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.