The Oraon, a Dravidian speaking tribe has a long history of migration from the Karnataka region finally settling in the Chotonagpur region of the present Jharkhand State of India. It is observed that for the Oraon Deccan has been the area of their physical characterization, the valley Son the area of their economic, social, moral and mental characterization and the Chotonagpur Plateau area originally the place of their consolidation and subsequently of their disintegration and degradation.
Despite these facts the Oraon evolved rites and ceremonies, religious, magical practices to ensure their safety, they also evolved music and dances appropriate to each different festive occasion.
The present work, Anthropology of Oraon Music is an attempt at substantiating this view-point by covering their musical forms, preparing their musical notations, analyzing them structurally and understanding by putting them in their ritual context.
Apart from the introduction the data collected on music have been arranged into six more chapters such as on Xaddi or Khadd songs associated with their fertility and prosperity and Benga, the marriage songs related to besides human beings to paddy seedlings, fruit trees, tanks and wells. Other four chapters are each on Jhumuri and Karam associated with rain making celebration of the new birth order, Fagu adopting it from their neighbouring Hindus in a mutilated form and summary analysis of the Oraon melodies with some concluding remarks respectively.
The Oraon musical forms analyzed from the aesthetical point of view and the song texts not only reflect the acculturative influence on them they are a manifestation of their living nature and conjuring images of its interaction with the supernatural world.
Onkar Prasad (b.1948) is an anthropologist and ethnomusicologist. He was formerly Professor at the Dept. of Anthropology and Dean, Vidya Bhavan (Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences), Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, W. Bengal. Among his major works are Folk Music and Folk Dances of Banaras reprinted in 2010 by The Anthropological Survey of India, Kolkata, Santal Music: A Study in Pattern and Process of Cultural Persistence reprinted in 2013 by Inter-India Publications, New Delhi and Methods of Raga Formation and Music Analysis (jointly with his teacher, Prof. Mohan Singh Khangura, a music maestro) published in 2015 by Parampara, Kolkata. His book, Musical Cosmology of the Santal with the cosmological dimension of the Santal music and Anthropology of Sound : Santal Tribe have been published by B.R. Publishing Corporation, New Delhi in 2016. Dr. Prasad is credited for nurturing Creative Anthropology. Introduction of Auto Graphic Method, Anthrop ophilosophic Perspective and the concept of Sadhaanikaram (Commonization) to understand the process through which the Indian civilization persists cutting across ethnic, linguistic and regional boundaries of the country include Anthropology of Oraon Music and Santal Thought: Reflections of Time and Space.
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