“As the district boasts of a variety of communities and languages, everything about the folklore and music here is unique, which made its preservation imperative,” said AIR Adilabad programme head Sumanaspati Reddy, talking about his efforts in recording songs, long stories and bhajans, especially those belonging to the aboriginal tribes. “Some of these songs were found only in anthropologist Christopher von Furer-Haimendorf’s seminal study titled ‘the Raj Gonds of Adilabad’.” The public broadcaster now has at least 3,000 hours of recordings of the folklore and music of not only Adivasis but other communities like the Labhanas. Some of the individual recordings stretch into an hour owing to the length of the songs and style of singing.
AIR got a boost to its efforts in finding aboriginal musicians and story tellers when the ITDA handed them the responsibility of producing and airing programmes on Adivasi culture from the mandals of Wankidi, Tiryani, and Kerameri under the Union government’s Vanabandhu Kalya Yojana. “This helped us a lot in our work,” Mr. Reddy said.We searched and found history and even old food habits of the aboriginals. The collection is definitely a treasure.” “While wedding songs were numerous, we recorded the songs of Persa Pen and the story of Jangubai. We discovered that the four clans of Raj Gonds sing the same stories and songs, but the tunes are different,” AIR announcer Durva Bhumanna, himself a Gond, pointed out.
The station, however, finds itself constrained in airing its programmes in the agency areas as its transmission capability is limited. A transmission tower somewhere in the higher reaches of Sirpur (U) or Jainoor mandal can cover the entire tribal belt, said engineers.
Source and Credit : http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-telangana/air-turns-repository-of-tribal-music-culture/article8990272.ec
Source and Credit : http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-telangana/air-turns-repository-of-tribal-music-culture/article8990272.ec