How India as a civilisation is defined by its engagement with music

The nation’s vast ocean of songs belongs to everyone and is transferred from one generation to another.

In winter, when the countryside prepares for the cropping season, songs waft in the air at night, invariably accompanied by drum and harmonium. Tribal women singing while harvesting paddy at Umswai village in Karbi Anglong, Assam.   | Photo Credit: RITU RAJ KONWAR

If music be the food of love, play on,

Give me excess of it that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken and so die.

That strain again, it had a dying fall.

O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound

That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stealing and giving odour. Enough, no more,

Tis not so sweet now as it was before.

These are the immortal opening lines of Shakespeare’s romantic play The Twelfth Night. Indeed, music is the food of love; and too much of it, music or love, may induce nausea. I am invariably reminded of these lines every time I get caught in the singing orgy called (in Hindi) Antakadi. The Gujarati word for this “sport” is Antakshari and the Marathi word is bhendya. For a long time I was under the impression that this rather strange group music-sport is confined to western and northern parts of India. But, as I travelled to other parts of the country, I came across the phenomenon there as well.

The rules of the game are simple. One person sings a couple of lines of some popular song, never mind how terribly rendered. What matters is the last syllable of the last line. The opposing side has to pick it up and begin singing anything that begins with that syllable. This done, the first group returns to the ring and sings yet another song beginning with the terminal syllable of the song sung by the opponents. Who in the group should sing is not decided. All that this sport needs is two groups and plenty of free time. I have noticed that when schoolchildren go on long tours, they play this “new song for every last letter” game to reduce the boredom of a long bus or train journey. I have not seen schoolchildren or college students in European or North American countries doing this. It is a peculiarly Indian phenomenon.

One aspect of the game that may interest ethnographers and psychologists is that girls and boys who are shy when left to their individual self, and have hesitation in conversing or mixing with the opposite sex, lose their shyness when they join the Antakadi groups. In that sense, the Antakadi is a ritual created by a repressed society that helps adolescent persons provide outlet for their concealed attraction for the other sex. But is there something more to the shrill songs of the bored young travellers than the mere ritual?

I saw this question in a very different light when I started working with Adivasis. During the 1990s, I was tracking migrant Adivasi labourers. They used to walk long distances, over a hundred kilometres in some cases, and settled in makeshift camps in cities for the months they wanted to work at construction sites. I noticed that in evenings, women often got together and sang. It was not unusual for men to join in. Those were the songs they had carried from their villages, in turn, carried forward by their elders from their ancestors. Back in their villages, I noticed that they sang when they sowed the fields during the monsoon. They also sang after burying their dead kith and kin. So many songs; they had songs for all seasons, all occasions! Those songs kept them related with their families, their villages, and their past. It was as if the song was a different kind of language, not a language that names, describes, and analyses the world, but a language that connects, internalises, and remembers.

In India, one is a social member either of a tribe or a caste. Thinking of the tribal songs, my mind went back to the wedding songs that I had heard sung by elder women in my community. In most communities there are songs related to various rituals associated with the wedding process. There are songs to bid goodbye to girls going to stay with their in-laws, and songs that welcome them to their new surroundings. There are songs to be sung when women become pregnant, and songs when the child is born and given a name. These songs of arrivals and departures provide a community the sense of being together.

In winters, when the countryside prepares for the cropping season, songs waft in the air at night, invariably accompanied by drum and harmonium. If you walk up to the singing group, you notice that those are the songs drawn from medieval saints. Kabir and Meera and Tukaram and Akkamahadevi and Narsinh Mehta, Thyagaraja, and many others. Those songs have been in the air for centuries now. Their charm has not worn out; their soul-stirring appeal has not dulled.

Every time I travel outside India, I miss the songs of India. There are night clubs and there is music of a different kind. Yet, the song that wells up from the heart and brings back the deep memory of the distant past, the song that makes you meditative, is not there. I have noticed that by and large the range of songs that an Indian knows—from cinema, folk songs, qawwalis or powadas or bhajans—is much larger than the songs that the folks in Europe and America know. Formal music is one thing.

The written music scores by great composers is, of course, a learning deserving respect. And, bands playing their own compositions can be admirable. Yet, they are not quite the same as the free-flowing songs that belong to everyone, singer or non-singer. What India has is the unwritten and non-formal music. The engagement of the Indian consciousness with this vast ocean of songs and its informal and unorganised transfer from one generation to the next is almost the defining attribute of India as a civilisation. That, and not so much the great philosophies and darshanas, emperors and heroes, is what is at the heart of Indian culture. We are many languages, many histories, many people; but we are united in our deep relation with the songs of India. I imagine Bharat Mata as a rich, prolific, and free-flowing musical presence.

In recent years, one notices a new cultural war being waged in Indian society. Fears are expressed that it may leave India changed forever. But since the cultural warriors have not been able to bring in any new music, any great songs to India, will they be able to win the heart of India?

The British rule contributed to many areas of life in India, but not so much to its songs. When it was over, it was over forever. In contrast, the Persian rulers of India brought in with them glorious traditions of music; and their presence continues to manifest itself through many cultural traditions of India. In time, the ideology that dominates the public discourse may go into oblivion; but will it have left any cultural mark, except memories of avoidable violence and hatred? For, indeed, music is the food of love.

Ganesh Devy is Obaid Siddiqi Chair Professor, National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bengaluru.