I trace the patterns of circulation of sung hikmät, considering the ways that these Turkic language prayers link the Uyghur communities of Xinjiang to other parts of the Turkic speaking world through the circulation of written and published texts. I draw on recent debates on the relationship between orality and literacy, and consider how they help us to think about hikmät as they were performed in ritual contexts in Uyghur communities until very recently. I argue that oral and textual traditions of hikmät interact constantly and closely, creating "feedback loops" of transmission and performance. This perception impels a reassessment of our assumptions around projects of canonization of Central Asian performance traditions.

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From Oral Tradition to Digital Archive: New Primary Sources for the Study of Baul Traditions

Lorea

2023

Journal of Hindu Studies

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Practitioners’ notebooks and personal letters are neglected items that deserve attention in the study of ritual and performance traditions, especially if these can be complemented with oral–aural sources. This article presents some features of an unexplored archive of new sources for the study of Baul songs and popular religious movements in Bengal by introducing and complementing the data contained in the digital archive called ‘Songs of the Old Madmen’ (EAP1247, British Library), comprising notebooks of Baul songs and correspondence between an influential Bengali guru and his disciple. I highlight three aspects. (i) The notebook as archive and metadata of Baul performances. (ii) Emic notions of authorship and cultural ownership. (iii) The contextualisation of the digital archive within the history of representation of the Baul tradition. Embedded in such context, this digital archive provides a nuanced and intimate picture where Baul practitioners emerge as neither the lonely minstrels lauded by Rabindranath Tagore, nor as the antinomian materialists portrayed in more recent scholarship on Bauls. Questioning the politics of cultural representation of digital archives, this article integrates oral histories and ethnographic sources collected during fieldwork in West Bengal that are inextricably part of the material digitised through remote capture.

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5. Note to Self: What Marathi Kirtankars’ Notebooks Suggest about Literacy, Performance, and the Travelling Performer in Pre-Colonial Maharashtra

Cited by 17 publications

References 0 publications

Vocalizing the “Local”: Exploring the Cultural Milieu Along Coastal Maharashtra

Vocalizing the “Local”: Exploring the Cultural Milieu Along Coastal Maharashtra

Text and Performance in the Hikmät of Khoja Ahmad Yasawi

From Oral Tradition to Digital Archive: New Primary Sources for the Study of Baul Traditions

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