Agrarian Production and the Archiving of Folksong

This paper was published in the year 2019 and has been written by Smita Tewari Jassal, professor of Sociology at Ambedkar University, Delhi. Linking cultural production of folksongs to the material realities they depict, the paper highlights the agricultural labour undertaken by women and the conditions of this work. It reads two genres of folksongs – jatsaar and kajli (also called kajri) – sung by women during agricultural work in the Bhojpuri-speaking regions of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The paper has been published in journal Review of Agrarian Studies.

“What may we learn about the relations of production from songs sung during processes of production,” the paper questions, and urges drawing connections between cultural and economic analysis. While masculinist notions of labour invisibilize the work women undertake in agrarian economies, the folksongs they sing – both in its content and context – underscore their integral role in agricultural work, performed from both within and outside the home.

Different periods of the crop cycle involve different genres of Bhojpuri folksongs, the paper notes. Songs performed when paddy is transplanted are called ropani, songs sung during weeding are called sohani. Nirwahi songs are sung during the last stages of tilling. “The tasks could range from transplanting rice to weeding, harvesting, threshing, winnowing, creating water channels – the list [of Bhojpuri folksongs] covers the entire crop cycle,” the paper adds.

Jatsaar songs are sung by women while grinding grains and spices at the jata (grinding stone). These songs are often sombre in tone and speak of the hardships of labouring women: “Brother, do not tell of my hardships to our sister / Hearing about them our sister will refuse to go to her conjugal home,” a song goes. Kalji songs, on the other hand, are sung during the rainy season which marks a break from intense agricultural labour. They are often light-hearted and include coaxing the immediate authorities of power. The women performing these songs remain tactfully aware of the dangers of outright revolt, and kajli songs articulate both assertion and resolution.

A woman bargains with her husband in a kajli song as she intends to return to her natal home, demanding a break from chores: “My girlfriends will dress up of course, dear. / To visit their fathers, our own worlds, dear one. / Swinging on the swings, how we’ll sing, melodies of the rains to sing. / Just for four days, take care of the kitchen chores for me.” Kajli songs also refer to the loss of rights and claims on the natal home with marriage, when women are transferred across households: “Brother’s destiny is father’s inheritance / While mine, exile far away.” Kajli songs also often contain references to male out-migration and the women left behind who find themselves sidelined within the household and its hierarchy for research allocation. “To his mother and sister, when he sends festive sarees / To his wife, two little handkerchiefs, my friend,” a song goes

The songs, the paper notes, reveal the emotional, social and material realities of women living in the Bhojpuri-speaking region. Interestingly, the paper speaks of the attempted sanitisation of kajli songs as a semi-classical musical form which simply celebrates the onset of monsoon. The genre, hence, has distanced itself from the “quotidian heritage and knowledge systems of working women”.  

The paper underscores the importance of folksongs in easing the drudgery of agricultural work, offering a sense of rhythm and collectivity. Since folksongs are often anonymous, women employ it to articulate their outright resistance against and strategic bargaining with patriarchal powers within which they live. “Women are much more likely to sing what they cannot, and do not, ordinarily articulate in everyday speech,” the paper notes.

These folksongs, however, also sometimes reinforce dominant patriarchal and casteist values. The paper highlights the image of the ideal woman constructed in these songs who emerge as custodians of casteist boundaries. These songs serve as cautionary tales warning against transgression, to be transferred by an older to a younger woman working together at the grindmill. Folksongs, the paper proposes, are therefore multivocal and portray a range of emotions experienced by women in rural agrarian economies. 

Focus by Dipanjali Singh.