Dhauladhar dhvani

Anita Pandey & Siddharth Pandey

So used are we to think about the great mountain ranges as borders and separators that their roles as connectors and facilitators commonly receive short shrift. One such range is the colossal Dhauladhar (‘The White Range’), that straddles Himachal Pradesh and elevates widely between 3500m and 6000m. Running leisurely for hundreds of kilometres along Hamirpur, Sujanpur and especially Kangra, it is easy to forget that something lies beyond its snow-capped ridge as well. So powerfully does the Dhauladhar convey a sense of complete guardianship while beholding it from the south.

But of course, something does lie on the other side too, and that is the district of Chamba. From its upper reaches comes the most famous tribal community of the region, the Gaddis, who for centuries have been making arduous seasonal journeys across the Dhauladhar to work and settle in the lower stretches of the Kangra valley, before returning to Chamba. And with these well-established movements, not only have the Gaddis indissolubly mingled with their Kangra brethren, they have also imbibed and contributed to the latter’s culture of folk music, and vice versa.

In regions like these, where, for the longest time, society has chiefly remained oriented towards oral cultures of singing and storytelling, folk music serves as an extraordinary repository of ideas, issues and iterations that have strongly come to define this Himalayan ethos. From celebrating the everyday beauty of local landscapes and evoking environmental concerns, to registering matters of love and longing and adapting the sacred within the ubiquitous, folk songs display an acute awareness of the life that was. There is hardly an event, activity or ritual that does not have a lyrical number attached to it, because in the Himalayas, music is knowledge.

A high-spirited song ‘Jeena Kangre da’ (The life of Kangra valley) expressly celebrates the life of the Gaddis in all its simplicity and contentment. Sung by the Kangra natives in appreciation of their pastoralist counterparts from Chamba (fondly referred to as ‘mittar’ or friends), the lyrics evoke the cool winds, pine trees and mountain slopes where Gaddis and Gaddans (female Gaddis) sing to each other. The lines ‘Dhann Gaddiyaan de/dhaaran ch chugde’ (The wealth of the Gaddis/graze the slopes) are telling, because ‘dhann’ here refers to the flock of sheep accompanying the shepherds. Akin to the Hindi word ‘dhan’, meaning ‘wealth’, the flocks are literally considered the greatest ‘capital’ of the Gaddis, walking vast distances with them in hundreds and thousands, conjuring a picture of grace and perseverance. Very often, Gaddis pick up a lamb or two and carry them in the ‘khokh’ (pocket) of their ‘cholas’ (tunics), protecting them as their children.

Many other songs of landscape beauty abound, but not without acknowledging obverse aspects. For instance, a popular ditty ‘Saayein saayein matt kar Raviye’ (Do not roar O Ravi) recognises the awe-inspiring nature of the river meandering through the Chamba valley, while simultaneously admitting the ferocity of its waters, that engenders fear in the listener. But the latter nonetheless wishes to settle in its fluvial terrain, conscious that Chamba belongs to the Ravi first, and then to humans. Hence the words ‘Tere Chambe basne jo dil mera karda’ (In your Chamba do I wish to dwell). Such awareness of natural entities can also be seen in love songs, romances and tragedies, that habitually constitute the crux of folk cultures across India.

Ballads such as ‘Kaali ghagri le aayaan o’ (Bring me the black skirt), ‘Kaaliye koyle bol savera’ (The black koel inaugurates the morning), and ‘Koonja udiyaan jayi peyan’ (The cormorants fly over) evocatively imagine birds like crows, cuckoos and cormorants as messengers and metaphors of communication between lovers and relatives. Since a number of these songs were composed at a time when modern transport was still a distant possibility, not to mention the treacherousness of undulating topographies itself, the idea of long distances acquired a poetically poignant tone. In turn, feathered creatures evolved into symbols of connections and vectors of relationality. Sometimes, a solitary human would also don this role. Thus, a Gaddi favourite such as ‘Jug jiyo dhaare re o Gujjaro’ (Bless you, the mountain-roving Gujjar) commemorates a generic pastoralist of the Gujjar community (another tribe residing in the Himalayas of both Himachal and Uttarakhand), where a housewife appeals to the shepherd to convey her message to her lover working in the remote highlands.

Gender, geography and jobs frequently interweave here, providing an intuitive illustration of the region’s socio-cultural sensibility. Often bound up with her in-laws, it is the harassed, lonely woman who plaintively croons these lyrics, remembering her husband stationed far away as a forest guard or an Army soldier. Other places and products enter the stanzas too. In ‘Kaali ghagri’ (Black skirt), a Kangra woman desires her Shimla-based husband (via the crow) to bring her a flowing black skirt worn in that area (called ‘reshta’, supposedly inspired by the long gowns worn by British ladies). As the verses go, ‘Soni soni yeh Shimle di sadkaan jinde, kaali ghagri le aayan ho’ (From the beautiful roads of Shimla, bring me the black skirt).

Similarly, topographical indicators from one’s immediate vicinity liberally punctuate these melodies. Along with ‘sadkaan’ (roads) and ‘raahein’ (routes), words such as ‘naun’ (village water-bodies for collecting water, washing clothes and meeting friends) and ‘kwaal’ (stone-lined pathways laid along inclines) recurrently anchor the tunes. And while numerous ditties have generic characters, proper nouns are plentiful too, attesting to the particularity of stories.

If Hinju, Rupnu and Pyaarua point to male names, then Lachchi, Jobnu, Neelima and Phoolmo comprise some popular female ones. Perhaps the most famous couple is that of ‘Koonjua’ and ‘Chanchalo’, whose romance by the same name takes place across the valley of Chamba, and like most love stories, ends in the tragedy of separation. Here, too, Chamba’s geography makes an incontrovertible appearance, with its legendary ‘chaugan’ (central ground) and ‘chaandi’ (silver) serving as crucial narrative elements.

A major performative genre endemic to the Kangra valley is ‘Dholru’, which uniquely records and recalls many of these tragic songs. Attributed to singers traditionally belonging to a ‘low’ caste, these ‘Dholru’ songs are typically sung at the beginning of the Hindu calendar (the Vikram Samvat), and it is only with this performance — considered auspicious by one and all — that the season of spring is said to have been inaugurated. The tragic tone of songs such as ‘Ruhla di kul’ (The stream of Ruhla) and ‘Suay di rani’ (Suay’s queen) directly derives from the stories they tell of the sacrifices made by local queens, frequently in the name of reviving water during droughts.

Other stories of violence against women are also not uncommon, both at the hands of kings and mothers-in-law, invoking the deep-rooted patriarchy that has long characterised the region. Caste simultaneously comes into play, not only through the socially oppressed identities of ‘Dholru’ singers, but also via the songs of the female characters, who wish to retain their low-caste distinctiveness in a bid to escape the lecherous designs of upper-caste kings.

The other elements that ‘Dholru’ songs vividly invoke relate to mythology and religiosity. Numerous numbers are dedicated to the glory of Lord Shiva (routinely referred to as ‘Dhoodu’ after the ash that smears his body), where his divine image gets perceived through the prism of the ordinary. This is a facet that resonates across other gods and genres like Ram, Krishna, and wedding songs (‘Sanskar geet’), where Hindu deities are literally imagined as common people, and even equated with newborn babies, shepherds, brides, grooms and housewives. A ditty such as ‘Kaale mahineyaan neriyan raata janmeya Krishna Murari’ (In the monsoon month’s dark night was born Lord Krishna) is sung at the birth of every child, male or female, regardless of the month, thereby appropriating a godly image within everyday contexts. And in ‘Shiv Kailashon ke vaasi’ (Shiv, the dweller of Kailash), sung enthusiastically by the Gaddis, Shiva transforms into a shepherd, travelling alongside as a companion through real geographical junctures before reaching his home in Kailash.

But the penchant for the mythological and historical mustn’t let us conclude that it is only the past that provides fodder to folk music. With changing times, the song cultures of the Dhauladhar have keenly articulated the ongoings of modernity as well. Two closely related pieces from the middle of the 20th century reflect this influence. In the first, ‘Ravi de kande kande chal mere mitra’ (Let us walk by the side of the river Ravi), a couple imagines the joys of electricity that the then upcoming hydroelectric project at a village called Surgani would provide in the near future. But in the second song titled ‘Chhoti Surgani badda dam baneya’ (In the small village of Surgani came up a huge dam), the singer is ambiguous about the changes and job opportunities that have come their way. The laid-back nature of village life has now been permanently disrupted with mechanical, backbreaking labour setting in ‘Sadak banani, jhabbal utthani mera lakkh dukhda’ (The incessant shovel-use for building the project-road pains my back).

Songs themselves have modernised too, and not always for the better. The popular tragic ballad ‘Dhoban’ (Washerwoman), which narrates her kidnapping and eventual death at the hands of a royal family, is now played as a peppy number at local weddings, with one album version even showing women dancing gleefully to the tune that completely goes against the heartrending sentiment of the original.

Another ditty, ‘Maaye ni meriye’ (O my dear mother), made famous by Bollywood singer Mohit Chauhan, casually replaces ‘Jammu’ with ‘Shimla’, consequently confusing the actual geographical route that formerly led to Chamba (the key subject around which the whole song is based). Of course, variety and variation undergird every folk legacy, but tampering drastically with the core meaning or content sullies the melody’s integral character.

Creative use of a popular Himachali song, ‘Amma puchhdi’ (Mother asks), was, however, seen recently in the 2022 film ‘Qala’, where it was picturised to enhance the edgy mother-daughter relationship driving the narrative, much like the song itself. But even as folk music receives a festive makeover through several kinds of media, concerted studies of its multilayered complexity remain the need of the hour. For, as new generations swiftly replace the old guard, preserving our intangible heritage invariably acquires a resounding urgency.

— Anita Pandey is a folk artiste, poet and educationist from Kangra valley.

Siddharth Pandey, her son, is a historian, artiste and cultural critic from Shimla