Shalini Ayyagari
Popular Dissertation Workshop II
Department of Music, Ethnomusicology: UC Berkeley
2 May 2007
Subaltern-
Creating Spaces for Success:
Narrowing gaps and widening capacities for empowerment
among hereditary musicians in western Rajasthan
“Mangniyar means to beg, you know. These musicians have always
made their livings from begging. Well, not anymore. Now we beg from
them. If we need something, we go to them,” N.K. Sharma, a respected
historian from Jaisalmer, Rajasthan was telling me. He was speaking
about the focus of my doctoral dissertation, the Mangniyar—a
community of professional hereditary musicians hailing from the Thar
Desert region of western Rajasthan, located in northwestern India.
In my research I am examining how this community of musicians, in an
ever-increasing world of modernization, is actively [re]configuring
musical practices, [re]constructing space and social positioning,
and [re]articulating relationships in order to assert their
livelihoods and individual agency.
Dissertation Project Description
Customarily for at least the past four centuries, the
Mangniyar, a peripatetic community by profession1, have provided
family genealogies and entertainment to their hereditary musical
patrons for remuneration. They have been attached not only to
individual patron families, but also to entire family lineages over
many generations through social and economic dependence. However, in
recent times, modernization is jeopardizing this way of life. No
longer do younger musicians know the span of musical repertoire that
their forefathers knew, nor do they depend so much on their jajmans
(patrons) economically. Likewise, their jajman families do not
generally possess the musical knowledge and interest that their
ancestors once had, nor do they feel the responsibility to provide
economic sustainability for their Mangniyars.
With modernization has come a myriad of small-scale development
projects sponsored mainly by non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
at state, national, and international levels. Most of these
institutions in western Rajasthan focus on cultural preservation,
education, cultural tourism, ecological development, and health
issues. Instead of resisting this local developmental discourse as a
force endangering their way of life, Mangniyar professional
musicians are actively transforming this institutional space to
maneuver within and beyond the constraints of imposed boundaries and
categorizations. Many Mangniyar musicians have begun to transcend
the limitations of their low caste designation and position in
society by integrating not only development rhetoric, but also NGOinspired organizational structures into their livelihoods. Many have
This community of musicians is often put into the category of “nomadic”, but they
are actually peripatetic, having a settled home and traveling to various close-by
locations to visit their patrons.
1
Shalini Ayyagari
Popular Dissertation Workshop II
Department of Music, Ethnomusicology: UC Berkeley
2 May 2007
Subaltern-
founded their own institutions aimed at musical preservation,
economic
sustainability
through
music-making,
ecological
rehabilitation, and community uplift. Gazi Khan Barna for instance,
a Mangniyar musician residing in Jaisalmer city, Rajasthan has
founded his own NGO called Pahachan (“Recognition” in both Hindi and
local Marwari language) with the support from both local and foreign
donors. Aimed at cultural sustainability, his NGO focuses on a
school for underprivileged Mangniyar children on his property in
Barna village. There students are educated in both rural lifestyle
and local hereditary musical traditions. With this knowledge, he
claims students not only gain a valuable folk education, but also
then have a viable means to make a living as a musician and sustain
traditional musical practices at the same time. Using this form of
development also as a source of revenue, the local musicians invite
tourists to the village school, which has the dual function as a
concert venue. Gazi Khan Barna has gained both wealth and wide
success (as perceived within and outside of his musician community)
as a result of this endeavor. Thus, it seems that in many cases,
this NGO structure has taken the place of the traditional jajmani
(patronage) system as an overarching and institutional organization
within the Mangniyar community.
Recent
discourse
on
NGO
work
has
emphasized
external
intervention into community development projects and their capacity
to ward off global modernization at a local level. At the same time,
this discourse often criticizes NGOs for their close relationships
with state and global financial institutions as well as their
inherent bureaucracy and non-accountability to actual people. But
what happens when an NGO is formed by the very people that the
organization aims to help? And what is the outcome when this NGO is
used
to
support
modernization
through
community
uplift
and
alternative forms of sustainability? The above scenario of Gazi Khan
Barna is an example of collective action—a community taking control
of its destiny and advantage of feasible opportunities to promote
their music as a viable means of livelihood in today’s globalizing
world.
In my dissertation, I am exploring different conceptions of
institutionalization among the Mangniyar musician community in an
attempt to understand how the use of discourse and relationships can
serve as a means to power. I am specifically interested in how this
new form of institutionalization is changing and influencing the
music of the Mangniyar. The Mangniyar often make interesting
engagements through performance—both in a musical sense (how they
sing and play for customary and newer forms of patrons) and in a
social sense (how they speak about their musical culture and
reorganize their musical practices. Institutionalization in this
case can be viewed using a culturally informed perspective as a lens
rather than a prescription for success and empowerment. This lens
allows one to understand individuals as driven by culturally
Shalini Ayyagari
Popular Dissertation Workshop II
Department of Music, Ethnomusicology: UC Berkeley
2 May 2007
Subaltern-
influenced sets of motives, beliefs, and identities. People living
within the Mangniyar community, while spread out and diverse over
the
desert
landscape,
comprise
a
connected
whole.
Their
individualistic aspirations are formed sometimes in accordance,
often times in discordance, but always in relation to societal
norms. However, all musicians are not treated nor do they act
uniformly. Unfortunately in communities such as the Mangniyar, the
spectrum of levels of aspiration, capability, and success often lead
to the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Is it
possible to avoid this by empowering the less successful musicians
through these novel forms of institutionalization? In my fieldwork,
I have experimented with concepts of practice at a grassroots level
and in my dissertation I am examining ideas of success according to
musicians’ words, actions, and music making.
Relevance of Subaltern Studies
While the Mangniyar would probably not use the term “subaltern”
to describe themselves, it is a useful analytic through which to
examine such communities; the complex notion of subalternity is
significant for any interactions amongst people whose lives are
rooted in relationships of domination and subordination (not just
for the subordinated). My research project shows that people at a
grassroots level who are working to transform dominant institutions
to either improve or replace them are still constantly involved in
power struggles. Thus Subaltern Studies represents geographies not
within the confines of the postcolonial condition, but instead as
forces through which everyday struggles are continually being
[re]configured in the form of institutionalization, [re]constructed
to uplift the Mangniyar community, and [re]articulated as a novel
form of patronage (to use the terms from my introduction paragraph).
The initial intentions of the Subaltern Studies Group (SSG) are
to be commended—to remove from history a top down approach and
replace it with a study of the culture of actual people. And yes,
the SSG’s emphasis on textual analysis created an unprecedented
search for historical materials in regional languages, generated
interdisciplinary approaches and new analytics to historical
studies, and most importantly, took on a self-critical awareness of
the problem of writing history. However, the direction that the SSG
took in the 1990s was more towards understanding how the subaltern
was constituted rather than uncovering actual lost voices of the
oppressed and underrepresented. As a result of this past disparity,
research scholars of the 21st century have been doing just that—
examining specific micro-practices at interesting and unexpected key
contemporary moments where today’s current fractured regional
modernity of the everyday can best be analyzed and differentiated
both historically and geographically. I believe my work is not only
influenced by the use of this analytic, but falls within this body
of scholarship.
Shalini Ayyagari
Popular Dissertation Workshop II
Department of Music, Ethnomusicology: UC Berkeley
2 May 2007
Subaltern-
Research Method
My dissertation fieldwork has mostly been using participant
observation methodology. For my project, this has meant conducting
research with the aim of gaining a close and intimate familiarity
with the Mangniyar community and their cultural practices through
involvement with the musicians and their families for an extended
period of time. Within this methodology I have conducted formal
interviews, musical recording sessions, informal discussions, direct
observations, analysis of music and oral history, and music lessons
with important musicians for my research.
I have also been using participatory action research. Antonio
Gramsci’s idea of the “organic intellectual” directly inspires and
informs this research method2. Using this as a technique in my
research I have placed myself side-by-side with the Mangniyar
community as co-learners and workers. I have been directly and
actively involved in helping a few particularly motivated musicians
to form their own organizations, interpreting local and national
governmental guidelines3, helping them to write their memorandums,
and designing school curriculum. The goal of this aspect of my
research has been to take local knowledge from life experiences from
within the Mangniyar community and use this knowledge to address
problems and instigate changes within the community and amongst
relationships with other communities. Once again, such relationships
and projects bring up very complicated power dynamics even between
the fieldworker and the community; in my dissertation I am examining
these forces.
Current State of Research and research schedule
Currently I am finishing up my fieldwork in Rajasthan, India. I
will return to UC Berkeley by early June 2007 after completing 18
months of fieldwork (November 2005-April 2007), and will immediately
begin the formal writing process of my dissertation. I currently
have drafts for the first two of seven chapters and I plan to
complete Chapters One and Two and have a draft of Chapter Three by
early Fall 2007, the time of the Subaltern-Popular Dissertation
Workshop II. During Academic year 2007-2008, I have received a
Graduate Opportunity Program Dissertation-Writing Grant. Therefore,
I will be able to concentrate my academic attention solely on my
dissertation and will not be teaching or working on top of this.
I presently have over 500 pages of field notes, approximately
2000 digital photographs, fifty hours of digital audio recordings,
and forty hours of digital video recordings from my year-and-a-half
conducting research. I am also concurrently working on a documentary
film about my dissertation project to accompany and perhaps stand
alone from my dissertation.
Gramsci 1971.
The Societies Registration Act, 1860 (21 of 1860) with State Amendments. 2003.
India: Universal Law Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd.
2
3
Shalini Ayyagari
Popular Dissertation Workshop II
Department of Music, Ethnomusicology: UC Berkeley
2 May 2007
Subaltern-
Conclusion
The Mangniyar community of musicians has always been known for
their constant reconstruction of spaces—may it be through their
songs and genealogies, their syncretic religious practices (a mix of
both Hindu and Muslim ideologies and customs), or their shaping of
and adapting to local geography and natural surroundings. Thus,
space cannot be taken for granted as an inert backdrop for
resistance, but instead is continually produced at intersections of
cultural practices and the making of livelihoods and local politics.
It seems to me that this is exactly what Mangniyar musicians are
doing. By examining the cultural politics of a micro-practice that
refuses the dichotomies of global verses local, economic verses
cultural, and power verses powerless, I am showing how the coproduction of space can open up multiple possibilities for joint
action of people and cultural networks.
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Shalini Ayyagari
Popular Dissertation Workshop II
Department of Music, Ethnomusicology: UC Berkeley
2 May 2007
Subaltern-
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