Naati & lilt of the land: How folk dance and music shape landscape
Adhiraj Singh Bisht
The origin of the word ‘Naati’, a traditional folk performance of the western Himalayas, is lost in time. However, many speculate that it is a corruption of the word ‘Naach’ (dance). Historian OC Handa describes it in terms of its traditional significance in his book, ‘Naga Cult and Traditions in the Western Himalaya’: “They (locals) indulge in community dancing (locally called naati) and singing for hours at end in gaysome abandonment. Interestingly, their gods and goddesses, most of them the Naga and Nagin deities, also join them on these occasions on their raths (palanquins), attired in their best, and dine and dance in unison.”
When one utters the word ‘Naati’, one does not just think of the Himachali dance form, the music that accompanies it, the lyrical style, the resounding drums and karnalis (a Pahari horn-like instrument), the heavy yet hollow soundscape, or the near-ritualistic call to the movement of bodies to a steady, relaxed rhythm. Instead, the word evokes all of these together, along with a lot more. Each of these aspects merges into the other; bodies move with one another like the pulsating echoes of the drums, the choral singing blends with the commanding lines of the hesni (a wind instrument, akin to a clarinet) and the lyrics meld with the melody-like flourishes of the hands.
It is a unique cultural labour that builds the experience of Naati — that of association and connection, if not among performers, then among more abstract ideas like music, dance, ritual, etc. Stretch its boundaries, bring to light the connections it draws, and Naati ceases to be a discrete art. It becomes larger than any definition.
The idea of landscape is one that almost all traditional Naatis connect to very strongly. An association and intimacy with land is created through these Naatis. Most of these need to be understood as ways in which geology becomes familiar — land gets marked by a steady movement of the body, drowning soundscape of the baaja (instruments) and evocation of the lyrics; consecrated by their ritualistic repetition at weddings, festivals, retirement parties, etc.
The lyrics often evoke the significance of special places. For instance, the songs ‘Shobhli beeriye’ and ‘Laal chidiye seri’ invoke the sites of the orchard/farm as those of romance and eroticism. The line, ‘Laal chidiye seri be zaana, seri poki ra gehu ra daana’ — which would roughly translate to ‘Pretty red bird (the bird not being a literal bird), take me to the sprawling stretches; for, in the fields, grains of wheat have flourished’ — exhibits this perfectly. In these Naatis, an invitation to the orchard/farm is followed by flirting and affection. Similarly, local fairs and festivals that turn into events of excitement (and tireless Naati) also become sites of flirtation and play in ‘Bhawa Rupiye’. The day of the local fair becomes an anticipated event, where the suitors decide to meet. The everydayness of the labour on a field suddenly becomes animated with novelty and excitement in the Mahasuvi-Sirmouri Naati ‘Hoth kota poini dachiye’: ‘Hoth kota poini dachiye, mere roye noziro tane’ (‘My sickle gashed my hand; my eyes lay fixed on you).
Songs like ‘Lumbru’ and ‘Dura desha re mhaanu’ see mountains as visual formations of distance and longing, wherein lovers are separated by the terrain of valleys and gorges, close yet far. The feeling of longing and separation lays itself bare thus: ‘Ek shaura bola Bhekhli dhaara; dooja shaura bola Rupi; aadha ge ratiye supna hua, bhokki kaalzu lupi’ (A lover on mount Bhekhli, his beloved in Rupi; at night, you invaded my dream and scorched my heart complete). The very act of traversing these landforms is also central to the Naati in various forms.
Walking is the quintessential manner of mapping lands in Himachal, from deities and their cavalcades walking on their lands to demarcate their territories to nomadic communities traversing alien lands for resources. In the Mahasuvi and Sirmouri Naatis, ‘Chidiye daaliye’ and ‘Giriyo to paani’, the ferocity of the landscape is afforded the site of droughts and implicitly impending calamity.
The Naatis ‘Naina ladi ri naati’ and ‘Laadi Shauni’ (as also others) engage with the treacherous terrain as a hurdle, both metaphorical and literal, to the necessity of the desire to move from one station to another, surmounting the distance that spawns longing. This is seen in the very first line of ‘Naina ladi ri naati’: “Dhoge ta dhoge ni hondna, Nainue; dhoga ra pathru kala ho; dei bi khabar meri zhoori be; chidoo laga bashda daala ho” (Tread not along the cliff, O Nainu; for the cliff is black and slippery; deliver this to my lover, for a little bird sits on a tree, yonder).
When talking about Naatis in the contemporary context, one has to acknowledge the pervasive effects of recording technology on folk music. It has fundamentally transformed the very experience and production of the Naati, which can now be recorded as music, dance and so on, separately. It often ends up losing the connections one notices in more traditional settings.
In some ways, the advancements in electronic music have been pioneered such that they are more conducive to dance than any other form of Naati music, recorded and unrecorded alike. Naati songs can now be heard and danced to anywhere and by anyone. The grounding of the performance of Naati in its native landscape can get dislodged in this fashion. While newer songs like ‘Pink palazzo’ and ‘Seue ra nibhu season’ retain the particular aesthetics of their landscape in their lyrics, others like ‘Laadi Shaauni 3’ do not necessarily evoke the meaning and aesthetics of a landscape that only the native has access to. The only two things that tether them to a certain place is the musical form of Naati and the Pahari language.
As I travel on a bus with some Naati hits blaring through the speakers, the landscape lays itself bare through the window, and absents itself from the song. I wonder what it would be like to listen to it in the absence of this landscape, in a closed room. What is Pahari-ness without the landform of the Pahar?
