Event 38: Pulayar (Paraya) transplanting songs - Ettumānūr
- Description:
- Two women and one man sing a long, unidentified song. The purpose of this session was to playback and re-cord transplanting songs from 1938 recordings made by A. A. Bake, Bake 28.3 "Two Pulliya transplanting songs, Bake 28.4 "Two Pulliya kolāttam songs, Kolāttam (sticks)," and Bake 28.5 "Two boat racing songs, Kolāttam (sticks)." But one non-Bake song was recorded. The singers are Nani, whose father was renowned for singing these songs; her husband, Thankappan, and their daughter, Molly, from Edayazham Vechoor, Taluk Vaikam, North Kottayam district. The recording location is the Mural Art Center, Archaeology Dept., Ettumānūr Post, Kottayam, Kerala. In the recent past transplanting songs were sung by 50 or more women in a row, with one or two singing as leaders who do not do the transplanting work. Their lines are repeated in chorus by the others. The tradition is becoming rare because many of the Puliyas have converted to Christianity and become educated, and seek jobs outside their traditional laborer class, so that other castes are doing the field labor. Molly, in fact, held a paper with the song texts from which she sang. The family did not know the Bake 28.4a song, but they remembered hearing it as children when their mothers and aunts sang it. They identified it as kadambi, a kolāttam (stick-dancing) song. Playback of Bake 28.4b was identified as a Paraja, not Pulaya. Item 3: They sang another song, and could have sung many more, but the others were waiting to dance and it had become very late."
- Date:
- March 27, 1984
- Resource Type:
- sound recording
- Collection:
-
Bake/Jairazbhoy Digital Archive of South Asian Traditional Music and Arts
