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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 ravanhattha is a fiddle with a long bamboo neck and coconut shell resonator; it has 2 main strings, 14 sympathetic strings, a small lower bridge, no upper bridge, and ghugroos (bells) tied to the end of the long bow. A virtuoso instrument capable of sustaining resonant melodic lines, the ravanhattha accompanies the gav, or the sung part, of the episode, in which the male singer-narrarator (bhopa) begins the line, which is then picked up and completed by his female partner (generally his wife). The epic is sung in front of a parh, or painted scroll, which is used to demonstrate the specific incidents and characters in an episode, the bhopa pointing them out during the arthav, or the declamatory “explanation” of the sung section in prose. Both the gav and an excerpt from the arthav are included in this recording, which is prefaced by the blowing of a shankh (conch-shell).

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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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