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Showing posts from July, 2012

BHAVAI- entertainment as way of social change

A girl seating at Darpan academy’s theater suddenly reminded me of Gujarati folk theatre and its initial traditions and it gave emancipatory insights when I found relevance of my studies in this died out fomat of theatre. I am talking about Bhavai, a folk theatre from Gujarat and Rajasthan region of India originated 1360 AD. Uniqueness of this theatre is embedded in its way of depicting and narrating caste ridden Indian society. Bhavai, was initiated by group of people who were actually excluded from the caste system, it was a kind of punishment given for not following caste norms this group was led by Asiat Thakar who wrote about 360 Vesha (plays, also known as swang ) among which 60 has survived till date. This group instead of protesting against social structure in violent manner took creative and sarcastic way of protesting. They started providing entertainment to people, but how entertainment can be way of protest?? Looking at format of Bhavai, it easy to find out th
A girl seating at Darpan academy’s theater suddenly reminded me of Gujarati folk theatre and its initial traditions and it gave emancipatory insights when I found relevance of my studies in this died out fomat of theatre. I am talking about Bhavai, a folk theatre from Gujarat and Rajasthan region of India originated 1360 AD. Uniqueness of this theatre is embedded in its way of depicting and narrating caste ridden Indian society. Bhavai, was initiated by group of people who were actually excluded from the caste system, it was a kind of punishment given for not following caste norms this group was led by Asiat Thakar who wrote about 360 Vesha (plays, also known as swang ) among which 60 has survived till date. This group instead of protesting against social structure in violent manner took creative and sarcastic way of protesting. They started providing entertainment to people, but how entertainment can be way of protest?? Looking at format of Bhavai, it easy to find out that

MOVING UPWARD OR MOVING FURTHER

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Coke studio, Great effort to create and preserve wonderful and soul enchanting music. On other side there came a series called satymev jayate as effort to make people aware social (and may be increasing) problems. Both the programs are crucial for television viewership transition faced by Indian broadcasters. For first time, comparing coke studio and satymev jayate seemed to be an insane effort to me but you can see the other side of coin when you give it a second thought. Coke studio and saymev jayate obviously technically different series, but for me they are doing great job of changing society.  Coke studio changing society? How? …. Through music!!! Yes, coke studio is making effort to bring in the songs which are highly philosophical and they fuse it with such stream of music that it directly touches to emotions. Lyrics are not, were not and will not be the constraint to understand those songs and music.   Such emotional realizations about self, god and community