Her deep throated voice resonates and strikes a chord even as music builds to a crescendo. The month of aashadh is here and she revels in songs that revive the joie de vivre of sawan. The beat is old. You seem to have heard it years ago. And even though the words may not be comprehensible until explained (as she sings in Awadhi, Bhojpuri and Bundelkhandi too), you cannot help swaying to the music of folk. Malini Awasthi holds stage and the audience with her tremendous energetic and passionate singing and dancing.
The magic she creates with traditional folk songs from Uttar Pradesh has clearly mesmerised audiences across the world. Having received the Padma Shri this year, here she talks about her love for folk, the genre and the need to take it to the younger generation.
Excerpts:
What spurred your love for the folk?
Various factors I believe. I grew up in a family of doctors. My mother was very social. Mostly we stayed in the hospital campuses. All these sick people from rural backgrounds would come and share their pain and agony conversing in their local dialect. I also visited people in the villages with my father. I think that has greatly contributed to me building up a natural connect with the masses. I have seen the rural life at close quarters. I was born in Kannauj. My two taijis (the wives of my father’s elder brothers)) were great singers. Both sang traditional folk. They used to play the dholak and sing beautiful folk from the olden times. Of course, these were the most underrated wedding folk songs that hardly anyone understood.
My mother was never into singing but somehow I don’t know why she was very keen that I learn classical singing. My initial training has been in classical. But my mother also pushed me into sitting with my taiji and learning the folk. Half the time I would not understand what they were singing in their typical dialect; the words wouldn’t make sense. If they did make sense I was too young to understand the deeper meaning of these songs. Then when I was in Standard VIII, I started to write those songs because when I used to sing wrongly I would be scolded. Once I started writing, those words started making sense. And it was then that I began to enjoy them.
There was always a natural calling inside to understand anything written in folk dialect. I remember when I used to study Hindi whether it was Surdas, Kabir, Tulsi or Bihari, whether it was bhajans or bandishis that we have (bada khayal, chota khayal and thumri), I would always try to read more than what the teacher taught. I used to feel bad about the perceptions people had about folk. I could never understand this step-motherly treatment towards folk. All these factors made me choose folk. I took it as a challenge to bring to people what they did not know and were missing out.
How did you manage to popularise folk?
It was not about me launching a career. It was always about folk. It was solely because of my larger than life passion for folk that I just took to it like fish takes to water. It is like madness; it grips you. You can see it on stage. UP folk has pan-India reach as compared to other folk. If people across India can understand “Ramcharit Manas” and “Hanuman Chalisa” that are in Awadhi, then they can surely make sense of Tulsi, Meera and Kabir. My songs are the same. If people who know nothing of folk can dance to “chalat musafir moh liya re”, or “hori khele raghubeera awadh mei”, “thade rahiyo” or “mohe panghat pe”, which are famous film songs from UP heartland, then it was enough to convince me that folk can find a place in the hearts of people. But maybe I need to set a different trend to make folk popular.
I have observed that women used to sit and perform folk. So I thought that in order to reach the masses and connect with them I need to stand or dance and perform. In the classical genre you have division of music – vocals, instrumental (further sub-divided into tantra vadya and aghat vadya), natak et al. But basic folk has no division. It is raw and pure in its form. And the same person who sings, also dances, as well as narrates and explains a tale related to a particular song. And I felt I had to take that role upon myself because as a story teller and a folk singer I needed to communicate that to my audience.
In earlier times when people performed folk, they were connecting with a rural audience that knew the dialect, knew the village life that understood what the songs were about since it was in their language. But now I am singing folk in front of an urban crowd who romanticises with the idea of folk, with the idea of village, panghat, ghunghat, etc. but have not seen it or left it far behind. And I have to bring it to the present generation. I cannot be rigid. I have to make folk easy to understand for this modern crowd. So I try to make my folk very contemporary with sound also. This is the best way to reach out to the younger generation. If you don’t then the art form will not reach the masses.
You sang the Mithila sohar for the girl child…
Yes, sohars are sung traditionally only on the birth of a boy. It is an innovation because I wrote it for the girl child. It has been a common practice that even at the birth of a girl; sohars would be sung only for boys. As a shagun it would be sung but they would sing of Ram, why not Sita?
What are your plans to take folk forward?
I want more and more people to sing folk. All schools must have syllabus sensitising every child about the importance of culture and folk traditions of their region. Every child should know about their folk artists, they should know what is aalah, what makes folk integral to our culture. When people take up civil services they end up reading about the culture of every state because tomorrow they might be handling the cultural sector. You want well-informed people to join the IAS. And the syllabus should be so designed as not to be graded but simply taught to inform and imbibe and gain knowledge. When people say nautanki, one should not laugh. Nautanki as an art form in UP has been entertaining people for hundreds of years. Today what you see on television as Kapil Sharma’s show is nothing but a modernand improvised nautanki. Every state must have a reservoir and repertory of folk where they can document information and highlight it in a sort of a museum to make people aware of their regional art form. Today with the help of technology all this is possible.
How will you sum up your journey as a folk artist….
All selfless journeys reach great heights and the joy of being able to make the modern generation listen to these hundred year old songs and to be able to convey the spirit of that song is amazing. I am swimming against the tide. Dhaare ke vipreet behne jaisa kaam hai mera….folk is nothing if I do not reach the hearts of people.
