Taking liberties in festive song

Abstract

The annual emergence of Holi cassette recordings in north India functions as the starting point for an investigation into issues of culture and social change, gender constructs, kin-ship norms, lower-caste assertion and a range of caste, class and gender concerns. Publicly characterised as obscene (ashlil) or, more appropriately, ‘transgressive’, the dominant motif in these recordings is the ‘joking’ relationship between a woman and her younger brother-in–law (the bhabhi–devar bond). This article explores how themes and forms characteristic of folk traditions change when the means of communication change. The cassette recordings hint at the existence of women's spaces within the culture of Holi. However, the appropriation of a genre that was essentially a space for rural women's innovation and improvisation has modified women's song traditions and commercialised them in such a way that monetary rewards accrue to the appropriators while the women are silenced and remain objects of the male gaze.

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