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The art and music traditions of Santal tribals of India

An exhibition on Santal music traditions at the National Museum in Delhi has its origins in German designer Bengt Fosshag's fascination with the single stringed lute banam. Gargi Gupta takes a look

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The unusual aesthetic choices and collecting habits of German designer Bengt Fosshag is helping spark interest in the art and musical traditions of Santal tribals in India.

Few people know much about the Santals, a culturally distinct and large indigenous tribe that lives in the states of Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha and Bihar, mostly in the forest interiors. The Santals are best known for their distinctive song and dance tradition. But barring a few efforts, there has not been much research or documentation on their music or lives.

Which is why 'Cadence & Counterpoint, Documenting Santal Music Traditions' at the National Music is an important show that for the first time brings together their musical instruments - the banam (single-stringed lute) and tamak (drum) - videos, and photographs that bring alive performances, and even an audio recorded way back in 1914. Also on show are Jadupatua (scrolls) with painted myths of the Santals and a specimen of Chadar Badar puppetry, a unique art form that is fast dying out as the Santals integrate into modern society and forget aspects of their culture.

But this wouldn't have come about had it not been for Fosshag and his fascination with the banam.

It all began sometime in the 1960s, when a friend gifted Fosshag a sarinda (a violin-like instrument) that he'd brought back with him from Lahore. Fascinated, Fosshag read up on the sarinda, visited museums to acquaint himself with stringed musical instruments from non-European societies and decided to start a collection. Over the decades, Fosshag acquired all kinds of string instruments, including various kinds of rababs, the Turkish kemenche, Greek lyres and the tar and dulcimer from Iran. Sometime in the 1990s, he began focusing on 'lute sculptures'- the damyen of the Nepalese and the dhodro banam of the Santals. The latter are large banams, played propped up on the lap with the help of a bow.

"They are shaped like women, and the men play them hugged closely to their shoulder," says Mushtak Khan, one of four curators who have worked on the show. Dhodro banams are elaborately carved, especially the heads, with animal, birds or human figures and sometimes even elaborate scenes of music and dance. One banam even had breasts carved at the back.

Interestingly, Fosshag never came to India, acquiring from dealers and antique shops across Europe, developing sources and contacts as his knowledge and eye matured. Two years ago, 75-year-old Fosshag part donated-part sold his collection to the Reitberg Museum in Zurich which marked the event with an exhibition (ongoing), called Sculpted Sounds showcasing 44 of these banams.

But holding an exhibition wasn't enough. What did the exquisitely carved iconography of these instruments stand for, and who were the Santals and what was their life like? This led the Reitberg Museum officials and curators to seek out the Crafts Museum in New Delhi which had, just last year, conducted a month-long programme with a group of Santal artists on Chadar Badar puppetry, and the two collaborated on the present exhibition.

Two banams from Fosshag's collection have travelled all the way from Europe and are on show in New Delhi. While the bulk of the show comprises banams loaned from the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya in Bhopal, there are four from the collection of Verrier Elwin, who was the first to study these instruments and write about them. This is the first time Elwin's collection, which he donated to National Museum, is being seen.

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