The young widow’s mellifluous lament rose skywards till it rent the evening calm, making it throb with her sobs. This continued for days in Bengal’s Paik Ambi village. A 10-year-old girl took in the whole scene and put it away in her memory box. “Most of the words were unintelligible but the mournful tune affected me,” recalls Baby Shaw, who is now a writer and researcher based in Jamshedpur.
Her grandmother had explained that such songs were an expression of grief and known as kandnageet, a form of folk song in and around the Subarnarekha basin or the areas adjoining the borders of Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal. Kandna is the local term for crying, a variant of the Bengali word kanna, and geet means song. Kandnageet is a kind of keening or lament, only not for the dear departed, but for oneself, about accursed lives caught in a web of social taboos and restrictions. The singers of kandnageet are always women.
Years later, Shaw understood the words of the song. It roughly translates thus: “Is this my destiny, my love/How could you leave me alone?/What about your promise to take me along?”
At some point in life, Shaw started building a repository of kandnageet with audio recordings and lyrics. Three years ago, 100 songs were published in a book titled Kandnageet, Sangraha O Itibritto. The second part of the collection with 150 songs is to be published soon.
From 2013 to 2018, Shaw travelled to scores of villages in areas such as Gopiballavpur in East Midnapore (West Bengal) to Balasore (Odisha) and Seraikela (Jharkhand) to interview women and collect the songs. People in this area speak a mixed dialect of Bengali, Odia, Maithili and Hindi — called Subarnaraikhik by some linguistic experts. “This is what I speak at home. Women sing folk songs during Tusu and Bhadu festivals in this region in the same dialect,” she says.
But unlike the Tusu and Bhadu songs, no artiste ever recorded kandnageet. Neither did anyone study these plaintive numbers.
As she grew up, Shaw would often hear women sing such songs to express grief, experiences of exploitation and domestic violence, or longing for a dear one. “I noticed these songs had a standard beginning, but the singers improvised, weaved in their personal stories,” says the 35-year-old. She stresses that these songs are not to be confused with those sung by rudalis who are professional mourners of Rajasthan.
Moirology or professional mourning existed in ancient Egypt, China and the Mediterranean countries. It is mentioned in the Bible and widely invoked and explored in literature, from the Syrian epics of the pre-Christian era to modern poetry.
Women’s mournful wails were turned into Hollywood’s fond musical motif, ever since Lisa Gerrard performed the song We Are Free in Gladiator (2000). Exotic sounding singers were also heard in movies as diverse as Black Hawk Down (2001), Troy (2004) and Munich (2005).
When she started exploring kandnageet, Shaw was reminded of plaintive anthems sung by women in many countries. People in the Subarnarekha basin — considered one of the most backward regions of India — learn to weather poverty, hunger and hardships.
Women in Dalit families often endure exploitation and pain from early childhood. The songs of lamentation reflect their socio-political situation. Says Shaw, “They are not allowed to protest, but they can sing. The songs are a cathartic release.”
Collecting the songs hasn’t been easy. The older generations who engaged with this tradition are gone. And no one had ever written down the lyrics; not in any concerted manner. Educated younger generations of women were largely uninterested in this oral tradition.
Shaw met a woman called Shailabala Dehuri, who didn’t hesitate to sing about how her in-laws tortured her because her father couldn’t cough up a hefty dowry. “Wicked are the people here/They make me work so hard all day/They call my parents miserly/But look how mean they are…” Another woman sang about in-laws whom she dubbed “beasts” feasting on her flesh.
Another time Shaw attended a village wedding wherein one of the sons of a joint family was getting married for the second time. The first wife couldn’t bear a child. When Shaw asked someone where his first wife was, she was taken to a waterhole behind the house. There, she heard the woman singing her lament. Says Shaw, “I felt awkward, I couldn’t record the song. I threatened the groom that I’d lodge a case with the police.” To date, Shaw regrets not being able to stop the wedding.
Another family didn’t allow their womenfolk to share their songs as that would expose the stories of their exploitation.
The genre of kandnageet is on the verge of extinction. The Subarnaraikhik dialect is also endangered; people prefer speaking in “more refined” languages such as Hindi, Bengali and English. With social transformation most women are literate, and the dowry system and domestic abuse are less prevalent. Says Shaw, “Younger women don’t wail to express sorrow, they are learning new languages of protest and to stand up against exploitation.”
