GOOD WILL!
Location: Tamil Nadu - India - Asia
Project: Murai - the right to perform
Ambassador: Saskia Kersenboom
TIRUVARUR sets the stage for a renewed struggles with the DEVASI heritage. Last mail we were still convinced to find in this old centre of music and dance a willing ear, eye and attitude to collaborate. Nothing is less true…. The ghosts of the past emerge at unexpected moments and from unexpected corners.
The UNESCO program for Intangible Heritage warns for the amazing fact that neglected cultural traditions in music dance and other performative skills all of a sudden become very desirable to many ruling and culturally dominant parties, the very moment that such forgotten ‘gold-of-old’ gets into the limelight. Devadasis and their colleague musicians form a case-in-point.
While the newspapers are full of protests by underpaid temple staff clamouring for higher payment, state policies plan to help temples by allotting more golden processional chariots. Priests, devotional singers and temple musicians find it hard to live on temple salaries and have to supply their income by ‘outdoor’ jobs, p.e. at computer centres.
However, the moment one opens the theme of devadasis, their dance an music, hidden voices claim that ‘after all’ this authentic knowledge belongs to them. A telling example: the local dance mater who belongs to a traditional, originally devadasi community, was reluctant to collaborate, send students or even discuss working together for a short program that combines temple music with contemporary Bharata Natyam dance in his school. “Others, more knowledgeable than he himself”, in Chennai or Tanjavur should be approached for guidance in this matter and moreover, the word ‘devadasi’ should not be mentioned ever, not now and not in future.
FULL STOP it seemed… but not to our father and son who are determined to proceed on bringing the old dance repertoire back to life from their music. As an experiment we have worked together on the music, the solfege passages, the rhythm and the phrasing of the text in therein. Last Saturday we were able to show the result of at least one song-for-dance, played on the Nagasvaram, the Tavil and Tala in the Ponkal ‘New Year / New Harvest’ Festival, right in the great temple of Shri Tyagarajasvami. The dancer…?: me, the idealistic, dreamer, scholar, dancer…. The audience???: many children, their parents and the dignitaries of the Ministry of Milk!!!!.... who distributed free rice to the devotees.
Some dreams, however, unbelievable, come true at short spells of time. The applause, the honour of receiving a colourful shawl after a colorful, laudatory speech, remain with me as tokens of tangible and intangible GOOD WILL!.
Saskia
