Inviting folk traditions to meet contemporary challenges

AMRITSAR: Last year, when the Thathera community made it to the Intangible Cultural Heritage list of Unesco, it brought relief to the select few who had been working to salvage the dying art form of Punjab and had some hope for the other dwindling folk art forms from the state.

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, November 20

Last year, when the Thathera community made it to the Intangible Cultural Heritage list of Unesco, it brought relief to the select few who had been working to salvage the dying art form of Punjab and had some hope for the other dwindling folk art forms from the state. Though the process is painstakingly slow, the step towards bringing them out of oblivion was much appreciated.

This was followed by the documentation process of the bhand and marasi community, the once-popular rural folk singers and performers, now forced to bear the brunt of changing times. Through NSD alumni Rajindra Singh and Sangeet Natak Academy’s collaboration, the community can hope for a better future by becoming a contender for Unesco's ICH project. This collaboration encouraged more from the city to join in the cause of reviving and popularising the folk art forms in state, making them visible and relevant. Amita Sharma, another theatre scholar, fellow at NSD and a freelance theatre practitioner, is also collaborating with Singh to amalgamate folk traditions with contemporary theatre techniques.

Studying folk art genre under celebrated Manipuri theatre thespian Kanhai Lal and theatre actor Sabitri Devi, who took Manipuri folk theatre to international stage and won accolades, Amita is currently working on a play by Ismat Chughtai, considered the grand dame of Urdu literature in India.

“We had earlier combined the Thathera art of utensil-making with the folk-dance forms, by making use of the handmade brass and bronze utensils during bhangra and giddha performance during a special performance organised by the Sangeet Natak Akademy at Jandiala Guru.This is how you make these forms visible, by coming up with new concepts,” says Rajindra Singh. “We are planning the same with the play, where we want to experiment with folk-art genres, without breaking the essence of each.”

In a similar attempt to popularise folk artists from rural Punjab, Dilbir Foundation conducted auditions in Preet Nagar, in collaboration with Gurbakhsh Singh Nanak Singh Foundation of Preet Nagar. Chipping in with their efforts to preserve tangible and intangible heritage of Punjab, the program in the rural hinterland especially from the border region, focused to revive folk storytelling, singing and dances, even handicrafts like traditional phulkari weavers.

Emphasising that such periodic exposure to the dying art forms will help both sides, the artists and the young audience, to stay connected, Singh says, “The young generation is born in a technology-powered world and traditions have to make a room, gradually. Give them time and exposure and they will soak in their rich past, also helping the next generation of these cultural treasures of Punjab.”