Music From The Tea-Garden State : Assam
Monthly Theme Prompt Response: Essay
Music doesn’t need to be understood. It needs to be felt.
It must call out to one’s soul.
Continuing the series on songs and music, here are a couple of songs from Assam. I love the music and the melody: but I don’t understand a word of the songs.
This is a Bihu song, a song sung during the spring festival, which falls on the 14th April.
In this northeastern Indian State of Assam is a temple dedicated to the mother Goddess, Kamakhya. It is one of the oldest and the most revered centres of Tantric practice. Dating back to the 8th or 9th century, the annual festival of the temple celebrates the menstruation of the Goddess.
The garbhagriha is small, dark and reached by narrow steep stone steps. Inside the cave there is a sheet of stone that slopes downwards from both sides meeting in a yoni-like depression some 10 inches deep. This hollow is constantly filled with water from an underground perennial spring. It is the vulva-shaped depression that is worshiped as the goddess Kamakhya herself and considered as most important pitha (abode) of the Devi.[24] (Wikipedia)
Shin, Jae-Eun (2010). “Yoni, Yoginis and Mahavidyas : Feminine Divinities from Early Medieval Kamarupa to Medieval Koch Behar”. Studies in History. 26 (1): 1–29. doi:10.1177/025764301002600101. S2CID 155252564.
The ‘sacred feminine’ doesn’t get any more sacred, or feminine than this.
Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent’s brilliant book, ‘Land of the Dawn-Lit Mountains’ begins with an anecdote of her visit to the Kamakhya temple.
Assam is famous for tea, and silk. It is also the home of the one-horned Indian rhino, the wild water-buffalo, the pigmy hog and the tiger. The Kaziranga National Park and the Manas National Park are famous tourist sites. Besides, the Dibru-Saikhowa National Park is famous for its feral horses.
Ptolemy’s ‘Geoghraphia mentions the State and her people, in the 2nd century.
A verdant land. A blessed one.
A land for music and richness.
We have here, then, an ancient space of people blessed by nature, sometimes. And sometimes not, as it is subject to devastating floods, in this land of water. But it is also a land of sunshine and songs, dances and devotion.
Here’s another Assamese song that I don’t understand a word of, but love, nevertheless:
I find these songs charming and melodious. They tell a story of love and secret liaisons against a backdrop of verdant fields and mountain streams.
I don’t think we need the language of words to understand them.
Doesn’t the radiant joy in the faces and voices tell their own story?
©️ 2022 Suma Narayan. All Rights Reserved.
This is the sixth in a series of essays about some of the music and songs which move me. It is a response to Ravyne Hawke’s prompt, tweaked a little:
