The AIIS Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology (ARCE) organized a program Bards and Ballads: Performance of an Endangered Musical Tradition of Western Rajasthan at Arna Jharna The Thar Desert Museum in Jodhpur, India on March 15, 2022. The performance presented a little known aspect of the rich repertoire of the Langa and Manganiar musicians of Western Rajasthan – gatha and katha—best translated as ballads. This highly endangered and vanishing tradition presents the cultural history of Rajasthan through tales of romance and valor, set to traditional melodies and Rajasthani rags. This event presented an important aspect of this project by bringing together some of the most prominent musicians of the Langa and Manganiar community to showcase this tradition to a wider audience through a curated performance. The program was was held in collaboration with Rupayan Sansthan (Rajasthan Institute of Folklore and Museum) and was funded through the Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation from the U.S. Embassy in India.
The event culminates nearly two years of a project “Documentation of the Endangered Musical Traditions of Western Rajasthan” carried out by ARCE. The goals of the project are to revitalize the ballad genre of Western Rajasthan known as gatha and katha. The aim of the event was to recreate the ambience of a Rihan, a term used for an informal gathering of musicians, where the musicians entertain their patrons, and the stories are told and sung into the night.
The performance was the concluding event of a three-day program that brought together over twenty musicians who have been involved in the project over the past two years, in the survey and documentation, and teaching of the next generation. Selected gathas and kathas were recorded in an intensive two-day session prior to the evening performance. The performance included six short extracts of gathas, chosen to represent the repertoire of the two communities, the Langa and the Manganiar, and to provide a sample of the various styles within the genre. It also included a performance by a teacher and pupil duo, to showcase this aspect of the project, under which six senior musicians were teaching six young musicians.
Ms Gloria Berbena of the U.S. Embassy in Delhi greets the musicians
Special guests included Gloria F. Berbena, Counselor for Public Diplomacy at the U.S. Embassy in Delhi and Mandeep Kaur, Principal Programs Advisor at the U.S. Embassy in Delhi.