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Paper short abstract:

I examine loss of song repertoire amongst the Kodava of South Indian in the late twentieth century, and a subsequent revival in recent years. I investigate the role of festival performance in this revival, and note that the 'burden' of maintenance is placed on particular groups amongst the Kodava.

Paper long abstract:

After recording Kodava songs in 2008, a singer turned to me. “This is our culture, for ourselves. Thank-you for being interested”. Dudikotpat (Dudi-beat-songs), the core male Kodava repertoire, are in no way secret, but projection through performance to a decontextualised audience is something that until recently has not been seriously considered, even rejected altogether. Many Kodava consider their music of little interest to others: their image, if it can be generalised, is of soldiers first, sports people second, and performers a somewhat distant non-place getter. A number of factors including increased affiliation to mainstream Hinduism, migration from the district, and the decline of traditional houses, prime loci of ancestral worship and animism, had resulted in a reduction of dudikotpat and its repertoires in the previous decades. Nevertheless, the last five years have seen revival, with Kodava returning with the purpose of learning repertoire from ageing relatives, the growth of more formal teaching at social institutions, increased dissemination of the songs through social media, and the instigation of competitive gala festivals. The latter are contentious from several perspectives, most notably for offering ‘performances’, and for who, amongst the Kodava, is represented, with a conflation in discourse of proficiency in traditional culture and ‘backwardness’. Moreover, performances in this context offer only fragments of more expansive songs and repertoire. It is unlikely that these will contribute much to averting loss of repertoire and a sense of ‘appropriateness’ of performance. Dudikotpat may still be songs they sing to themselves, about themselves, but incomplete ones.