Page 247 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

222 Tara Ubhe

bullocks in an alien house? When such questions are raised in the meet-
ings, the women gathered start thinking over it. They feel surprised at
how these songs can be related to their own problems and their own
mindsets. They always express the following reaction:
Really, we have never understood own grindmill songs in this per-
spective. The questions posed are genuine. ‘We are used to open up
our minds in these songs. The only thing is that we have not looked
at them in this way. They certainly help us understand our own
condition better.’

The reinterpretation of the same songs that women have been sing-
ing for generations provides the basis for starting a thought process in
different and new directions. For example:

This is not a millstone, but a hermit from the mountain
I tell you, woman, open your heart to him.
We tell women in village meetings that:

While singing like that, we open up our heart to the stone. Now,
slowly, this place of expression is vanishing. Millstones have gone,
flourmill has come. Then, we have to find another place to express
our minds and share our sorrows and joys. There are many question
marks before us and we have to face them. Meetings like this can
provide us with another space.

The Evidence for Critical Reassessment

Recalling songs in village meetings re-activates memory, boosts
awareness and constructs a common identity among peasant women.
Yet songs should not be resurrected only for the sake of their last
female heirs, nor restricted to communication with an illiterate or
half-educated rural population. What illiterate women expressed for
themselves, as a collective soliloquy, can now be addressed to all those
who are still used to overlooking the significance of their songs. It is in
particular our task as women social animators to show the relevance
of our mothers’ and grandmothers’ tradition to an academic society of
professors and scholars concerned with women studies, folk culture,