Cultures of Instrument Making in Assam Upatyaka Dutta
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Cultures of Instrument Making in Assam Upatyaka Dutta As Assam slowly recovers from the double whammy of COVID-19 pandemic and floods, I utilized every little opportunity to visit instrument makers living in the interior villages of Assam. My first visit was made to a Satra (Neo-vaishnavite monastery) by the name of Balipukhuri Satra on the outskirts of Tezpur (Sonitpur district), the cultural capital of Assam. There in the Satra, the family introduced me to three hundred years old folk instruments. A Sarinda, which is an archaic bowed string instrument, turns out to be one of their most prized possessions. Nobody in the family is an instrument maker, however, their ancestors had received the musical instruments from an Ahom king almost three hundred years back. The Sarinda remains in a dilapidated condition, with not much interest given to its restoration. Thus, the sole purpose that the instrument is serving is ornamentation. Fig 1: The remains of a Sarinda at Balipukhuri Satra The week after that was my visit to a village in Puranigudam, situated in Nagaon district of Assam. Two worshippers of Lord Shiva, Mr. Golap Bora and Mr. Prafulla Das, told tales of Assamese folk instruments they make and serenaded me with folk songs of Assam. Just before lunchtime, I visited Mr. Kaliram Bora and he helped me explore a range of Assamese instruments, the most interesting among which is the Kali. The Kali is a brass musical instrument. In addition to making instruments, Kaliram Bora is a well-known teacher of the Kali and has been working with the National Academy of Music, Dance and Drama’s Guru-shishya Parampara system of schools to imbibe education in Kali to select students of Assam. He believes that it is one way in which the interest in and knowledge of learning the Kali is being sustained, especially because the students receive a scholarship amount in the course of training. 1 Fig. 2: Kaliram Bora with his Kali I also visited a local museum at Puranigudam called Kolong Kala Kendra which has a special archival section devoted to Assamese folk musical instruments. It displays the Negera, Taal, Gogona, Xutuli and Lao Tokari/Ektara among others. However, there was one string instrument the name of which is not known. The curator had collected it from Golap Bora. Because of the creator’s death, there is no knowledge of the instrument’s usage and it remains only as an artefact in the museum. This is a living proof of ossification of a significant cultural product. Fig. 3: The remains of a string instrument with no recorded history at Kolong Kala Kendra Museum Mr. Nandalal Ravidas, doing small businesses in instrument making and setting up tube wells in his village, was my interviewee on one of the days of field visit. The mud walls of his house is lined with many Assamese folk musical instruments and other forms of material culture. From making instruments like Gogona, Xutuli, Lao Tokari, Dotora, Pepa, etc. to being a practitioner of Lokgeet (folk songs) and Pala (a form of religious drama of Bengali origin) himself, he is a man of many trades. He is one of the few people who has attempted to expand his business by allowing the sale of his musical instruments through shops. I also had a beautiful opportunity of participating in an informal Lokgeet jam session with Mr. Nandalal Ravidas and two of his friends. 2 Fig. 4: A Lokgeet jam with Mr. Nandalal Ravidas and his friends Another incredible experience on field was in Dergaon, in Golghat district, where I visited the home and recording studio of Zikir (Assamese Islamic song form) practitioner and instrument maker Mr. Wajidur Rehman. Rehman, who is the nephew of Zikir Samrat or Emperor of Zikir, Late Rekibuddin Ahmed, frequently experiments with the genre. He recently recorded a Hindi translation of a Zikir, where he also introduced a folk instrument never before witnessed in a Zikir ensemble – Anandalahari. It is believed to be one of the first musical instruments to be made in Assam. He wishes to popularize the instrument in Assam and elsewhere through its use in Zikir. All the instrument makers and collectors ran me through different courses in which changes were introduced in folk musical instruments with time. The reasons behind these changes and adaptations are mostly because of the growing unavailability of raw materials in nature, while at other times, they are meant to increase the durability of the instruments. For example, Mr. Rehman recently used steel instead of the shell of a bottle gourd to make a Lao Tokari (Lagenaria siceraria). Fig. 5: A Lao Tokari made of bottle gourd (left); a Lao Tokari made of steel (right) 3 The attitude towards creating sustainable livelihoods from making folk musical instruments has not been positive for various reasons. None of the instrument makers I met with depended solely on making folk musical instruments for their survival. I received a gift of a Lao Tokari made in the 1990s from Mr. Golap Bora and a Gogona from Mr. Nandalal Ravidas, both carved by the respective instrument makers themselves. In years to come, I would look forward to work with these individuals in developing a sustainable business model for folk instrument makers such as them in Assam. I would also like to pick up the skills of instrument making myself through participatory research. I thank John Taylor Music Travel Grant for helping me make this important trip to Assam for a research project which needs immediate attention if we were to keep cultures of instrument making alive. 4 .