Changing Status in India's Marginal Music Communities

Abstract

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 Courtesan Project and the Tawa’ifs’ Cultural Commons

“…According to Bertacchini et al (2012, p. 6), the community is constructed "upon an identity and symbolic dimension" and determined by the level of interaction among the members and their participation rate in the production process. In India, a hereditary performing community's identity and resultant social status are determined by their association with the genre of performing arts (Booth, 1997;Sherinian, 2009). Although Bertacchini et al (2012) recognize 'identity' as an essential component in community formation originating from individual or group dynamics, they do not discuss how the social perception of arts impacts the creation of a common identity and the production of cultural commons for a traditional performing community.…”