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.