Paper short abstract:

The Jhumur songs of the adivasi communities of eastern India exhibit a historicity , redefining santal identities through different moments and can be perceived as an ‘alternative archive’. The present effort traces the history of nature state and people through the adivasi songs composed in a given time.

Paper long abstract:

The present work traces the intricate connections between nature, state and property rights through an analysis of the Santali jhumur songs of the adivasis of eastern India,i.e. Bengal, Bihar , Jharkhand. These songs have been orally composed over a period of a century and a half, roughly beginning from the 19th century to the present day. The work tries to recontextualise adivasi identities from alternative archives as reflected in their folk music. . The idea is structured from ethnomusicology, but contrary to an anthropological study of a cultural text, the present work emphasizes on the temporal factor in spatial adivasi identities. The social and political realities like gender discrimination, poverty, displacement, private property and exploitation during the British colonial rule, flow with time through the adivasi songs. The songs memorialize personalities, moments of action as well as dissent. One can get the social ecology of mountains from the loud echo of the musical notes and the gradual transformation in the notes can also be traced in the changing patterns of the urban folk. Thus globalization and homogenization are forcing the songs to follow the present day system of global discourse and restructuring impulse and adivasi songs have become a commodity with proper packaging. This was not so before. In short, the adivasi songs are historical memories, which are more archival to reinvent their society or which can be situated in oppositional contexts in comparison to what we call 'the official state archive.'