Dāphā: Sacred Singing in a South Asian City

Music, Performance and Meaning in Bhaktapur, Nepal

Richard Widdess

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781351946278
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Música

D?ph?, or d?ph? bhajan, is a genre of Hindu-Buddhist devotional singing, performed by male, non-professional musicians of the farmer and other castes belonging to the Newar ethnic group, in the towns and villages of the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. The songs, their texts, and their characteristic responsorial performance-style represent an extension of pan-South Asian traditions of r?ga- and t?la-based devotional song, but at the same time embody distinctive characteristics of Newar culture. This culture is of unique importance as an urban South Asian society in which many traditional models survive into the modern age.

There are few book-length studies of non-classical vocal music in South Asia, and none of d?ph?. Richard Widdess describes the music and musical practices of d?ph?, accounts for their historical origins and later transformations, investigates links with other South Asian traditions, and describes a cultural world in which music is an integral part of everyday social and religious life. The book focusses particularly on the musical system and structures of d?ph?, but aims to integrate their analysis with that of the cultural and historical context of the music, in order to address the question of what music means in a traditional South Asian society.

Chapter 1
Introduction

An Evening Hymn

The streets of Bhaktapur are quiet as I make my way to the local temple for the evening dāphā session. In the square the last few stallholders are wrapping up unsold wares in the cloths on which they had laid them out on the brick paving. Small children released from school and with nothing to do in the evening chase each other around, but apart from the occasional tractor or motor-cycle passing through, nothing else disturbs the prevailing tranquillity. The dāphā group, sitting on their wooden verandah at the top of the temple steps, have already played the obligatory introduction on drum and cymbals which announces their presence and invites the gods to listen to their singing, and are sitting quietly discussing what songs to sing and waiting for more members to join them. So far there are only four singers and the drummer. The singers sit in two facing rows, the drummer on the third side of an imaginary square, facing into the middle. Between the musicians are two manuscript song-books with pages folded concertina-fashion, and a small brass oil-lamp, its wick flickering. The lamp is not needed for light, unless there is a power cut, since there is a naked electric bulb hanging from the roof of the verandah above us, but all the same it is carefully tended by a small, elderly man, who sits next to the singers but does not sing himself. He periodically adjusts the wick, or refuels the lamp from a small brass oil-jug. His face is wrinkled with age, his bare legs painfully thin, but the mud-stains on them show that he has been working in his rice-field today. Some of the singers, all men and mostly farmers, are also wearing work-stained clothes, but they all sport colourful Nepali caps of the latest local designs. I rest my back against one of the richly carved, age-blackened pillars, and wait for the singing to begin.

The first song emerges gradually from a desultory discussion of the news of the day, and much shuffling of pages of the manuscripts. Suddenly someone is singing the rāg, the introductory melody, but the conversation continues, and it’s hard to tell who is actually singing. The drummer starts to play introductory phrases on his black, barrel-shaped drum, which he cradles on his lap; as the rāg comes to an end the cymbals are picked up, cigarettes extinguished, and the song begins, the cymbals shattering the quiet of the square with their bright ringing tone. The first song is fast, vigorous and short. The two sides sing alternately. The singing is nasal, voices straining for the upper notes, but at first it’s hard to hear the melody over the sound of the cymbals and drum. The singing becomes gradually stronger as more people arrive and take their places on one side or the other; eventually there are five or six on each side – not a full complement, this being a not particularly festive day, but enough to produce a fervent sound on each side. A few passers-by stop and listen; a father holds his small daughter, who claps her hands in time to the cymbals while he makes a respectful gesture towards the temple. The singers, absorbed in their music, ignore them.

The song is soon finished, and we all touch our foreheads in a gesture of respect for the gods we have invoked. The conversation resumes. Which song to sing next? Not that one, it has the same metre as the one we’ve just sung. It’s Thursday, so we should sing one for Nāsaḥdyaḥ. What page is such and such? Can’t find it. Someone helpfully produces an grimy, flattened cigarette packet with a roughly scribbled index of favourite songs. The rāg begins. The singer has a pleasing voice, but half-way through he forgets the continuation, and another singer helps out. The other singers do not conceal their amusement.

This song starts slowly: on certain beats the singers pause for a moment, the drummer playing a roll, before going on. The first line is sung four times, by the two sides of the choir alternately. Eventually the tempo increases, the first and second lines alternating between the two sides in an elaborate pattern; the six-beat rhythm of the slow section gives way to a lilting seven-beat metre for the fast. If pitching is at times approximate, the rhythm is precise; as the verse unfolds the rhythm and tempo become faster and more complex, the drummer delighting in off-beat accents and constantly-changing patterns moving in and out of phase with the cymbal clashes. His dance-like rhythms remind me that the space between the two rows of singers is where the gods may, if they like the music, come down to dance. The dance of the gods is invisible, so no-one knows for certain whether they have come; but no one walks across this space while the singing is in progress, just in case.

Our spirits are uplifted by the sheer rhythmic momentum; a broad grin spreads from face to face. We seem to be in a world of our own. The singers crouch intently over the song-books, the cymbal players concentrate on their instruments; the drummer closes his eyes, and would seem asleep were it not for his constantly moving hands. The old man’s face is permanently creased into a wrinkly smile, a wizened finger tapping a wizened leg in time to the music. A cockroach scuttles across the dusty floor, but nobody notices. After a few minutes the drummer opens his eyes, the dancing rhythm subsides and the tempo returns to the slow six-beat pattern: the first verse of the song has been completed.

More verses, more songs and an hour later, it’s time to end the session. One of the oil-lamps is replenished with extra wicks, and these are all lit so that it glows brightly like a miniature burning Christmas tree. The last song is a short one, but as the voices subside, the drum and cymbals continue, playing at the fastest speed, as if unable to stop under the force of their own momentum. Despite the intensity of the playing, a moment of stillness descends over the group. Some join their hands in prayer, others gaze thoughtfully into the distance, or into the flickering flames of the oil-lamp. Not a word is spoken. When the instrumentalists finally conclude, the leading cymbal player silently takes his instrument to the oil-lamp, touches it to the flames, and then brings it to each of us in turn. We stretch out our hands to touch the cymbals, symbol of the presence of Nāsaḥdyaḥ, the god of music and dance, and then touch our foreheads in order to receive his blessings. The musicians greet each other: ‘Bhāgya! I revere you!’ The manuscripts are folded up and carefully wrapped in protective cloths. The lamps and straw mats are returned to the temple, and the drummer swings his drum over his shoulder. The group depart to their homes with few words. ‘Kanhe jhāsã! Come again tomorrow!’ ‘Has. OK.’

This impressionistic account of a typical dāphā singing session is intended to convey something of the atmosphere in which the music is performed; an atmosphere that is created partly by the musical sound itself, partly by the interactions among the musicians during and between songs, and partly by the time, place and social soundscape within which the singing occurs. It is an atmosphere that combines genial sociability with musical enjoyment, religious devotion and occasionally a profound sense of the spiritual.

While the atmosphere is unique to each occasion and cannot be captured on tape or film, other features of dāphā performance are standard and more easily documented. Dāphā is always sung by two sides of singers, who sing alternately and accompany themselves on cymbals (tāḥ and jhyālīcā). The sides normally sit on either side of the drummer (see Figure 1.1), but they may also perform walking in procession at a religious festival. They are almost invariably accompanied by the barrel-drum khĩ, or as it is called in Bhaktapur, lālākhĩ:¹ an instrument unique to the Newar ethnic group, this drum is more smoothly curved in outline than the North Indian pakhāvaj (which the Newars also play, calling it paścimā), and it has a permanent black tuning-spot on each of its two drum-heads. If available, one or two straight natural trumpets (pvaṅā) may be added to the ensemble; they play only during the faster portions of each verse, when they sound a continuous monotone rhythmically inflected to imitate the rhythm of the drum.

Other features of performance practice include the singing of an unmetered, solo melodic introduction to each song, the rāg; and the antiphonal repetition of each line, in slow and fast tempi, according to a set permutatory pattern, as a result of which the singing of a relatively short song is extended to 15 minutes or more in duration. Also typical are the rituals that frame a singing session, including the introductory and closing instrumental invocations (dyaḥlhāyegu), the lighting of the lamp (āratī) and the worship of the cymbals (tāḥ) (see further Chapter 3).

The songs sung by dāphā singers form a repertoire that overlaps only partly with other styles of Newar devotional music, which are believed to have developed more recently. It is a historical repertoire, and uses languages that are little understood in Bhaktapur today: Sanskrit, Hindi (especially in its Maithili dialect) and old Newari. But singers take pride in the fact that this repertoire, and the dāphā performance tradition in general, are a heritage from the past: particularly, a heritage from the Golden Age of Newar history, from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, when the Kathmandu Valley was ruled by the Mallas – Newar kings of Bhaktapur, Pātan (Lalitpur) and Kathmandu (Kāntipur). When the king of Gorkha, Pṛthvī Nārāyan Shāh, deposed the Newar king of Bhaktapur in 1769, and established himself in Kathmandu as sole ruler of Nepal, he did not prevent the continuation of Newar cultural traditions, many of which are maintained to this day, especially among the farming community.

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1. One dāphā group in Bhaktapur use the single-headed drum kvakhĩcā instead of lālākhĩ. The smaller, cylindrical drum dhalak is sometimes used during the rainy season when the lālākhĩ may not be played (see p. 97).

Figure 1.1 Dattātreya Navadāphā group, 2012

To set the scene for this study of dāphā, we must first briefly review the history of Newar culture and music in the Kathmandu Valley, and then introduce the main features of that culture, especially in relation to society, religion and music.

Outline of Newar Cultural History

The Kathmandu Valley is an elevated plateau, some 4,500 feet in altitude, that nestles among the foothills of the Himalaya mountain chain, surrounded by a ring of mountains rising to 8,200 feet. In geological times the valley was a lake, and its soil is consequently among the most fertile in Nepal. This fact, together with the geographical position of the valley, led to the development of urban culture there, beginning in the early centuries AD. From the start, settlements in the valley were in communication with cultures on the plains of India to the south, and in Tibet and China to the north. The valley lay on an important trade route between India and China, along which traders, pilgrims, craftsmen and scholars made their way in both directions. But travellers were compelled to wait in the valley for several months, because malarial forests barred the route southwards to India in the rainy season, while in winter the high passes northwards to Tibet were blocked with snow. So the valley occupied a strategic location in which its inhabitants grew exceptionally prosperous on the passing trans-Himalayan trade (Slusser 1982: I, 6), and benefitted from many cultural imports.

It is not certain who the earliest inhabitants were. Inscriptions and later histories speak of a Kirāta dynasty who ruled until c. 300 AD, followed by the Licchavi dynasty until 879. These may have been the ancestors of the present Newars, an ethnic group who claim to be indigenous to the valley; they are identifiable principally by their language, known as Newari to linguists, Nepāl Bhāṣā to Nepali scholars, and Newā Bhay to most Newars. This language is a member of the Tibeto-Burman family with regard to its grammar, but its vocabulary is rich in loan-words from Sanskrit, Hindi and Nepali. Early inscriptions are in Sanskrit, the sacred language of Hinduism, but they contain place-names that suggest the early presence of a Newari vernacular (Slusser 1982: I, 10).

Hinduism and Buddhism arrived in the valley from India and became established religions in the early centuries AD. Little architecture survives from this period, but several masterpieces of stone sculpture, strongly influenced by Gupta-period art of northern India, testify to the highly developed aesthetic and religious culture of the Licchavi period. Almost nothing is known about music in this period, apart from some isolated and fragmentary pieces of evidence. Drummers feature in sculpture, especially as accompanists to the gaṇa or retinue of ghosts, skeletons and godlings that dance in honour of Śiva. The importance of music is confirmed by a seventh-century Chinese account referring to the inhabitants of the valley playing drums and trumpets (Snellgrove 1987: 373). And a Licchavi inscription provides remarkably early evidence for the existence of music guthis: that is, societies by which music groups are traditionally organized, based in particular localities and communities (Sharma and Wegner 1994; see p. 113 below).

The Licchavis were followed by an unstable succession of ruling clans. There is a tradition in Nepal that the Kathmandu Valley was invaded by an Indian king called Nānyadeva in 1097, and that he thereby founded a ‘Karṇātaka dynasty’ in Nepal. Nānyadeva seems to have been a military adventurer from the Karṇātaka region of the Deccan who established a kingdom for himself in Tirhut, in the region of Mithilā to the south of the Kathmandu Valley. Coincidentally, he also figures in the history of South Asian music, as the author of a Sanskrit musicological treatise called Sarasvatīhṛdayālaṃkāra or Bharatabhāṣya (Widdess 1995: 143 f.). But there is no firm evidence in the Kathmandu Valley for anyth...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures and Maps
• List of Tables
• List of Music Examples
• Sound Recordings Accompanying this Book
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Notes
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Dāphā from Past to Present
• 3 Temporal Order: Time, Music and Rhythm
• 4 The Singing Community: Dāphā and the Social Order
• 5 Melody and Rāga
• 6 Encounter with the Divine: Dāphā and the Sacred Order
• 7 Songs and Meanings
• Conclusion: Music and Meaning
• Bibliography
• Index