1 00:00:00,030 --> 00:00:05,700 In Maharashtra and laundry, is there an unmuted, so please start. 2 00:00:05,700 --> 00:00:10,080 Thank you. And thank you to the organisers and good morning. 3 00:00:10,080 --> 00:00:14,040 Good afternoon and good evening to everybody who is attending today. 4 00:00:14,040 --> 00:00:22,990 I have a PowerPoint as well, so I'm going to show that we have something to look at while I'm talking. 5 00:00:22,990 --> 00:00:32,080 I actually can't see it the way this is set up, so we can't quite we see a little bit of it now. 6 00:00:32,080 --> 00:00:36,100 Just the bottom of it is what I'm seeing. Oh, OK, let me. 7 00:00:36,100 --> 00:00:44,240 There was the whole thing. OK, got it. OK, so. 8 00:00:44,240 --> 00:00:49,490 Let me just start, the stone mill is a heavy, grounded physical object. 9 00:00:49,490 --> 00:00:53,240 Its circulation at first glance seems quite literal. 10 00:00:53,240 --> 00:01:01,130 It moves, but only in place in circles. The songs of the grind mill are supposed to be so connected to the physical stone mill that famously, 11 00:01:01,130 --> 00:01:05,960 women can't remember or recall verses unless they sit in front of it. 12 00:01:05,960 --> 00:01:11,600 This connexion between the work of the hands and song making defines the grind mill songs as an embossed, 13 00:01:11,600 --> 00:01:21,380 embedded and embodied aural genre, whereas other aural forms like the Parata Allow Me Here then are sung by travelling performers. 14 00:01:21,380 --> 00:01:28,100 As the concept note for this conference puts it, the grind mill songs were composed and sung by women sitting in their homes, 15 00:01:28,100 --> 00:01:33,710 evoking images of a static, timeless and unchanging folk culture. 16 00:01:33,710 --> 00:01:42,840 In fact, however. The songs of the grind metal as a giant genre are a record of the experiences of dislocation, 17 00:01:42,840 --> 00:01:48,600 particular to women immortalised in thousands of songs about when Mos and Sassafras. 18 00:01:48,600 --> 00:01:51,330 Many are songs about longing for my heart. 19 00:01:51,330 --> 00:02:00,000 I've written elsewhere about sunset in my hair as image categories of conditions of being in Barbie exile and belonging, 20 00:02:00,000 --> 00:02:09,720 drawn from the Grindel song tradition and elevated in Thomas Gnabry's words as theological metaphors of alienation and fulfilment. 21 00:02:09,720 --> 00:02:13,050 These categories and other motifs themes, 22 00:02:13,050 --> 00:02:22,830 metaphors and speech genres evidence that underground network of circulatory routes between the Grindel movie and the poetry of the Sun. 23 00:02:22,830 --> 00:02:32,520 The Grindel songs did travel. They were not, though they are often treated as such separate and segregated from the larger world of verse making or, 24 00:02:32,520 --> 00:02:37,620 for that matter, from the world of writing literature and in Marathi. Today, given the limited time, 25 00:02:37,620 --> 00:02:43,530 I want to focus on the circulation of the movie as both a song and a poetic form for a glimpse 26 00:02:43,530 --> 00:02:49,350 of the of these subterranean routes connecting women's oral poetry and the written tradition. 27 00:02:49,350 --> 00:02:56,280 So let's begin this one with a travelogue of the OIE. 28 00:02:56,280 --> 00:03:06,540 The songs of grinding and pounding are the oldest Marathi verse form attested to in writing earlier than any extent written Marathi poetry. 29 00:03:06,540 --> 00:03:13,140 This alone should give us some pause here. The earliest references reconfigure the geography of the alwi from what we would 30 00:03:13,140 --> 00:03:18,420 today call my Rashtra to the larger and multilingual geography of the Deccan. 31 00:03:18,420 --> 00:03:23,370 Many might be familiar with the reference to all in the 12th century, minus or lesser. 32 00:03:23,370 --> 00:03:26,550 But this is not the oldest known reference to the 0V. 33 00:03:26,550 --> 00:03:35,160 The oldest references actually come from conservative sources the O.B. is possibly attested to in a 19th century work by a Jain writer. 34 00:03:35,160 --> 00:03:38,880 According to the Dictionary of Old, gonadal by P.V. Narayan, 35 00:03:38,880 --> 00:03:47,970 but more famous and more controversial is a reference to Orbih in a ten seventy seven Gunnedah inscription known widely as the hooch. 36 00:03:47,970 --> 00:03:54,270 I hope I am seeing that right inscription and located in north central Karnataka. 37 00:03:54,270 --> 00:04:01,410 One verse in this long inscription detailing the Ganga Dynasty extols and now lost work called the gorgeous dagger, 38 00:04:01,410 --> 00:04:05,370 composed in the 9th century by the Ganga Kingship a writer. 39 00:04:05,370 --> 00:04:11,250 Here is a rough and tentative translation of the inscription that Gil Ben Hirut helped me come up with. 40 00:04:11,250 --> 00:04:17,280 Hear me now! The Great King Shiva Mara composed the go to a stick of excellent poetic merit. 41 00:04:17,280 --> 00:04:24,450 It came into being in Albany, gay and on a given, while the word openly gay is rare in Canada. 42 00:04:24,450 --> 00:04:28,950 The word only Radu is a more common word for women's pounding songs. 43 00:04:28,950 --> 00:04:35,700 It is unclear whether the inscription is saying that the article was composed as Albany gay, ironically Onyekuru, 44 00:04:35,700 --> 00:04:43,920 or that it was so popular that it became the topic of women songs as I understand it, from discussions with BTS that they're not than others. 45 00:04:43,920 --> 00:04:48,570 There's much debate in the scholarship about how to interpret this inscription, 46 00:04:48,570 --> 00:04:53,970 but it does seem to illustrate cross-fertilisation between the Canadian Marathi speaking worlds, 47 00:04:53,970 --> 00:05:01,300 aspects lost in our generally modern linguistic approaches to language and literature in the subcontinent. 48 00:05:01,300 --> 00:05:06,940 The most well-known reference to Obi is, of course, from the Sanskrit text, the 12th century of Solazyme, 49 00:05:06,940 --> 00:05:13,150 a sprawling and comprehensive encyclopaedia written by King Somesh of the Western Juluca Dynasty. 50 00:05:13,150 --> 00:05:21,740 Here, the only along with the country's three pretty three by the actually is specifically categorised as a women's labour song from Maharashtra. 51 00:05:21,740 --> 00:05:28,480 Issue you should hear or we get any any the only a song about rushing by women in 52 00:05:28,480 --> 00:05:34,570 Maharashtra a century or so later and still before any extent written Marathi literature, 53 00:05:34,570 --> 00:05:40,210 we find another reference to the 0V in the hugely influential Sanskrit tome on music. 54 00:05:40,210 --> 00:05:47,410 The Sangeet Britannica, composed by Shah, live in their sometime during the reign of the first Yadira King Zingano, 55 00:05:47,410 --> 00:05:51,550 which is circa twelve hundred to twelve forty five. 56 00:05:51,550 --> 00:06:00,610 This work discusses the OBE in a section on rebounders. A poetic song forms and discusses it as a form pleasing to the people journeymen no water. 57 00:06:00,610 --> 00:06:07,750 Both attacks use the word organica, which is close to the word or when you gain the sources. 58 00:06:07,750 --> 00:06:11,380 To round out the deck, and I also want to just briefly mention here the chuck, 59 00:06:11,380 --> 00:06:18,760 you know, more composed in the 17th 18th century by Sufi poets or be doubled in Ducati. 60 00:06:18,760 --> 00:06:26,080 In the examples cited by Eaton, Richard Eaton, the repeated line native of Italy in Marathi songs, 61 00:06:26,080 --> 00:06:30,700 seems to be replaced with ya ya ya bismol Allahu Allah. 62 00:06:30,700 --> 00:06:32,590 According to Eden and other scholars, 63 00:06:32,590 --> 00:06:41,140 the Checchi Nama poems were used by Sufis as a mechanism mediating Islam to non-Muslims of war, and that's a quote. 64 00:06:41,140 --> 00:06:47,830 But I think there's a lot more going on here. Poetry is never reducible to its rhetoric rhetorical function. 65 00:06:47,830 --> 00:06:53,050 It's also ironic that women would be seen as an audience for a form that they actually 66 00:06:53,050 --> 00:06:58,690 created between the earliest Canada and Sanskrit references to these two people. 67 00:06:58,690 --> 00:07:05,350 It's to these Sufi poets. We have, of course, the development of the orbih in Marathi literature and its various literary forms, 68 00:07:05,350 --> 00:07:10,450 as well as the birth of the Abengoa, which is often metrically indistinct from the ground. 69 00:07:10,450 --> 00:07:17,080 Not these the two poetic forms that, amongst experiments with many other metres and form song forms, 70 00:07:17,080 --> 00:07:21,400 came to dominate Marathi literature until the 17th 18th centuries. 71 00:07:21,400 --> 00:07:31,480 We do not have time here to address the references to the Oral-B in Marathi written texts, including in one of the first texts in Marathi literature. 72 00:07:31,480 --> 00:07:34,990 But taking these early accounts sources into account, 73 00:07:34,990 --> 00:07:43,210 I think we can make some tentative observations one that the Albie was a song form that circulated widely in the region. 74 00:07:43,210 --> 00:07:48,280 We now call the Deccan, perhaps as far back as the 9th century, but almost certainly by the 11th, 75 00:07:48,280 --> 00:07:55,030 and was still admired enough by the 17th 18th centuries to inspire the Sufi poets. 76 00:07:55,030 --> 00:08:00,940 To that, there was communication and circulation not only between Canada and Marathi, and later in Marathi and acne, 77 00:08:00,940 --> 00:08:07,570 but also between so-called high literary works and the oral verses of women and three to 10 seventy seven. 78 00:08:07,570 --> 00:08:14,200 One giant inscription and the 18th century stuck in our vote suggest that women's always might have been 79 00:08:14,200 --> 00:08:22,540 something of a measure of the circulation or wide spread influence over appreciation for high literary works. 80 00:08:22,540 --> 00:08:31,720 So what is the only? If you look up in the dictionary, you'll find it defined as both a woman's work song and also a literary metre or form, 81 00:08:31,720 --> 00:08:35,260 the distinction asserted, but always rather murky. 82 00:08:35,260 --> 00:08:43,690 It has no necessarily syllabic or line regularity, but the most common literary form is three and a half lines, which you also find in granule, 83 00:08:43,690 --> 00:08:52,270 always with the one constant feature in the literary or of the final fourth line shorter than the first three, the Monarto last. 84 00:08:52,270 --> 00:09:01,660 And this and it read Knicker do not refer to the or the literary or, but the song form both point out one peculiar and to them, 85 00:09:01,660 --> 00:09:10,390 defining characteristic of the 0V that it ends with the word Ovie shouting They were right that it. 86 00:09:10,390 --> 00:09:17,680 If it has the word Ovie at the end, then the experts call it movie, and a similar statement can be found in the minus or LAHSA. 87 00:09:17,680 --> 00:09:22,570 Interestingly, there is evidence of this kind of movie in the Grindel tradition, 88 00:09:22,570 --> 00:09:27,820 where we find a way of singing that ends with the repetition of the word movie. 89 00:09:27,820 --> 00:09:47,670 I'm going to just play you a brief sample here. This is a sample recorded in 1997 by James, and it's part of her mobile collection. 90 00:09:47,670 --> 00:10:01,930 So in this clip, the singers are singing the sea tion, which is the aural epic retelling of the remains of. 91 00:10:01,930 --> 00:10:19,220 And you. This is. 92 00:10:19,220 --> 00:10:25,240 OK. Go back to this, I actually had. 93 00:10:25,240 --> 00:10:35,750 Written out the. The words so that you could follow the thing, but what you notice in this is this uncanny, 94 00:10:35,750 --> 00:10:44,680 uncanny resemblance between a description from 12th century text and a way of thinking that actually persists in our time now, right? 95 00:10:44,680 --> 00:10:51,320 Tim today in his introduction to signing to Jews. Nineteen forty three, given the first publication of Transcribed, 96 00:10:51,320 --> 00:11:01,100 Grindel always has interpreted this similarity as evidence of the etymology of the word order, a long debated topic in Marathi prosody. 97 00:11:01,100 --> 00:11:06,170 He argues that it is called only because of how women sang these verses. 98 00:11:06,170 --> 00:11:13,880 Now the more common and widely accepted etymology traces or lead to the word Albany, which means to thread or neck. 99 00:11:13,880 --> 00:11:18,320 It's at least a little puzzling that a song form of one kind of woman's labour pounding and 100 00:11:18,320 --> 00:11:23,240 grinding should metaphorically be linked to another traditional form of women's labour, 101 00:11:23,240 --> 00:11:29,690 which would be weaving in Sony. But while there are numerous examples of the metaphor of grinding in Marathi poetry, 102 00:11:29,690 --> 00:11:40,250 I have not thus far come across the use of the verb Albany to describe composing or writing poetry in any of the literature I've read so far. 103 00:11:40,250 --> 00:11:48,860 But to be fair, I think one would need to read the Moneyball archives to really get that to to really explore that. 104 00:11:48,860 --> 00:11:56,810 I have found examples where the poet management uses the word Guliani or goofy Renee, 105 00:11:56,810 --> 00:12:01,340 which also mean to thread or weave to describe the composition of an O. 106 00:12:01,340 --> 00:12:05,840 For example, he uses one page to describe his act of composition. 107 00:12:05,840 --> 00:12:14,330 In one of the most famous verses on the movie in the Danish city, Daniel violence would be attained even the promoter system. 108 00:12:14,330 --> 00:12:23,120 So are they actually going to be Iwo syllables of the Divine Taste, or MRSA in the 0V form, which is easily understood? 109 00:12:23,120 --> 00:12:28,850 Why even a child? He describes his act of composing metaphorically as a stringing or weaving together 110 00:12:28,850 --> 00:12:33,950 of syllables as one would string pearls on a necklace of flowers and a garland, 111 00:12:33,950 --> 00:12:39,230 which incidentally are metaphors used in verses immediately preceding this one. 112 00:12:39,230 --> 00:12:44,540 Now this is almost exactly the mirror image of the way women describe their own compositions. 113 00:12:44,540 --> 00:12:47,480 There are numerous Grindel verses, 114 00:12:47,480 --> 00:12:57,680 the majority in over two hundred and sixty in a small collection that describe the act of singing at the grinding mill as an unravelling of the heart. 115 00:12:57,680 --> 00:13:04,730 Almost the diametric opposite, though, also linked to the metaphor of already or weakening. 116 00:13:04,730 --> 00:13:16,520 For example, here's one such verse sung by women where they say that the guy in Norway never hired donger. 117 00:13:16,520 --> 00:13:21,260 Good liturgy. So what do you, Narayana Wooroloo? Cause they catch up with you? 118 00:13:21,260 --> 00:13:25,430 Oh Lord. Ah, this is no stone, though, but a stage from the mountain. 119 00:13:25,430 --> 00:13:31,690 Oh Lord, I will unravel my heart to him. Catch up with you. 120 00:13:31,690 --> 00:13:39,310 These always describe singing to the grandma as an unburdening or release or an unravelling to depart advance. 121 00:13:39,310 --> 00:13:47,380 These verses show the grandma songs to be an exercise in self-expression that are motivated by an introspective intention, 122 00:13:47,380 --> 00:13:54,940 both by the way hallmarks of what we read in modern times poetry, in the contrast between banish it and the women singers. 123 00:13:54,940 --> 00:14:01,180 We have some of the basic contrasts and distinctions in both form and genre of the literary or the underground. 124 00:14:01,180 --> 00:14:05,770 Nancy sure conceives of is always an intentional aesthetic activity and making, 125 00:14:05,770 --> 00:14:12,580 whereas women singers expressive lyricism is a is an activity of undoing, unwinding and releasing. 126 00:14:12,580 --> 00:14:17,620 Still, we should not be too hasty in seeing these metaphors of compositions as a binary. 127 00:14:17,620 --> 00:14:20,530 There are still two sides of the same moon, so to speak. 128 00:14:20,530 --> 00:14:27,460 Weaving and unravelling the metaphor of weaving for poetry and song is the long history in literature and culture across the globe, 129 00:14:27,460 --> 00:14:34,030 right down to the very word text with roots in the Greek text or in Latin text airy meaning to weave. 130 00:14:34,030 --> 00:14:37,540 I cannot help thinking here of Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, 131 00:14:37,540 --> 00:14:45,130 who spent her days weaving to keep away her suitor and her nights unravelling her weaving to ensure that it is never finished. 132 00:14:45,130 --> 00:14:54,010 In some conversations I've had with Grindel singers, they also describe making movies with the words with the verbs shortening or widowed. 133 00:14:54,010 --> 00:14:55,540 But perhaps more importantly, 134 00:14:55,540 --> 00:15:04,450 here I want to suggest that the dialogical interiority of the will all the conversation of intimate revelation that is the rule. 135 00:15:04,450 --> 00:15:10,840 The Oconee is also mirrored in the aesthetics of so much written poetry, especially poetry. 136 00:15:10,840 --> 00:15:15,610 In these women's compositions, we find a familiar poetics of intimacy. 137 00:15:15,610 --> 00:15:20,620 The verses, whether addressed to that by Shweta Lorde Mill or to a daughter, 138 00:15:20,620 --> 00:15:27,520 mother, friend or saki, are replete with what Martin calls intimate speech genres. 139 00:15:27,520 --> 00:15:33,970 Martin writes that intimate speech quote is imbued with deep confidence in the addressee and his sympathy 140 00:15:33,970 --> 00:15:40,270 in the sensitivity and goodwill of his response of understanding in this atmosphere of profound trust. 141 00:15:40,270 --> 00:15:43,570 The speaker reveals his internal depths. 142 00:15:43,570 --> 00:15:54,400 This sounds very much with open management and turning to a familiar poetic form like the Algie about less easily understood even by a child, 143 00:15:54,400 --> 00:16:02,920 opens the gates of the literary too familiar to metres and intimate speech genres in a nearly literal rising to use Sheldon Pollock's 144 00:16:02,920 --> 00:16:11,740 useful term language in each epic Mark Twain wrote quote certain speech genres set the tone for the development of literary language, 145 00:16:11,740 --> 00:16:20,170 both in Marathi writing and poetry as it developed, especially in the book The Tradition as arguably in other the traditions in north and south. 146 00:16:20,170 --> 00:16:22,090 The intimate speech honours of women. 147 00:16:22,090 --> 00:16:30,160 The poetics of intimacy in women's songs have influenced the development of literary form, style motifs, themes and voices. 148 00:16:30,160 --> 00:16:38,050 I want to make it clear here that I'm not arguing as writing to hit it that the Grandville OBE was the origin of the literary world. 149 00:16:38,050 --> 00:16:43,960 In fact, the relationship between the two is not a linear one, I think, but nor we should. 150 00:16:43,960 --> 00:16:51,020 Should we assume them to be completely separate and unrelated? There is no money genesis in poetry. 151 00:16:51,020 --> 00:16:57,380 There is rather to draw on a concept from Daniel Holloway is simple thesis in making wit. 152 00:16:57,380 --> 00:17:03,710 It's a word she says that's proper to complex, dynamic, responsive, situated historical systems. 153 00:17:03,710 --> 00:17:09,620 It's a word for word wording with in company. The oral and written are not mutually exclusive, 154 00:17:09,620 --> 00:17:15,020 but responsive and situated ways of making poetry with and for all the varieties 155 00:17:15,020 --> 00:17:20,120 of all forms of morality and writing that are deep and intimate conversation. 156 00:17:20,120 --> 00:17:24,450 Now, the death knell for the grand tradition has been sounding for the last 50 years or so, 157 00:17:24,450 --> 00:17:29,900 at least in reality, the Granville song tradition has persisted over the last millennia. 158 00:17:29,900 --> 00:17:38,480 Not only is it the oldest form of minority groups attested to in writing, but it may be the longest continuing verse tradition in Russia. 159 00:17:38,480 --> 00:17:46,070 Far from signalling its end to actuality in print and even later, radio and film only added to the repertoire of topics, 160 00:17:46,070 --> 00:17:52,040 imagery and melodies in the grand songs even today, well into the third decade of the new millennium. 161 00:17:52,040 --> 00:18:00,380 We find women who know and sing these songs. It was not writing or even entertainment technologies that struck a terminal blow to the songs, 162 00:18:00,380 --> 00:18:05,690 but rather a different technology the electric flower moon, which ended the need for daily grinding. 163 00:18:05,690 --> 00:18:09,530 Still, even today, decades after the flour mill replaced the stone mill, 164 00:18:09,530 --> 00:18:14,360 Grindel songs are being recorded and digitised by the Grain Mill Songs Project. 165 00:18:14,360 --> 00:18:22,430 The heavy rooted, grounded stone mill was the site and occasionally for long sustained and sustaining old growth tradition of songs 166 00:18:22,430 --> 00:18:29,090 that have circulated widely in the vast and interdependent network of morality and languages and literatures. 167 00:18:29,090 --> 00:18:36,620 And now even digital media in the landscape of poetic making, including in written literature since the 13th century. 168 00:18:36,620 --> 00:18:40,430 I want to end with this poem. 169 00:18:40,430 --> 00:18:49,280 Many of you may have gotten it on Ushahidi as she made the rounds on WhatsApp, which made the rounds author list, 170 00:18:49,280 --> 00:18:55,430 but it was clearly a poem moulded out of the stories in intimate speech genres of movies. 171 00:18:55,430 --> 00:18:56,630 I've done it here. 172 00:18:56,630 --> 00:19:06,710 I don't have time to read it, but it's all based on these songs about Ruffini and Bittle and The Sun's coming and Rukmini getting ruthlessly because, 173 00:19:06,710 --> 00:19:13,370 you know she has to do all the work. And you know, this is these are the grind mill songs. 174 00:19:13,370 --> 00:19:15,470 And then finally, if I have a minute, 175 00:19:15,470 --> 00:19:23,650 how many do have a couple of minutes or I just wanted to introduce for discussion throughout the hour for this conference? 176 00:19:23,650 --> 00:19:28,520 An ecological metaphor of circulation, which applies to what I presented. 177 00:19:28,520 --> 00:19:39,370 OK, half a minute, have a minute and that it is based on the the revolution of study in forest ecosystems and the discovery, 178 00:19:39,370 --> 00:19:50,110 the vast subterranean mycorrhizal fungal network connecting trees and plants and fungi together in a complex and interdependent system of circulation. 179 00:19:50,110 --> 00:20:01,600 And I think that this is a good way to think about the way oral forms and written forms also have networks of communication between them. 180 00:20:01,600 --> 00:20:03,754 So I'll end right there.