KERALA: (Inde du Sud/South India). Le chant des Pulluvan/Pulluvan Songs (review)

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1 KERALA: (Inde du Sud/South India). Le chant des Pulluvan/Pulluvan Songs (review) Joseph J. Palackal Asian Music, Volume 37, Number 2, Summer/Fall 2006, pp (Review) Published by University of Texas Press DOI: For additional information about this article Access provided by Kathmandu Model College (5 Feb :25 GMT)

2 Reviews 161 become an indigenous religion in India? An alternative question might be: Through which cultural lenses has Christianity been practiced in India for close to 2,000 years? This recording points to the answer that like all religions, Christianity in India has been in constant flux, integrating and reacting to cultural and historical processes of culture contact and its accompanying power dynamics. This important collection reflects the history of a multicultural Christianity in Kerala and should be of significant appeal to those interested in early Christian music, Middle Eastern and Orthodox sects (particularly pre-maqam practices), as well as those wanting to diversify their collections of music from India. Zoe Sherinian University of Oklahoma Notes 1For a brief, yet thorough history of Christianity in Kerala, see Corrine Dempsey (2001). 2Palackal invites further comparison of these examples to Western chant melodies. References Dempsey, Corrine 2001 Kerala Christian Sainthood: Collisions of Culture and Worldview in South India. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Palackal, Joseph J Puthen Pana: A Musical Study. Master s thesis, Hunter College, City University of New York. KERALA: (Inde de Sud/South India). Le chant des Pulluvan/Pulluvan Songs. Recordings and notes by Laurent Aubert in collaboration with Ravi Gopalan Nair. AIMP LXXIII, Archives internationales de musique populaire Musée de ethnographie, Geneva, VDE CD-1147, One audio CD, 64 41, 36 pp. of notes in French and English (general notes, track notes), 8 photos. With this CD, Laurent Aubert has drawn attention to a rather complex musical system that lies outside the realm of the much-studied classical traditions of Kerala, a culturally diverse region on the southwest coast of India. The performers are known as Puḷḷuvan and their songs as Puḷḷuvan pāṭṭu (Malayalam, song of Puḷḷuvan ). The Puḷḷuvan are family ensembles of itinerant bards. Their performances combine religious myths and rituals with melody, melodic and

3 162 Asian Music: Summer/Fall 2006 rhythmic instrumental accompaniment, visual and decorative arts, and body movements. The Puḷḷuvan sing to propitiate the serpent-gods, ward off evil, and invoke divine blessings on their patrons. One of the rituals is called pāmpin tuḷḷal ( trembling of snakes ), which is associated mostly with small neighborhood shrines or temples dedicated to the serpent-god. The ritual is preceded by the ceremonial selection of a space made sacred for the occasion, the erection of a temporary pavilion (pandal) decorated with tender palm leaves, and drawing of snake-images with multicolored powder on the ground. During the ceremony young virgins, entranced by the haunting melodies and repeated rhythmic patterns, allow themselves to be possessed by the snake spirits, and tremble and gyrate their bodies simulating the movement of snakes. The Puḷḷuvan accompany themselves on the musical instruments: vīṇa, a single-stringed fiddle with or without bells attached; kuṭam, a clay pot that has a truncated base covered with cowhide connected to a variable tension monochord; and kaymaṇi, a pair of small cymbals. The names of the first two instruments are often referred to as Puḷḷuvan vīṇa and Puḷḷuvan kuṭam to distinguish them from their usage in other contexts. For example, kuṭam, a clay pot used to fetch and store water, is called ghaṭam when used as a percussion instrument in Karnatak classical music, and vīṇa is a long-necked, fretted lute in the classical tradition. To the Puḷḷuvan, the musical instruments are much more than sound-and rhythm-producing mechanisms; they are a living link in the reenactment of myths that connect to stories as old as the Mahābhārata (first millennium BCE). The CD is an excellent introduction to the Puḷḷuvan s repertoire. There are nine tracks recorded between on different occasions at various locations. The recording quality is excellent, and the vocal and instrumental sonorities are distinct. The thirty-six page booklet in French with English translation provides information on the Puḷḷuvan and their music, the ritual of the serpentgods, the performers, and their musical instruments. The notes on individual tracks include a description of song themes. Since music is only a part of the Puḷḷuvan s art, the booklet includes eight excellent photographs to help listeners relate to some of the more visual aspects of the performance. The selection of tracks offers an encompassing sound image of Puḷḷuvan music, while highlighting the individual qualities of the performers (28). The inclusion of performers from four different family ensembles helps to experience male and female inflections and a variety of performance styles in the repertoire. The themes range from praises of popular Hindu gods like Shiva (track 1) and Ganapati (track 4), to a song to invoke blessings on Aubert (track 9). Aubert acknowledges the limitations in the scholarly presentation of the repertoire because, among other things, the Puḷḷuvan do not agree on the names

4 Reviews 163 of various rhythmic patterns or on the descriptions of the melodic structure (24). The difficulty lies partly in representing polysemic words that have specific connotations attributed arbitrarily by the practitioners of a particular tradition. One such term is rūpam, which literally means image, form, figure, and more. Aubert has attempted to translate rūpam as scale. However, the configuration of pitches and ordering of intervals are the least important factors in the conceptualization of rūpam. Rather, the term stands for an aggregate effect created by text, melody, rhythmic patterns, and vocal and instrumental sonorities in correspondence with the multicolored images (rūpam) of different kinds of serpents drawn on the ritual space(kaḷam). What is significant here is that the Puḷḷuvan have appropriated a word from common parlance that has no musical connotations outside of their community. The term tāḷam, which is understood as metric cycle centered on a specific number of beats and accents in Indian classical music theory, may not be applicable in all instances to Puḷḷuvan songs. Track 6 is a case in point. The singing is accompanied by a single beat played repeatedly on kuṭam; the treatment of the song-text is independent of the steady beat. Yet, Aubert describes the application of rhythm in this track as tāḷam: 1 beat (slow isochronal pulsation). A single-beat tāḷam will be like a single-note rāgam; in Indian classical music theory, both are inconceivable. The Puḷḷuvan s use of the term keṭṭu kavita (track 8), which literally means tied or woven poems, deserves more attention. Aubert has translated the phrase as improvised poem. The act of tying or weaving (keṭṭu) songs is a compositional technique that the Puḷḷuvan and other Kerala singers of folk songs apply in the context of performance (see Groesbeck and Palackal 2000, ). It is a creative process in which the singers depart from the established sequence of lyrics of a particular song and either compose verses instantly or combine distiches from other songs that are relevant to the context, without changing the melody or the rhythmic structure. Track 9 is another example of the use of this technique. It contains a song to avert evil effects of serpents and usher in blessings on the patron. In this case, the song was sung as requested by Aubert. The song begins with Aubert s first name, Laurent, pronounced as Lawrence. The singer prays for, among other things, a plentiful harvest of paddy. Obviously, the singer used an existing song from his repertoire and added Aubert s name. Track 6, mentioned earlier, is interesting for its particular use of vīṇa. In other tracks vīṇa follows the vocal melody. In this track, after a melodic introduction (1 23 ), the vīṇa takes the role of a drone instrument by continuously providing an ornamented reference pitch, the final note on which melodic phrases end. The booklet does not include a bibliography; interested listeners can enrich

5 164 Asian Music: Summer/Fall 2006 their knowledge by reading Aubert s own book (2004), which includes about 100 pages on the ritual of the trembling of snakes. Another forthcoming publication by Christine Guillebaud deals with various aspects of Puḷḷuvan songs. This book will be particularly useful because it includes a DVD in which songs are depicted in their ritual context. On a personal note, I was extremely glad to listen to this CD because it brought back musical memories from my younger days in Allappuzha, Kerala, where I grew up (Allappuzha is home to many Puḷḷuvan families). Aubert s work is all the more valuable because the art of the Puḷḷuvan is slowly going out of vogue. In 1998, three years before Aubert s fieldwork, George S. Paul, a music and dance critic for The Hindu daily, quoted Ambujakshi, a female performer, saying, It is no longer possible to make both ends meet with this profession of singing alone and further, fabrication of the rare instruments is also beyond our means nowadays (Paul 1998, 2). Aubert has provided in this CD a set of audio samples that can be used for discussion of such issues as interaction among indigenous traditions, scholarly representations, and music transcription and analysis. Joseph J. Palackal Graduate Center of the City University of New York References Aubert, Laurent 2004 Les feux de la déesse. Rituals villageois du Kerala (Inde du Sud). Lausanne, Editions Payot, collection Anthropologie Terrains. Groesbeck, Rolf, and Joseph J. Palackal 2000 Kerala. In The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, vol. 5, South Asia: the Indian Sub-Continent, edited by Alison Arnold, New York and London: Garland Publishing Company. Guillebaud, Christine Forthcoming Musiques de l aléatoire. Une ethnographie des pratiques musicales itinérantes au Kerala (Inde du Sud). Paris: CNRS Editions (National Center for Scientific Research). Paul, George S Music that Merges with the Ambience. The Hindu (Friday Review), August 28, 1998: 2. Music of Makran: Traditional Fusion from Coastal Balochistan. Recordings, text, and photographs by Anderson Bakewell. From the International Music

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