Sad decline of our art and music heritage
Our indentured ancestry brought with it a vibrant heritage that elevated the arts, writes Selvan Naidoo, curator of the 1860 Heritage Centre
IN THE week that is past, my son had to complete a challenge that his primary school calls SQUIRT week (Shh Quiet, It’s Reading Time). It meant that he had no access to cellphones, iPads and the TV. Indeed it was a challenging week for the whole family as we all decided to forgo what has become a ubiquitous part of life.
In that week, we played backyard cricket until the sun had set, played chess, cooked our meals together, read beautiful books and went through family albums, recalling life’s simple treasures. We also had to find ways to entertain ourselves and on one evening found ourselves at UKZN’s Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre, watching Anita Rathnam’s A Million Sitas.
The performance, seen live and delivered in English, was far more captivating than any television production. The sad reality was that there were so few people in the audience to witness a beautiful art form that has always been a rich part of our heritage.
Our indentured ancestry brought with it a vibrant heritage that always elevated the arts. The production we witnessed at the theatre was no different to the theatrical productions from indentured times through to the late 1980s. Yes, the technological nuances were much improved but the subject matter, purity and bhava (emotion) of the performance were no different.
“Free” Indians post-indenture found time to explore creative expressions as a cathartic process from an oppressive plantation life. The late Professor Fatima Meer’s seminal study, “Portrait of Indian South Africans”, foregrounds creative expression as a critical part of South African Indian life.
She wrote: “They began as the improvised expressions of the poor indentured workers…”
The first free Indians had among them a few musicians, storytellers and dancers, who improvised in creating entertainment. “Their meagre talents and instruments provided for the small Indian communities, settled in rural and city environs, the basis of all their entertainment,” she wrote.
These performances came from dramatised stories from the Mahabharata, Ramanayana and Puranas, in Hindustani and Tamil.
The Muslims among them sang Qawwalis in praise of God. It’s praiseworthy to note how people in those days supported one another, notwithstanding their religious differences. As the years rolled by, performances became much more organised and saw artists performing at grand temple ceremonies and weddings. So slick were the musical arrangements that by the 1930s fullyfledged professional orchestras had become a way of life.
Naresh Denny Veeran’s PhD thesis on “Orchestral music of the working class” offers a phenomenal insight into the mechanics of a musical identity.
Veeran brings to light the doyens of a rich orchestral tradition that saw the likes of the Railway Youth Orchestra, the Golden Lily Orchestra and the famed Ranjeni Orchestra entertain the masses in ways they had never seen before. No wedding from the 1950s to the 1980s was complete without an orchestral ensemble.
Sadly, these orchestras don’t exist today. It’s a tradition that perhaps ought to be revived to give today’s youth lessons in old-school values of collective camaraderie.
Before the orchestral tradition, there existed three other types of semi-professional forms of artistic expression.
They were Therukoothu, a South Indian dance drama group performance that dramatised religious scripture; Sarangi Tal, the North Indian groups that rendered religious song and dance in the lost language of Bhojpuri; and the third expression found in Qawwalis by Muslim performers that were rendered through energetic expression lasting an entire night.
In most instances, the performers made the props and costumes with the “natchanias” (males impersonating females) of the Sarangi Tal dressed with ornate costumes that embellished many a performance. Therukoothu dancers created costumes made of papier mâché to dramatise their performances. It is interesting to note that women in those years were ‘barred’ from performing in such professions.
The town of Mount Edgecombe was the citadel of Therukoothu as expertly outlined in Sathasivan (Satchu) Annamlai’s MA dissertation on the art.
Therukoothu flourished at a time when devotees from other plantations were provided with a “special train service” just so they could all take in the festival activities.
As there were no alternative forms of entertainment, Therukoothu occupied centre stage for the Mount Edgecombe community, where performers were given celebrity status.
Therukoothu did not require elaborate stage settings or a venue; performances were in the open air, some without a platform, with cloth sheeting held by performers that served as stage curtains. Beautiful oil torches enhanced the atmospheric mood of the story lines, in a way similar to the ighting techniques of Anita Rathnam’s A Million Sitas.
Village life of our ancestry eroded over time, eventually giving way to urbanisation that sadly contributed to the demise of our rich heritage of Sarangi Tal, Qawwali and Therukoothu.
The art of Therukoothu survived up to the late 1980s, and did so because of the camaraderie of the townsfolk of Mount Edgecombe.
There were indeed other factors that led to the demise of our traditional folk entertainment. The growing importance of English as the spoken language of communication meant that the new-generation audience could not comprehend the dialogue found in our traditional masterpieces.
Additionally, the fast-paced rhythms of the music found in the movies of the brand of Bollywood and Kollywood were no match for the slower, meaningful music and dramatic productions of our past.
Perhaps the most devastating death knell to our heritage came in the form of television. This introduced shows like the popular series Dallas, resulting in fewer people attending cultural and religious activities. On March 21, 1980, JR Ewing, the arch-villain of Dallas, was shot in an episode called “A House Divided”. This was the last show in that series, and left everyone with the question “Who shot JR?” The sad part of this gripping television story was that this episode was broadcast at the same time as the 16-day memorial service of my thatha (grandfather), the legendary Arumugam “Tabla” Govindsamy.
“Tabla Gwain”, as many called him, was a legendary tabla player. He played classical carnatic music with the likes of V Soobiah Pillay, Harry Arunachallam, Kistraj Ragavan, Gopalan Govender and many more stalwarts, who were the torch-bearers of the legacy that we enjoy today.
So popular was Tabla Govindsamy that he played long into the night for many a Qawwali despite his orthodox Tamil lineage. The saddest part of that night of my thatha’s memorial was that many people were more concerned about “Who shot JR” rather than pay homage to one of South Africa’s greatest tabla players.
Esoterically, television’s popularity destroyed the social fabric that came with our traditional folk heritage. Television and other social media platforms point toward invasive dependencies that deny the arts on so many levels. The joy of SQUIRT week reminds me of the work that remains ahead in supporting the arts more intensely and hopefully reviving our traditional folk heritage, so that my “house is not divided!”