Sweet tales of the Sarangi: creative strategies and ‘cosmopolitan’ radio drama in Nepal

Abstract

This paper examines the production of a development‐oriented BBC World Service Trust Nepal radio drama entitled Katha Mitho Sarangiko (Sweet Tales of the Sarangi). It positions this drama as an example of cosmopolitan cultural practice in that its writers and editors engage explicitly in a negotiation or a ‘working through’ of cultural differences as they strive towards their twin drama and development goals of communicating ‘positive’ social and behavioural change, such as conflict reduction, good governance and the observance of human rights. The paper identifies a range of creative strategies employed by the producers in their attempts to link a wide range of culturally, linguistically and geographically distinct locales and situations deemed representative of contemporary Nepal. It is suggested that such ‘linking strategies’ mobilise transnational cultural capital and a range of professional competencies, the most notable of which is a willingness to interpret and represent diverse castes, cultures and ethnicities.

Keywords:

• Nepal
• drama and development
• cosmopolitanism
• transnational cultural capital and competence
• location
• realism
• kinship

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the editors and to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on this article.

Notes

1. See De Fossard (1997), Dornfeld (1998), Graffman (2004) and Skuse (2002, 2005) for further insights into the formula, nature and sociality of various modes of media production and drama for development that are included.

2. In addition, a key goal of the intervention was to build drama editing and production skills within the Nepalese radio sector. This was achieved through the recruitment of young local drama writers drawn from the FM broadcasting partners of the BBC World Service Trust.

3. Located in the affluent suburb of Lalitpur, the BBC WST offices are strategically located near key bilateral aid donors (such as the UK Department for International Development) and multilateral organisations (such as UN organisations).

4. Both Werbner (2008) and Baumann and Gillespie (2007) reveal a multiplicity of ways in which the term cosmopolitan has been used – from vernacular cosmopolitanism and rooted cosmopolitanism, to cosmopolitan ethnicity – and in doing so reveal the deep ambiguities and fluidity of meanings associated with such terminology.

5. Importantly, this does not mean that only intellectuals possess the ability to ‘engage the other’. The likes of Clifford (1992), Hall in conversation with Werbner (2008), Sichone (2008) and Werbner (2008b) all point to highly localised engagements with cultural plurality that has added impetus in ever‐deepening media contexts such as Nepal in which audiences, regardless of whether they are nationally or internationally mobile, are routinely presented with a mass mediated ‘world of cultural difference’ of which they must try and make sense (see Wilmore 2008). However, this paper – in focusing on drama writers and editors – positions itself within a more typically ‘intellectual’ and middle‐class frame of the type routinely associated with cosmopolitans and processes of media production. In doing so, it does not seek to discount the ability, skills or competencies of audiences to either ‘read cultural difference’ or to ‘speak back’ to and affect media producers in meaningful ways. Rather, it is concerned principally with the cultural sphere and sociality of media production (see Liechty 2003).

6. Forum theatre is used extensively throughout the developing world as a mechanism for including ordinary people in improvised drama designed to reveal practical solutions to development issues and problems.