![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Kabigāna is a verse-duelling/song-theatre genre practiced in West Bengal (India) and Bangladesh. Often deemed as obsolete and extinct – following from urban perceptions and the canons of literary history – the genre is found to grapple with the questions of ‘authenticity’ across its multiple spaces of performances- rural rituals, urban fairs/festivals, cinematic representations as well as packages for television and the new media. This article introduces the performance genre of Kabigāna by trying to understand its format and content as an entity that is separate from the umbrella term of ‘folk performances’. It contains two case studies of contemporary Kabigāna performances in rural West Bengal and Bangladesh to understand how performers themselves negotiate the complex idea of ‘authenticity’. Finally, it tries to address some key issues of the cultural politics of performances by bringing in a number of claimants for the genre and exploring if any of these claimants ‘own’ it ultimately. Following an ethnographic method of enquiry and analyses of documented performances, this article tries to bring out the nuances of the performance genre that has mostly been lost in literary canons and official archives. In this sense, the findings of the fieldwork presented in this article is an approach towards re-reading the archival texts, performances and institutional practices and politics in relation to each other.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Whereas lead singers of Kabigāna are popularly known as kabiẏāla or kabioẏālā in West Bengal in India, in Bangladesh they call themselves sarakāras. I have explained the reason behind such demarcations in my discussion on the two sites of fieldwork.
2. See, Ishwarchandra Das Santra, Taryāra Laḍāi [Part I]; Nandalal Ray, Taryāra Laḍāi [Part II]; Tinkari Biswas, Ati Brhata Taryāra Laḍāi [Part III].
3. A Kabigāna performance progresses through ḍāka (invocation), mālasī (song of praise for goddesses Durga or Kali), sakhī saṃbāda (love episodes of Radha and Krishna), ṭappā (series of questions), dhuẏā (interlude songs), pāñcālī (narration), paẏāra (rhymed couplets), and milanagīti (final duet song).
4. See, Mary Frances Dunham, Jarigan, 48.
5. See, Siddiqui and Haque, Folklore Research in East Pakistan, 13.
6. See, Dunham, 48.
7. See, Ibid., 49–50.
8. See, Ibid., 46.
9. For details on Islamic traditions in Bengal, see Roy, The Islamic Syncretism Tradition in Bengal.
10. See, Banerjee, The Parlour and the Streets.
11. For a discussion on the kabigāna of Ramesh Sil and Gumani Dewan and their association with the IPTA, see Priyanka Basu, “Becoming Folk,” 1–21.
12. See, Bhattacharya, Propaganda and Information, 56. Also see, Bhatia, Acts of Authority, 85, where she writes how the IPTA activists staged Ali Sardar Jaffri’s Yeh Kiska Khoon Hai (Whose Blood is this?), a play on the peasant and works’ resistance against the Japanese bombing of Chittagong.
13. I travelled to the villages with two of the performing Kabigāna troupes of Sanat Biswas in West Bengal and Sadananda Sarkar in Bangladesh. In both cases the performers had three days (or nights) of Kabigāna performances before they got a short break to visit their homes and resumed their travel for the next set of performances. Each village the performers visit to perform acts as patron, arranging food and accommodation for the performing troupe over and above the remuneration paid by the organizing committee.
14. In conversation with Manoranjan Basu/Manoranjan Sarkar, 29 June 2013.
15. See, Schechner, The Future of Ritual, 228.
16. See, Ibid., op cit.
17. See, Schechner, Performance Studies, 52.
18. See, Genepp, The Rites of Passage; and Turner, The Forest of Symbols, The Ritual Process.
19. In defining performance, Erving Goffman writes: ‘A “performance” may be defined as all the activity of a given participant on a given occasion which serves to influence in any way any of the other participants. Taking a particular participant and his performance as a basic point of reference, we may refer to those who contribute to the other performances as the audience, observers, or co-participants … When an individual or performer plays the same part to the same audience on different occasions, a social relationship is likely to arise’, The Presentation of Self, 15–16.
20. See, Schechner, Performance Studies, 71–72.
21. See, Meyer-Dinkgräfe, Theatre and Consciousness, 160.
22. Judith Becker (2004: 71) explains the term ‘habitus of listening’ as follows: ‘The term I have adapted from Bourdieu, habitus of listening, underlines the interrelatedness of the perception of musical emotion and learned interaction with our surroundings. Our perceptions operate within a set of habits gradually established throughout our lives and developed through our continual interaction with the world beyond our bodies, the evolving situation of being in the world.’
23. See, Becker, Deep Listeners, 71.
24. See, Lawson, Performing through History, 4.
25. In the Ramakrishna Mission performance in Pirojpur as well a similar set of response and behavioural patterns (tearful emotional outbursts and embraces) were continually carried out during and at the end of the performance. The fact that the emotionally trained habitus of listening is strongly culture-specific is underlined by the fact that, while I was made to sit among women in the ‘female space’, I did not engage in union; or even if I was approached for an embrace, I discerned a failure on my part to understand the regularity/shared-ness of the cultural-ritual act in which I failed to participate.
26. See, Beeman, The Anthropology of Theatre, 378.
27. Beeman uses Schechner’s distinctions between ritual and theatre in order to understand how the distinction between the two is analytically problematic within the focus of writing/analysing performance.
28. See, Bourdieu, Distinction.
29. See, Derrida, Archive Fever, 9.
30. See, Jordan and Yeoman, “Critical Ethnography,” 7.
31. Interview of Manoranjan Sarkar, 24 June 2013.
32. For details on the Namasudra community and the Motua movement, see Bandopadhyay, Caste, Protest and Identity, Caste, Culture and Hegemony; Biswas, Itihaser Aloye; and Mallick, “Refugee Settlement in Forest Reserves,” 104–25.
33. Biswas, Tarja, 164–6 explains what Tarẏā is by showing that the word comes etymologically from tarjana-garjana which means to point fingers and roar loudly. He also writes how the two teams in Tarẏā would sing a brief invocation and engage in long question (cāpāna) and answer (utora) sessions which is the main component of the genre. It is mainly in this sense of a question-answer song genre lacking the other components of Kabigāna that the reference to Tarẏā was given to me in relation to Kabigāna.
34. See, Vanini and Williams, Authenticity in Culture, 3. Although Vanini and Williams write how authenticity is constituted of a ‘set of qualities that people in a particular time and place have come to agree represent an ideal or exemplar’, in my analysis of rural Kabigāna in this chapter as also in the context of fairs and festivals, we will see how the idea of ‘authentic’ varies among the performers as the context of the performance changes. Additionally, I take into account how claims of authenticity are different for kabiẏālas in West Bengal and sarakāras in Bangladesh.
35. See, Peterson, “In Search of Authenticity,” 1086.
36. See, Waskul, “Camp Staffing,” 60.
37. See, Goffman, Stigma.
38. See, Waskul, “Camp Staffing.”
39. See, Stone, “Appearance and the Self,” 93.
40. See, Waskul, “The Importance of Insincerity,” 61.
41. See, Goffman, The Presentation of Self, 15–16.
42. See, Schechner, Performance Studies, 28.
43. See, Ibid., 29.
44. See, Ibid., 22.
45. See, Phelan, Unmarked, 146; and Reason, “Archive or Memory?” 82–89.
46. Erika Fischer-Lichte offers a four-fold definition of performance, the foremost of them being: ‘A performance comes into being by the bodily co-presence of actors and spectators, and by their encounter and interaction.’ (See, Fischer-Lichte, ‘Culture as Performance’). In my understanding of individual performances, I borrow the interactive model of performance in relation to the innovations practiced through twice-behaved behaviour.
47. Sanat Biswas, veteran kabiẏāla in West Bengal and a performer in the rural Kabigāna analysed in this section was the interviewee who elaborated at greatest length on the history of the Kabigāna and its contemporary status, interspersing his holistic narrative with episodes and information from his own life. I first witnessed him on-stage in an urban proscenium performance of Kabigāna in Kolkata – a 49-minute performance tailor-made for the event of celebrating the birth anniversary of the CPI leader, Muzaffar Ahmed. Following this, the rural performance allowed me a comparative-contrastive framework with the urban performance and also with the rural performances of Kabigāna which I documented thereafter in Bangladesh.
48. A number of other performance genres namely Tarẏā (see Chakraborty, Tarjagaan), Bolāna (see Ray, Bolan), Ālkāpa (see Islam, Alkap), Gambhīrā (see Roy, Gombhira), Khano (see Roy, Khano), Bādāi (see Manna, Badaigaan), Leṭo (see Chakrabarty, Leto) and Ashṭaka (see Biswas, Ashtak) have similar structural and contextual aspects and are found all over West Bengal.
49. In the initial stages of my fieldwork, I obtained the details of registered kabiẏālas from the Folk and Tribal Cultural Centre in Kolkata, West Bengal. This list of performers covered individuals from mainly the three districts in question, namely Bardhaman, Birbhum and Murshidabad. I chose to concentrate on these locations as they offered an interesting comparative and contrastive framework not only at the level of performances but also at the level of performers’ own voices of agreement and dissent in ascertaining ‘authentic’ Kabigāna. (See, Directory: Folk Artistes of Bengal for a complete and exhaustive list of the performers and practitioners of Kabigāna within a range of related genres.)
50. The Bāulas are wandering singers, and follow their own school of philosophy that associates itself with a certain sense of mysticism. The figure of the Bāula has been historically romanticized in literary and visual representations.
51. This process of the organizing village or committee approaching the kabiẏāla with a request of performance is termed as bāẏenā. Bāẏenā is a Bengali word meaning ‘pleading’, ‘requesting’ or ‘nagging’. In both West Bengal and Bangladesh, kabiẏālas term the request of performance as bāẏenā and that of accepting the request as bāẏenā neoẏā.
52. Sanat Biswas elaborated on the changes in the nature of patronage of Kabigāna (from that of the zamindars to the present day organizing committees): ‘The former Left Front government was instrumental in creating a platform and a voice for the marginalized; it is because of this that the strongholds of patronage has shifted from the individual to the organizing committees or local clubs. These are people who are themselves marginalized in terms of class positions and thus endorse the performance practices of folk forms like Kabigāna’. [Interviewed on 29 July 2012].
53. This practice of the kabiẏāla selecting his opponent and forming teams for the performance is also known as joṭa karā (forming teams). This is not however always a permanent arrangement and there are numerous instances in which internal tiffs within such pairs have resulted in kabiẏālas breaking the team (joṭa bhāṅā). The element of joṭera pāllā in Kabigāna which involves the two kabiẏālas coming together on-stage at the end of the performance and singing the concluding numbers is a signature of the team or joṭa that they have formed.
54. Interview with Sanat Biswas on 29 July 2012.
55. Sanat Biswas also intimated how such government-aided performances can number up to 150 during a year where the remuneration is roughly between six and seven thousand rupees per day. The public performances on the other hand pay them 9,000/- rupees per day.
56. Not all performers are involved in farming and agriculture. Gadadhar Ghosh, a kabiẏāla from Mangalkot, Bardhaman is a small-scale farmer whereas Sanat Biswas informed that he has never been engaged in agriculture. In a seminar lecture and discussion on a similar genre of Gambhīrā in West Bengal, Aniket De discusses through a thick ethnographic description how the rickshaw-puller who took him to the performance venue of Gambhīrā in a certain village later revealed himself to be the key performer in the performance. This testifies to the fact that ‘folk’ performers most often have a ‘main’ profession – a more direct form of labour ascertaining a fixed income – and their roles as performers mostly append to such roles. For a larger discussion on Gambhīrā, refer to the Brick Lane Circle Seminar by Aniket De on ‘Divided Songs: Nation, Religion and Entertainment in South Asia’s Borders’, London, 5 December 2017.
57. The villages often choose performers from outside and there is a certain home turf/outsider aspect to the performance.
58. See, Shields, Bakhtin, 109.
59. See Introduction for a discussion on my positionality and reflexivity as an ethnographer.
60. There is a certain uniformity regarding the dress of the kabiẏālas in both West Bengal and Bangladesh, though the attires differ in some respects. The kabiẏālas wear a dhuti (lower garment) and pāñjābī (upper garment), which is common for both regions. But then the kabiẏālas in West Bengal use an uttarīẏa or uḍuni (long hanging piece of cloth made of silk) that is also used as a prop in portraying several characters. For example, the uttarīẏa is firmly tied on the waist when representing bold/infuriated protagonists or sometimes placed on the head in order to depict female characters. In Bangladesh instead, kabiẏālas do not use the uttarīẏa. For details on the dress of kabiẏālas, see, Biswas, Kobigan, 14.
61. While the drums, clarinet, harmonium and cymbals are deemed as the ‘traditional’ instruments in Kabigāna, the keyboard piano is a new inclusion signifying how new ways of sound production have affected and become necessary for Kabigāna. However, I have not witnessed the use of a keyboard piano in the other performances I documented in West Bengal and Bangladesh. In my interview with Sanat Biswas, he told me that the older practices of Kabigāna would have only a set of one drummer (ḍhuli) and two dohāras for each team. Newer inclusions of instruments, he clarified, has become a necessity to suit the urban audience taste since performances have entered into urban venues.
62. For a detailed description of the role of dohāra in the Bangladeshi variant of Kabigāna, see, Sarkar, Kobigan, 45–47. It is worth mentioning that the role of the dohāra is more elaborate and prominent in Bangladesh than in West Bengal.
63. Though the application of tunes in Kabigāna does not adhere to any particular one, the pāllā or the debate is sung in the tunes of Bāula songs, Kīrtana and other rural songs. See, Biswas, Kobigan, 24–25.
64. The Greek chorus, as HDF Kitto (1956: 1) shows, combined the three functions of poetry, dancing and singing: ‘The Greek verb choreuo, “I am a member of the chorus,” has the sense of “I am dancing.”’ Also, see Patrice Pavis (1998: 53–55) on the role and function of the chorus.
65. The chorus would very often exclaim and repeat phrases like, “Is it so?” or “Please continue” or as encouraging as “Brilliant!” in the guise of a listener to the kabiẏālas’ narrative or logic. Such exclamations also align the chorus and the kabiẏāla together forming a listening-singing performing unit within Kabigāna and underlining the role of the chorus as the support for the performing kabiẏāla.
66. Caṇḍī or Saptaśati are other names of the Devi Mahatmya, a Hindu religious text and part of the Markandeya Purana (composed by rishi Markandeya). The ritual of reading the Caṇḍī is called caṇḍī pāṭha and the text describes the episode of goddess Durga slaying the demon, Mahisasura. It is customary among the Bengalis to listen to the Caṇḍī on Mahālaẏā (the day signifying the advent of the goddess). Mahālaẏā marks the beginning of Durga Puja festivities in West Bengal.
67. There is a difference between guru staba and guru bandanā in Kabigāna. The guru staba is a mantra or Sanskrit śloka that the kabiẏāla recites as soon as he has greeted the audience and before he begins to sing the invocation. The guru bandanā comes under the repertoire of the bandanā or invocatory songs that the kabiẏāla composes and sings. See, Swapan Maitra (2012: 49; 51–52), for the difference between the two.
68. For example, the following lines from a bandanā song by kabiẏāla Gurudas Pal (1913–1968) invoke both the motherland and the people: Prathama chande adhama bande-/(ei) janmabhūmira māṭi go/Gaẏā ki Kaśī, Makkā kiṃbā/Madināra ceẏe khān̐ṭi go/ … sabhāte bandinu āmi janatāra pāẏe/jān̐dera smaraṇe bhaẏa bhīti dūre jāẏa [Humbly I begin invoking/this soil of my motherland/Gaya or Kashi, Mecca or/Medina- it is purer than all of these/ … I revere the audience of this sabhā/invoking them wards off all fears and worries.” (Malini Bhattacharya and Pradipto Bagchi, 2000: 45).
69. ‘[C]ollective subjects never meet each other physically as both collectives and subjects. They cannot therefore assume identity on pragmatic grounds as do individual subjects’ (see Trouillot, ‘Abortive Rituals’, 438).
70. See Connerton, How Societies Remember, 339.
71. The kabiẏāla further sang: Ekhana siddhānta kare kamiṭi jā pāṭhāila/Ekhana āpanādera kāche rāẏa cāite āmāẏa dān̐ḍāite hala/Ei jana ādālatera rāẏa āmi śunate cāi/Yadi sarba sammatikrame haẏe thāke āmi lāgiẏe yāi laḍāi [Now, whatever the committee sends as decision/I stand before you seeking your judgement/I am keen on hearing the judgement of this open court/If you permit let me begin the battle].
72. The kabiẏāla had initially begun with the debate between Past vs. Present in the midst of which he was approached by the organizing committee with a change of topic.
73. See Fischer-Lichte, Ästhetik, 4.
74. The topic is evidently a favourite among the audience not only in the village of Boro Sangra but in others as well. Debates and enactments on the same topic were carried out between the female kabiẏāla Dulali Chitrakar and male kabiẏāla Ranjit Das at the 15th Rājya Kabiẏāla Melā in Jindighi, Murshidabad in March 2013. They used the same role-playing devices i.e. grandfather vs. granddaughter as the kabiẏālas in Boro Sangra, though within a limited performance slot of 3 hours.
75. See Confino, “Collective Memory,” 198–200.
76. See Beeman, “The Anthropology of Theatre,” 373. Here, Beeman borrows and elaborates upon Kenneth Burke’s notion of ‘motion’ and ‘action’ and how both of these combine to produce theatrical meanings.
77. In the Kabigāna performance in question, Sanat Biswas played the role of Past/grandfather while Sadananda Josh enacted the Present/grandson. Notably, Gambhīrā performances both in West Bengal and in Bangladesh use the trope of dādu-nāti (grandfather vs. grandson) in a format of debate quite similar to Kabigāna.
78. As an example of his claim, Sanat Biswas referred to the public policies of the erstwhile Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi in terms of banking, insurance etc. and criticized the role of the current Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh.
79. See Narayan, “Banana Republics,” 197–9.
80. It needs to be remembered here how the organizing committee urged the audience to imbibe knowledge (jñāna arjana) from the Kabigāna performance.
81. In my conversation with Dr. Malini Bhattacharya in Kolkata on 29 May 2013, she used the phrase ‘organic intellectual’ with regard to the role of the kabiẏālas. ‘Organic intellectuals’ are organic to the interests of the working class. With regard to kabiẏālas functioning as ‘organic intellectuals’ in furthering the realization of socio-economic upward mobility and goals of a particular class with respect to the rural location, they were carefully employed by the Left in West Bengal in the 1980s to become the organs of cultural expression; prior to that the IPTA movement in the 1940s established the link with these rural performers with a view to propagate a cultural revolution through songs.
82. I have discussed the role of gender in Kabigāna and the agency of the female performer with respect to women from the scroll-painting community of the Chitrakars.
83. I shall come back to the segregation between the female and male performers in Kabigāna in a later chapter and show how the former is marginalized by the dominant male group in several ways. Using abusive remarks or exaggerated body movements labels the female performer as a ‘fallen’ woman within the poised respectability of Kabigāna.
84. See Sax, “The Ramnagar Ramlila,” 131.
85. See Schechner and Hess, “The Ramnagar Ramlila [India],” 66.
86. Bharucha, “Notes on the Invention,” 1908, writes: “Darshana is capable of subverting technology. Even if an Indian spectator may not be fully conscious of his seeing capacities, there is nothing quite like his ability to see God within an actor’s frame. Nor can one underrate his capacity to tune in and out of an image.”
87. See, Schechner and Hess, “The Ramnagar Ramlila,” 70.
88. See Hansen, Grounds for Play.
89. I was able to document two performances from this series, in the villages of Majumdarkandi and Lamchari since the third performance coincided with the Kabigāna performance at the Hay Festival 2012 in Dhaka which I have discussed in my chapter on fair and festival performances.
90. See Sarkar, Kobigan, 111–52.
91. See Ibid., 162–84.
92. Sarkar, Kobigan, 130–1, maps the guru-śishya (teacher-disciple) tradition that connects this region’s Kabigāna to its ‘predecessor’ in the Calcutta variant of Kabigāna (popularized by Anthony Firingi); also see, Hossain, Kobiyal Bijoy Sarkarer Jibon, 20. [Sarkar has pushed further Hosain’s earlier explorations on the connexion between Kabigāna in Calcutta and the southern region of the river Padma.]
93. Chandpur, Comillah and Brahmanberia are the three districts formed out of the earlier undivided Comillah region previously known as Tripura (see Sarkar, Kobigan, 146). Majumdarkandi is a village under the Boro Durgapur Union, under the Durgapur Union and in the Upazila of Matlab (north). busses run frequently between Dhaka (Gabtali) and Comillah (Daudkandi toll plaza), a distance that is covered in roughly 3 hours. To reach the village of Majumdarkandi, however, an auto-ride is obligatory till a point where means of transport are not allowed into the village owing to muddy undulated roads; I walked a considerable distance into the village from that point. The surname ‘Majumdar’ generally belongs to members of the Hindu community (Kayastha or Brahmin), and the name of the village indicates the common surname of the families living there.
94. The kabiẏālas Sadananda Sarkar and Sanjoy Sarkar belong to the Khulna and Gopalganj districts respectively, which form the region south of river Padma and is considered to be the most important in the development of Kabigāna in Bangladesh.
95. The versions of Kali are divided between the ‘benign’ and ‘fierce’ natures of the goddess according to Hindu religious beliefs. If she steps out with her right foot with a sword in the left hand, she is the benign or dakshiṇā kālī. If she steps out with her left foot and with the sword in the right hand, she is the fierce or śmaśāna kālī; see, Harding, Kali.
96. Sarkar, Kobigan, 50, mentions how Kabigāna performances were intrinsically connected to the celebrations of Kali Puja in the region demarcated as southern Bengal in the twentieth century. In fact, Kali Puja celebrations were ‘unimaginable’ without Kabigāna in certain places. The performance space in such cases would be arranged in such a way so that it faced the bāroẏāri caṇḍīmaṇḍapa (or, the altar of the goddess). There was an evident similarity in the way the performance space in Majumdarkandi was designed and how Sarkar has presented it in the form of a diagram in his discussion (facing the temple on one side and the audience on all the four sides of the stage/raised platform).
97. In contrast to both these documented performances, the Kabigāna performance in Pirojpur Ramakrishna Mission (Nishikanto Sarkar vs. Manishankar Sarkar) involved singing and performing within the Mission’s precincts; the change of performance space and its stature gravitated the audience to a performance session of preaching and learning- a characteristic feature in Kabigāna performances.
98. A number of studies have however surveyed the extent and continuity of rural fairs themselves, especially in West Bengal. Ashok Mitra, Poschimbonger Pujo o Parbon, Fairs and Festivals, gives a census of the religious celebrations and associated fairs in the districts of West Bengal.
99. See, Sarkar, Kobigan, 380; 391; 411; 412, for bio-notes on Manishankar Sarkar, Nishikanto Sarkar, Sanjoy Sarkar and Sadananda Sarkar.
100. Also, in my conversation with kabiẏāla Nishikanto Sarkar during and after the performance at Pirojpur Ramakrishna Mission (on 19/11/2012), I was informed how the kabiẏāla began his life as a performer through Ashṯakagāna and then learnt Rāmāẏaṇagāna, Kīrtana and Rāmajātra from his father. Following his father’s death, he left his graduate studies (as a BSc. student) incomplete and joined Kabigāna formally and permanently.
101. In addition to the components enumerated in this list, Sadananda Sarkar also mentioned two other elements – Basanta (song of spring) and Bhora Goshṭha (song of dawn) that are sometimes performed given if it is the season of spring during the performance or if an overnight performance stretches to dawn respectively. Sinha, Purbobonger Kobigan, xi-xvii, adds Karuṇyara Bilāpa (song of lament) and Rāṃa Phukāra (erotic/slanderous/‘vulgar’ compositions) to this list. None of these components however featured in the two performances of Sadananda vs. Sanjoy I watched in Majumdarkandi and Lamchari (13 and 14 November 2012) because these were winter performances spanning from afternoon to midnight. Incidentally, the performance also lacked the element of Sakhī-Saṃbāda due to the constraint of time as the performers revealed. See Appendix 1a for Dinceshchandra Sinha’s explanation of the structure and rhythm of Kabigāna in Bangladesh.
102. Both the individual members of the chorus and the group were termed as dohāra by the kabiẏālas. In some instances, however, the group is called dohārapatra collectively. However, for clarity in the analysis of the performance in question, I will call the chorus group dohārapatra and the performing individual from the group as the dohāra performer.
103. The following day in the following performance in the village of Lamchari, the sarakāra duo role-played Ramakrishna Paramahansa and Swami Vivekananda [which they called Ramakrishna-Naren pālā]. Similarly, in the Pirojpur Ramakrishna Mission performance the topic involved a debate between Kalikaprasad Chakraborty and Nityananda. In contrast, at the Hay Festival performance of Kabigāna in Dhaka, the topic involved the more abstract themes of written knowledge vs. oral tradition (discussed later).
104. See Appendix 1b for details of the Ṭappā from the Pirojpur Ramakrishna Mission performance in order to understand the distribution of lines between the two dohāra performers and the questions posed therein.
105. The Nāma-yajña involves chanting the holy names of Krishna in order for the devotee to be able to become one with him.
106. Śuka (male) and Śari (female) are two imaginary pair of birds found in Bengali folk-tales. They have the ability to talk like human beings and take the sides of Krishna and Radha respectively in a debate between the two. In the question posed, the greatness of either Śuka or Śari would mean the victory of either Krishna or Radha.
107. Braja prema or Vraj prem signifies the love between Radha and Krishna and the question demands an explanation with examples on the nature of their love.
108. For a detailed study on the life and songs of the star performer, kabiẏāla Bijoy Sarkar (fondly remembered as Pāgala Bijaẏa) see Biswas & Biswas, Banglar Loko-Kobi; Hossain, Kobigan; Sarkar, Kobigan, 383–4. References to Bijoy Sarkar recurred almost in every performance I witnessed in rural Bangladesh, either in the form of narrating some of his life incidents or through singing popular songs from his own compilation.
109. Sadananda said in Bengali: “Cā/Nā cāile pābe nā”. The humour lay in the clever rhyming of the two words cā and nā and also in the double entendre of the word cā which means both ‘tea’ and ‘to ask for’.
110. Sanjoy Sarkar, in the role of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, addressed his opponent, Sadananda Sarkar, in the role of Balabhadra Bhattacharya, as his uncle-in-law, since the Mahaprabhu’s wife belonged to the same village as Bhattacharya and the two were related. Sanjoy Sarkar performed the usual strategy of indirectly insulting his opponent, something similar to the verbal battle between the grandfather and grandson in the Past vs. Present debate in the West Bengal performance. When his turn came to reply to Sanjoy, Sadananda compared the former to a kind of fish (paṭakā mācha) which sucks in air and swells when fished out of water but dies instantly when it is stepped upon. Thus banter and insults trump the sacredness of the embodiment.
111. As Sanjoy Sarkar sang some lines and referred to Rajendra Sarkar (another kabiẏāla) as the author of the lines, Sadananda corrected him saying that the author was Jasimuddin. The younger kabiẏāla seemed to accept this in good humour and proceeded with his song.
112. See, Barba, “Interview,” 12.
113. See, Barba and Savarese, The Secret Art, 188.
114. While Barba and Savarese, The Secret Art of the Performer, cites his example from the Asian martial-arts tradition, his concept of pre-expressivity can be understood in relation to perceiving the act of performance itself as an extra-daily technique.
115. See Schechner, Performance Studies, 225–6.
116. A similar parallel to this example of the performer warning his audience can be found in a description of the Ramnagar Ramlila. Schechner, The Ramlila of Ramnagar, 82, writes: Another important non-character performer is the old man, a former vyas who is too old to direct but cannot be retired (there is no such thing), who carries a silver-headed staff and shouts before each section of dialogue: “Chupraho! Savdahan!” (Keep quiet! Pay attention!). This role was invented for him.
117. Nishikanto Sarkar revealed later in the performance that Bijoy Sarkar had a collection of over 600 self-composed songs, of which nearly 375 have been published so far.
118. From the example of Bijoy Sarkar’s original composition and Rasik Sarkar’s impromptu composition, it seemed that the latter’s song was more a kind of an answer-like composition rather than a parody. The song did not have the humour that a parodic composition generally foregrounds and exhibited instead a philosophical perspective on ideas of human life and death. Since answers to original songs are often in the mould of parodies, Mani Shankar might have used the word in highlighting his father’s talent in on-the-spot composition.
119. Interview with Sanat Biswas on 29 July 2012.
120. Kola-sarakāra is a term used for apprentices in Kabigāna; the word is used by Bangladeshi kabiẏālas and not by those in West Bengal.
121. The areas mostly dominated by Namaśūdras in Bangladesh, according to Manoranjan Sarkar, are Dhaka, Barishal, Jessore, Khulna, Chandpur and Comillah.
122. Interview with Nishikanto Sarkar post-performance in Pirojpur on 19 November 2012.
123. See, Myers-Moro, Thai Music and Musicians, 1–20.