Santal Folk Dance-Songscharts a hitherto unexplored epistemological terrain: to study Santali Folk Dance-songs of Jharkhand as the primary subject matter and contextualize how ‘the Santali culture’ is getting manifested in its art form. In fact, the Folk Dance-Songs offer a window to peep into the world of the Santals, their lives, customs, traditions religions and philosophy. It has been observed that these dance-songs have escaped the overpowering drive to ‘civilize’ them, be it in the pre-colonial, colonial times or thereafter and thus exist in their natural forms. This is, however, not to suggest that the Santali dance-songs have remained static in their pristine forms, it is a fact that gradual changes have crept into their forms, but not to the extent to alter their soul and spirit. All these factors make the Santali dance-songs worthy of documentation to understand the Santali cultural reality.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rajesh Kumar, PhD., is the author of DalitsVs Aboriginal Australians: Convergences& Divergences and three other books. He has published numerous scholarly articles in national and international journals on various issues relating to literatures of margin. His areas of interest include: Culture Studies, Post-colonial Studies, Literatures of margin/ Marginality, Sociology of Dalit discourse, Dalit Autobiographies, Australian Aboriginal Autobiographies, Australian Aboriginal Literature, Dance Studies, Folklore Studies and Tribal Folk Literature of India.
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