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Epic of Pabuji

from Rajasthan: A Musical Journey by Rajrang

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Drawing on a single episode from Rajasthan’s most loved and widely disseminated oral epic of Pabuji, the three excerpts represented here exemplify three distinct performance traditions of the epic, which are shaped around the rhythimic and musical dynamics of three instruments: the ravanhattha, the mata, and the gujari. All three excerpts focus on the meeting of the brigand-hero Pabuji and his four companions with Deval, a woman from the Charan (bard) community who rears horses and cows. Pabu bargains hard for a magical mare called Kesar Kalami, which has been kept hidden in an underground cave by Deval. After initial reluctance to part with the mare, Deval finally relents, but on condition that Pabu will protect her cows and sacrifice himself, if necessary, in the eventuality of her animals being stolen. This is precisely what materializes in the course of this folk epic, in which Pabuji (an avatar of Lakshmana from the Ramayana) is transformed into a bhomiya, a martyr who lays down his life for the protection of cattle and is subsequently deified.

The mata is a pot-drum, which has an auspicious significance in the epic of Pabuji. The Pabu ka mata rendering of the epic is more stark and ritualized than the performances played against the visual backdrop of the painted scroll (parh). Sung by devotees of Pabuji, the two narrators punctuate their soulful singing of the epic by drumming on two matas, at times simultaneously, with very complex and extended rhythmic patterns. Of particular interest in this recording are the split-second intersections of voice and drum, and the almost seamless continuity between the performers, who pick up (and punctuate) the syncopated drumming with the meticulous clarity and desert-like calm of their voices.

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from Rajasthan: A Musical Journey, released July 8, 2013

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Rajrang by Rupayan Jodhpur, India

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