Page 274 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

Folk Arts and Folk Artists 249

atmosphere, like grandma’s stories, proverbs, lullabies, grindmill
songs, and in Tamil Nadu rice-pounding songs, tape songs, Kolai
Sindhu, Oppaari (death song), Kummi (songs accompanying Kummi
which is a form of folk dance in Tamil Nadu and Kerala), kolaattam
(a dance form from Andhra Pradesh involving the use of sticks),
Kuruvan, kurathi songs, tattoo songs, etc. These folk forms are alive
in the state, and they are also known as non-paying folk forms, that
is, we do not get any remuneration through these forms. They are just
spontaneous expression. They suffer from a lack of recognition and
exploitation by the educated and, of course, elite media facilitators.
But this does not mean that they have lost the function that they
performed for generations of acting as vehicles of social values and
religious faith. If these forms are properly used to help rural people
understand the reasons for the existing oppressive socio-economic and
political systems, they may pave the way for a better life.
Folk forms that are remunerative can be divided into two kinds,
communicating and non-communicating (only recreational). Most
of the communicative art forms are strictly religious, and they have
depended on religious functions and temple festivals for their sur-
vival. Though most of the stories are taken from religious texts and
mythology, the possibility of infusing progressive content into them
is not a formidable task. These folk forms have an in-built potential
to become a means of furthering the people’s form. The progressive
elements in these folk forms do not end there. It is possible to create
new stories, and incorporate new issues. Some experiments have been
made in this regard with a fair amount of success. But one has to
remember here an important point. That folk artists involved in these
experiments should have proper conviction about the issues that they are
taking up. Otherwise these experiments cannot succeed.
Interestingly, most of these folk forms have an in-built character
like sutradhari, vidhushak or comedian who narrates the story
but does not stop at that. He or she is also the representative of the
audience, and as such echoes both the immediate mundane thoughts
of the spectators and their deep longing for social justice. He or she
takes the audience into the past, and projects a future through an
interpretation of mythological characters. This aspect is useful to
link up the values projected in the play in the contemporary social,