In search of a lost tradition

Listen to songs by women Warkari poets, performed like they were centuries ago

In a strange play of irony, movements that are born to counter hegemonies still run the risk of falling prey to internal hierarchies, where the voices of the most marginalised among the marginalised tend to go unheard. Women, Dalit women at that, fall under this category today, as they did centuries ago when the Warkari sect took shape in present-day Maharashtra under the Bhakti tradition.

Among the 50 Marathi male and female poet-saints recognised under the Warkari tradition, it is the songs written by the men that are performed the most. "As someone who has grown up listening to abhangs and singing Bhakti poetry, I realised I could count the number of [Warkari] women poets I had sung songs of, on my fingers.

But when you come across translations of their abhangs, you realise their defiant nature, and that we perceive Bhakti through just one lens," says singer-composer Shruthi Vishwanath, who has researched the poems and set them to music with Yuji Nakagawa and Shruteendra Katagade.

This Saturday, the trio will present their renditions at an event, titled The Padar as Slipped. The title draws from a work by the 13th-century poet Janabai, the first few lines of which translate to: "My veil has slipped to my shoulder/I don't give a damn; I will go the bazaar". While much has been written about the works of Janabai, Aubai, Soyrabai, Muktabai and Gonabai, they haven't percolated into a performance, where, as Vishwanath puts it, they truly come to life.

ON: July 28, 7.30 pm
AT: Studio Tamaasha, Andheri West.
LOG ON TO: bookmyshow.com
ENTRY: Rs 400

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