Page 238 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

Grindmill Songs 213

The immediate reaction of the audience was: ‘Give us this file. At the
time of marriage, we shall keep it before us and sing those songs.
Youths install a loudspeaker when there is a festival or a marriage. All
people can listen to the songs. Some words are impressive.’ Peasant
women, thus, realize the value of their own traditional creation once
placed in front of them in a written form: the beauty of the words, the
quality of the composition, the strength of its structure strikes their
mind as never before.
In a big gathering of women Saru Kadu showed a file of songs, tell-
ing her audience that:

[W]e have created them and kept them in our memory. This shows
that we are not ignorant. If we compose songs, this shows that we
can create something. We can take into consideration many facets
of our everyday life. This shows our creativity. Our power to think,
remember, understand can be utilised in other ways nowadays. If we
start paying attention also to the wider problems of our community,
our village, taluka, etc., can we not become as much successful in
tackling these issues? The composition of these songs shows that we
have a basic intelligence of our life. What remains, is only to use our
capabilities to understand the questions of the community at large
and find ways to solve them. If we are decided, the passage is easy
from the songs to these activities of animation.
Women animators who, like Saru Kadu, can neither read nor write
are particularly convinced that grindmill songs are a very effective
medium. Theoretical subjects tackled with abstract words in general
meetings prove difficult to remember, but once we try to put forward
songs appropriate to the subject under consideration, women anima-
tors can immediately remember the exchanges that took place and how
they were discussed. Paradoxically, we observed that illiterate women
are those who make the most effective use of the files of collected and
classified songs in their work of social and cultural awakening.
When rural women animators generalize their experience and its
benefits, they stress the following points. A number of songs run down
the girl-child, but many songs also praise the same girl-child. Why
not choose songs of the second category as a vehicle for exchanges
during women’s meetings: they may hopefully pave the way towards
transforming the prevailing derogatory views about girls and women.
Similarly, women sing on the grindmill the qualities of a brother,