Kadiguang Panmei
Most traditional cultures and their folk music have a variety of accompanying musical instruments. The form, melody and function are indicative of that culture's technical and geographical ingenuity.
The Ruangmei Naga people are one of several tribes of the Naga people that inhabit Northeast…
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Kadiguang Panmei
Ruangmeis are one of the Naga tribes of India and are predominantly based in Tamenglong and Noney districts of Manipur and parts of Assam and Nagaland. The name Ruangmei means people from the south and is an indication of the direction they migrated to from their ancestral home of Makuilongdi.…
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Shweta Radhakrishnan
A Garhwali community radio station was a long-cherished dream in the region, kept alive and nurtured by a dedicated group of community members for over a decade. This dream was finally realised when Mandakini ki Awaaz began broadcasting on September 21, 2014.
Manvendra Negi and Devilal…
in Interview
Shweta Radhakrishnan
Madhuri was 13 years old when she first met the Mandakini radiowalahs (radio people), as they were called in her village. They were a small group of three people from the Mandakini ki Awaaz radio station who had come to her village, Pinglapani, to record content—songs, stories, jokes—for the…
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Shweta Radhakrishnan
‘Lyaava suna, suna meri baat, Mandakini ki awaaz, lyaava suna, suna meri baat, Mandakini ki awaaz’
(Let us listen, listen to what we have to say, the voice of the Mandakini, let us listen, listen to what we have to say, the voice of the Mandakini)
Every morning across the Mandakini river valley,…
in Overview
Shweta Radhakrishnan
Community radio is a broadcast medium operated ‘in the community, for the community, about the community and by the community’, as radio broadcaster from Philippines, Louise Tabing writes in the UNESCO-published How to Do Community Radio. More localised than state-owned and…
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Vishes Kothari
Following are samples and translations of different songs sung to various folk and ancestor deities across Rajasthan. These songs were collected over the years in the Thali-Shekhawati region of Rajasthan from a cross-section of communities. Performed by women, they form part of occasions such as…
in Video
Vishes Kothari
Ann Grodzins Gold has spent many years living and researching in Ghatiyali, a town in Tonk district, Rajasthan. Her fieldwork and writings concern diverse topics— pilgrimage, women’s rituals and expressive traditions, environmental history, and most recently landscape and identity in a…
in Interview
Vishes Kothari
What is 'folk' about 'folk gods and goddesses'? What makes them 'folk'? Remember what I had said about Pabuji—he is no great god in the Hindu pantheon, but a bhomiya god who has the power to intervene in the problems of everyday life, faced by nomadic communities like the Rabari of Rajasthan….…
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Vishes Kothari
Women’s voices in South Asian history can be hard to come by. Even when written genealogies and histories, epics and religious treatises mention women, they treat them as ‘subjects’ or plot devices furthering male narratives. If one turns to oral traditions, however, one finds abundant presence of…
in Overview