Even as the dawn slips into Bengaluru’s Cubbon Park, the Bandstand swells with rich, bass folk songs. Amidst curious joggers and wide-eyed children, a small group of urbanites raise their collective voice to evoke ancient legends from far-away North Karnataka.
“Try to capture the nasal, gut intonations of the primal music,” instructs the lead singer, Shilpa Mudbi Kothakoota, to her earnest disciples. She then weaves them into the next song: Seeriya Thannire naariga udasire/Muthaidyar udi thumbyara (Come drape this woman with a sari/Married women fill her jholi) — her powerful, throaty, full voice floating above the trees.
Recently, they lent their songs to the protests against Citizens’ Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC). “We attended almost two to three protests every week,” explains Shilpa. For instance, they equated dictatorial leaders with Jamadagni, a legendary character, but also added songs of unity, such as Vaishnava Janato and Kabir ditties.
For quite a while now, Shilpa and her husband, Adithya have been part of the Urban Folk Project (UFP), which aims to collect, explore and transfer rural folk songs, mainly from regions around Belgaum, Mariyammahalli, Koppal, Gadag, Kokatnoor and Pattadakal into modern spaces.
Their quest began with an attempt to collect songs related to Yellammanata Devi, originally from Saundatto in Belgaum, but with the interwoven baggage of modern experiences, emotions and added stories from snaky modern streets.
They pioneered the UFP that aims to build bodies of rare, forgotten folk music in cities. Started in 2017, it soon became a vibrant, young and collective history of the state — one that tries to infuse ideas and traditions through space and time into songs, stories, myths and performances.
Do the ‘folk’ songs give flashes of inherited culture or personal history? Well, they are mutations of historical stories floating through urban time and space, she smiles. A mixture of laughter and intensity, Shilpa seems to be a foil to her more serious yet equally fun husband, Adithya.
Her interest in returning to her roots began when Shilpa discovered that she no longer wanted to be a filmmaker with the government, which turned out to be more propaganda and less documenting. She wandered back to her grandmother’s hometown, Bidar, and reached out to the Madigas, her Dalit caste. “Although I studied in an urban convent and was never aware of, nor voiced my caste, later, I did,” she muses. But while getting a handle on the subterranean caste conflicts of the modern world, she realised that like everything else, there has been a Sankritisation of the legend, with attempts to make Yellamma look like Goddess Lakshmi.
Shilpa wandered into the UFP in 2017. Her husband Adithya, a typical corporate employee, got hooked, melted and blended with her art. He is a complete representative of an urbanite, who comes from a space that he calls ‘sterile’.
Born and brought up in Bengaluru made him learn just a smattering of the language. “What I see on Facebook and Twitter is also an expression, a modern equivalent personal expression. But it is just an image or a persona, nothing primordial or basic like the folk expressions,” he adds.
How should they archive political, social and community history, what is the archiver’s choice for the form, and if things are not written down, then how are they remembered? These were their concerns, says Adithya.
“All the forms are sitting in a time capsule and might get lost if there are no efforts to revive them,” he adds. Shilpa admits that she connects better with their idioms and has reached out to a number of its communities, such as the Devadasi, Jogthi, Komati and Arya Vysya in the region. “It was not intentional, we just followed our ear,” says Adithya.
Breaking stereotypes
Yet, as much as they would like to go back to the original, there is no complete original, she adds. A myth travels through centuries across modern cities and frames everyday lives and experiences. But currently, they have temporarily stepped away from formal, ‘structured’ documentation. “I want to be a living archive, not just record but experience the songs,” says Shilpa. “Our attempt is to contact and I hope to transfer songs, not just document.” Her legend of Yellammanaata recounts the tale of how Renuka became the powerful Goddess Yellamma of the ‘lower’ caste Hindu, Devadasi and Jogathi communities. There are various versions of the story, tailormade to fit particular communities and most of them recount women’s problems. The goddess resonates with people on the street.
For Ratna, from a nearby resettlement colony, who is hurrying to nearby houses to finish her chores, the deities who are extolled are recognisable. “Yellamma is our native goddess. She is Durgamma, she is Laxmi, she is Yerini…” she says. “I love these songs, as they take me back to my own land and its culture.” The troupe has wandered into different folk shows — even getting invited by governments and institutions to perform in Cochin, Hyderabad and Mumbai.
“Every team takes up a version of its own, going back to its roots and ancestry. There is no question of evolution, in which you become something better than what you were,” explains Shilpa. So Durgamma, based on the goddess, is closer to the street. She wears kadas, payals and speaks like human beings. In every version, there is a different goddess. In one of them, Parashurama kills his mother, but later resurrects her, even though Renuka curses with all her lung power!
Improvisation is thus part of the entire performance. If a telephone rings, the actor would make changes in the subtext. During elections, Parashurama would vote! In one version, Renuka, mother of Parashurama, enacts giving birth, with a doll that ‘pops’ out, completely dressed, from her body. A bystander asked, ‘Renuka, is your womb a mandi market?’
Shilpa’s version is feminist, but to present it is not easy — it involves debates with her teachers; debates that can get emotionally draining and ugly. For instance, her teacher might consider Parshurama as God, while for her, he might only appear to be a spoilt brat. “Still, as an artiste, I have a right to move the story in the direction I feel it should,” she avers. “Especially since it is oral, not written.” She explains that she too is breaking stereotypes in her head, in order to come to a compromise, or create something real and ephemeral. This is especially because, with these songs, they are penetrating lives and mindspaces. “Even the folk artistes are rigid, with their own baggage of prejudices and stereotypes — as difficult to break as the rest.”