FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

This issue of Eastern Quarterly (Volume 5 Issue 4) entitled POPULAR CULTURE: MUSIC, TEXTS AND MESSAGES explores the changing sensibilities in popular culture in the Northeast, particularly in the field of music, and the forms in which it is expressed. Much of these changes came in the wake of our encounter with British colonialism and Christian world in the later half of the 19th century. However, this is not to underplay the popular cultural trends that exist through cultural interface of different communities and worldviews within the region itself. As detailed by the contributors to this issue of Eastern Quarterly, the changes range from embracing entirely new forms of music genre like Western Rock music to subtle tonal shifts while retaining the traditional form. What stories do these changing modes of cultural expression narrate? How do these stories enrich our understanding of the complex social reality in our part of the world? These questions encapsulate the touchstone against which we in Eastern Quarterly weigh and measure our explorations. In the present context, the question also begs itself: Why choose to explore popular musical culture?

One obvious reason is that research on and about issues of the Northeastern region has, by and large, barely touched contemporary cultures which lie outside the conventional areas of formal research. For example, there has so far been not much serious investigation into the forms and contents of new modes of cultural expression as distinct from studies on folklore, oral tradition and canonical literature. The underlying assumption appears to be why should one be concerned at all with the trend of new cultural patterns – more specifically, popular culture?

Popular culture, as it is understood in common parlance, is not only the body of ideas but also attitudes that reflects the images of phenomenon in a given spatial and temporal frame. Though heavily influenced by the impact of modern mass media, it is the cultural experience widely enjoyed by members of a group within a society through stages of change and transformation. We in Eastern Quarterly, therefore, feel that engagement with patterns of cultural expression, starting with music, can help capture the complexity of the social reality in the Northeast in fuller measure. With exposure to all forms of practices in an increasingly globalized world via the media and cultural encounters, there is a need to at least start looking at these new experiences to understand the message inherently present in all these forms. We also believe that engaging with popular culture – whether it is literature, music or dance – is a real-time negotiation with the ground realities. Understanding popular culture from this perspective can help broad-base as well as sharpen our perceptions of the lived world.

The four theme papers in this issue is an initial effort to question, challenge and evaluate the meanings and purposes of the texts as well as the content of the popular cultural patterns. Towards this end, Ronid Chingangbam in the first paper, “Imitation of the Imitated: Popular Music and the Art of Rejec-tion and Reflection” weaves back and forth into a comparative evaluation of “rock music” – a form of youth culture which is fast gaining ground in the Northeast in general and Manipur in particular – between its place of origin, the US, and the Northeast region of India. In the process, Chingangbam examines whether and how it is following and/or departing from that evolutionary trajectory in its practice in the Northeast by tracing the “imitative” phase which is now showing signs of reinventing itself as a vehicle of protest in the cultural setting of Manipur. He argues that the phenomenon is in need of a new direction based on our everyday experiences of the realities in the same manner that the emergence of certain popular cultures in the West is rooted in the socio-political conditions of the times.

Usham Rojio in his paper, “Poetic Discourse in the Songs of Tapta,” further explores the linkage between rootedness and creativity at the micro level of an individual performer in the cultural setting of Manipur. He discusses how a popular singer in Manipur, Tapta, has responded to the oppressive social and political conditions. He relates conditions of inequality or injustice to changing definitions of these conditions and further argues that Tapta’s songs represent a symbolic step in redefining the notions of injustice and oppression and creating a social ideology for social movements. While doing so, he analyses the work of Tapta, a singer who has captured the imagination of the young and the old with his inimitable style for social and political commentaries through his songs. He takes note of the “ritual nature of music, and the effect of this ritual in creating feelings of identification.”

Utpola Borah’s paper shows another side of the discourse wherein non-modern rituals and practices of a traditional society negotiates with changing times as well as external forces while retaining the secular space thereby ensuring a continuum of social solidarity and order. In the paper “Music, Body and Sexuality in Bihu Songs of Assam” Borah highlights how song, ritual and body become central to not only defining cultural identity of Assamese society but also how these play the role of a catalyst to bring about social change and solidarity. She has painstakingly delved into the variegated forms of Bihu song traditions and, in the process, brought out certain “erotic and sexual characteristics of Bihu songs and dance” from an ethno-musicological perspective. In doing so, she gives readers a glimpse into a society’s pragmatic regulation of sexual mores now banished by a puritanical outlook. In course of her presentation, Borah further traces the transition of a festival that originated in a fertility cult in which sex and reproduction were dominant themes to one wherein worship and prayer have superseded the original sexual content. The dynamics of Bihu song and its tradition show the deep-rootedness of this popular tradition among the Assamese population cutting across gender and age.

While dynamics and trends of popular culture work on a wider scale in larger societies, the smaller communities, too, engage in similar forms of reconfiguring its cultural identity – particularly in the wake of more dynamic forces of modernism and evangelizing cultures. Till the advent of British colonialism and the Church, these communities had remained less engaged with external cultural forces. Towards understanding this, the paper “Problematizing Cultural Appropriation: Tangkhul Folk-Blues and Socio-Political Aspirations” by Dhiren Sadokpam looks at how the notion of cultural appropriation operates in a setting wherein there is an amalgama-tion of the folk with the modern. He takes the readers through the music and text of an artiste, Rewben Mashangva, to address the issue of appropriation of popular culture. The recent trail of recognition of Rewben Mashangva speaks of some urgency in the enterprise as Rewben Mashangva has attained almost a cult status in Tangkhul Naga folk music. Sadokpam further argues that such works can be better understood in terms of a society’s “multiple exposures” to world cultures, which have not led to the reproduction of the same culture. He also argues that there is a need to go beyond the binaries of “dominance and subservience” for a better understanding of the politics of “cultural appropriation.”

KALEIDOSCOPE Section consists of two papers. The first one entitled “Changing Role of Women in Conflict Situations: A Study on Nalbari District of Assam” by Sanghamitra Choudhury discusses the nature of the impact of armed conflict on women. Through the case study of women in Nalbari District of Assam, she argues that armed conflict across and amongst communities often inflicts irreparable damages to the people – physically, culturally, economically and psychologically. It tends to exacerbate gender inequality and encourage gender specific disadvantages which are not always recognized and adequately addressed. No less pertinently, Sanghamitra argues that women are tarred for the “sins” of their spouses and, what is even sadder, made to suffer for it. The second paper by R.S. Tohring, “The Anal Naga Tribe and the Chavan Kumhrin Festival,” analyses a festival and argues that it has not only regained its popularity among the Anals but has also brought unity for the tribe. While analysing the festival, she also makes an effort to negate the arguments put forward by some that Christianity is destabilizing the cultural practices of the tribes.

In TAKE-Two, Anuradha M. Chenoy commends the last issue of Eastern Quarterly entitled GENDER STUDIES IN THE NORTHEAST for questioning some of the stereotype images that are painted about women in the Northeast – of their being emancipated, free, vocal and socially dynamic. She takes a sardonic dig at the omnipotent patriarchy by saying that if there is one thing that links men in the Northeast to the rest of India, (and much of the world) it is their deeply patriarchal nature, which remains embedded in relations and structures despite globalization, development or the lack of it.
We in Eastern Quarterly hope that our readers would savour the fare. It is equally possible that they may not take too kindly to the formulations advanced by a writer or all of them. To that we would say that you have a right to be disappointed. Our only request is that those differences should be recorded and sent to us so that we can jointly take the debate forward.