Project coordinator: prof. dr hab. Cezary Galewicz
Duration: 2024-
Supported by: ID UJ
In cooperation with: Institute of Indian Studies RUG Groningen and EFEO Pondichery
The aim of the Network is to support the launching of the project Voices from Deep South: The rise of Song Cultures of South Asia
Project offers a new perspective on the history of song performing cultures of South India in premodern and colonial contexts. It embraces voices of the folk and the literary with a focus on pāṭṭu songs of India's Deep South. More than a song, pāṭṭu stands for a multitude of interrelated constellations of song traditions - a galaxy of regional song cultures. Many feed on genres of epic dimensions. From songs of heroes and place through verses to awake a deity or activate a curse, to songs of ecstatic praise. Most embedded in recurring ritual events, linked to matrilineal order and performers of subaltern roots. Pāṭṭu invokes practices of deploying skills stored in songs to cure diseases, restore prosperity, empower listeners, or otherwise affect reality. the project will explore ways in which sonic ecumene of singing the local in shared imaginary of the South proved resilient over centuries and creatively embraced two languages of prestige: Tamil and Sanskrit. We will study ontologies of singing the body, the suffering and deliverance, the humane and divine, movement and restraint in this unique subaltern records. We aim at a new understanding of the processes of forging identities at the crossroad of the literary and folk by mapping genre distribution, narrative patterns, transmission modes and cultural economies while identifying key moments of historical change.
Links:
- Institutions
- Archives
- PANDIT, Prosopographical Database for Indic Text
- Pāṭṭu archive
- Transkribus
- Activities
- Other