Paper short abstract:

The paper analyzes the traditional funeral dance of the Lanjia Saoras, an indigenous group of Osidha (India). Deprived of its original religious significance, this performance has now become a mediatic means through which emphasize the vanishing identity of a marginalized tribe.

Paper long abstract:

This article documents a case of shamanic possession during a funeral ritual among the Lanjia Saoras of Odisha (dist. Rayagada). The approach is both ethnographic and linguistic as we introduce the translation (from Sora, Munda family group) of a traditional liturgy and a dialogue with the spirits aimed at reconnecting the community with the ancestral land. The funeral dance, a kind of itinerant procession covering the sacred sites of the village and its surroundings, consecrates the renewal of the alliance between the living and the dead. The article wants to highlight the contrast between the traditional ritual gestures and the contemporary performances held in occasion of the capital's tribal festival (Adivasi Mela), where these dances are repeated ad infinitum devoid of their original religious meaning. The funeral dance, proudly displayed in traditional costumes by indigenous delegations that come to the metropolis (Bhubaneswar), it is almost a cry of despair, a yearning for identity of an Adivasi culture that is now fastly disappearing.

Paper short abstract:

The paper looks at ways in which Goddess Durga and her festivals has been the focus to make connections between Adivasi and castes, Rajas and administrators, industrialists and migrants – bringing up material overlaps, i.e. the goddess in iron and earthen forms in a mining area.

Paper long abstract:

The paper looks at ways in which Goddess Durga and her festivals (primarily Durga Puja and Dasara) has been instrumental and has been used to make connections between various groups: Adivasi and first settlers, Rajas and administrators, industrialists and migrants - bringing up intriguing material overlaps, i.e. the goddess in iron and earthen forms in an area known for iron ore mining and its concomitant promises of development and threats to livelihoods.

Multiple manifestations of the goddess(es) are worship and help negotiating alliances as well as processes of localisation and resistance.

Paper short abstract:

Together with artists of the “indigenous” community of the Santal, I participated in the production of a music video album in India. Based on the example of a clip from the album I will show how, through this song, young listeners relive the very ambivalent meaningfulness of a village dance night.

Paper long abstract:

In the academic debate on the role of "indigenous media", authors primarily consider such media to be a means of fostering local traditions and values (see Wilson and Stewart 2008). I will acknowledge costumes, tunes and instruments such as the flute as popularized markers of Santal "tradition" in the song. I will show, moreover, that the effect of these "markers" of tradition mainly comes from the artists' distancing themselves from their own culture. I will then outline how the typified display of Santalness in the song is strongly connected with the clip's narrativity in the form of a jokey anthem. When indigenous pop songs are evaluated as producing mediatized versions of "indigenous culture", I will argue that the song can truly be part of a revitalization of Santal culture. Above all, however, the song is seen by its audience of young Santal people as a means of evoking the culturally specific emotions of joint village dances and their contiguous forms of romancing, which counter a conservative understanding of Santal values.

Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses indigenous documentation projects of the Bora Sambar region as local attempts of cultural connectivity. It also reflects on the role of the ethnographer’s involvement in fostering cultural connections through ethnography and mutual audio visual music productions.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates on the one hand 1) the role of audio visual production as indigenous empowerment through connectivity with mediums of power, such as video and audio and 2) the role of the author as musician herself who together with indigenous musicians produced audio recording for culture recognition and preservation projects.

The paper investigates the double process of documentation, engaged research and full participation in the audio visual music industry of contemporary India.

The data for the present study has been collected during a long term ethnomusicological fieldwork in rural and urban western Odisha, undertaken from

2002 to 2010. The aim of my investigations was to document and analyse the unknown and vulnerable musical and artistic traditions of marginalised musicians of the Bora Sambar region of western Odisha, especially of the so called "untouchable" Ganda village musicians and of various non-Brahmin priest-musicians of ambivalent

social status.

The data was collected within the context of an indigenous documentation which I combined with my understanding of sustainable documentation.

In my endeavour of sustainable documentation, I relied on the approach of

dialogical ethnography (Tedlock / Mannheim 1995; Bakhtin 1973; 1981). In

the first place, this meant the establishment of long-term relations with local

musicians. Recorded data was documented in collaboration with the musicians

and later mutually discussed and interpreted. The local musicians were

introduced to the techniques of audio-visual recording in order to pursue the

documentation of their musical culture on their own. Music was not regarded

as stable or "authentic", but as a transformative expression of culture. Thus,

musical and socio-cultural changes could be grasped throughout the years.