Singing the Story –Performance and Meaning in Karbi Oral Narratives

Dharamsing Teron
(karbistudies@gmail.com)

Abstract -
Karbi oral culture has a life of its own, manifesting itself in diverse and lively genres. Ancient tales of
creation, migration, folktales, totem tales, epics, legends, proverbs, lullabies, sacred prayers in verses etc.
are preserved in huge oral repertoire. Priests perform sacred prayers and master singers sing the stories
adhering to strict metrical and poetic structures passed down from generation of unknown ancestors.
Histories and memories are perpetuated through the words of mouth and every act of recitation,
incantation, healing chant, prayer, dirge singing, or storytelling is an impromptu performance that
continue to survive in spite of the relentless forces of assimilation and the colonial label of ‘short
memory’. Women lament singers continue to perform funeral epic poems which span days narrating the
journey of the soul which also is an exploration of the Karbi ideas of life and death. In fact the entire
Karbi philosophy of life itself is encapsulated in the oral tradition and folklore of the community.

Keywords : Oral culture, Performance, Folklore, Lament, Karbi philosophy

Karbi Oral Culture at a Glance -

Proximity to nature in all its primitive abundance had shaped the expressive Karbi oral tradition.
Nature nourished the cultural ambience of Karbi ancestors who worshipped multiple of unseen spirits and
created their own rituals. Rituals and performances are therefore inseparable in Karbi oral culture. In fact,
every ritual is a performance. (Teron, 2011; 19) Almost all oral performances are associated with
religious rituals. Origin and creation myths dominate the ritual performances which are associated with
various healing worships. The creation of universe (Pirthe Keplang) is recited at Vur Kematha which is a
religious ritual performed for an individual or a household to enhance or boost the inner self or multiple
of selves. Another creation and migration legend known as Mosera is performed at Karhi or funeral
festival. The various myths of origins or Keplang of Hanso (ginger), Phelo (cotton), Vo (fowls), Bong
(bottle gourd), Lo (plantain leaf), Nok (sacrificial sword), Ingti (salt), Beng (fish for ritual offering), Thap
(fermented rice cake for preparing homemade brew), Sok (paddy) etc. are all performed at various
religious rituals. Important oral verses of the origins of Karbis (Karbi Keplang), ‘Songs and Singer’
(Lunse Keplang), the Supreme Deity of Karbi pantheon (Hemphu Keplang), the first village settlement
(Rongkim) etc. are associated with ritual performances. The various ‘rites of passages’, such as rituals
pertaining to child birth (klongklo athekar) and naming (honkok), wedding (adam asar), and death (kethi-
kejang) involve lengthy narrative performances. The charhepi or female dirge singers are known to recite
the longest of all existing oral songs lasting for days of continuous narrative performances mapping the
journey of the soul through a dreary and difficult landscape of the other world back to the village of
ancestors. The charhepi’s seemingly endless performance has innumerable segments which describe and
bring to light Karbi life of a pristine past – a performative oral history.

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 There are works or farming related oral songs such as Botor Kikur, Ritnong Chingdi, Chili Kapherang
etc. which are performed to mark specific agricultural activities in regular annual calendar. Botor Kikur is
dedicated to the weather god or Botor Sarpo performed by Katharpo, the Chief Priest of the Rongkhang
Kingdom. The epic poem of Ha’imu and her sacrifices are performed at the ceremony in order to bring
forth rain and fertility. Likewise, Ritnong Chingdi is a farming song which depicts the entire cycle of
agricultural activities. Chili Kapherang is dedicated to the rice spirits.
There are secular performances that are not necessarily part of religious rituals too are in huge
abundance. Love ballads or Ove Alun with exotic melodies are found in all parts of Karbi heartland
created by unknown love birds who performed them in pure magical delight or in tragic deluge. There are
innumerable melodic verses which rustic bards would perform at any given situation –be that praise songs
(Kechoro Alun) or songs entreating rice beer (Hor Kechohang Alun), songs dedicated to legendary cult
heroes such as Thong Nokbe, Waisong or Rongpharpi Rongbe, or even epic tale of Ramayana known
among Karbis as Sabin Alun. Besides these, there are numerous poetic verses called lun kore which both
young and elderly people indulged upon in their spare and leisure time in the oral heyday of the past.
Another notable but vanishing genre is the erotic verses called Miringrang Alun performed during
funeral festival called Karhi (or chomangkan) which are explicitly sexual and now considered obscene in
the changed socio-cultural milieu. Taboo or social sanctions against performances of these erotic verses
are totally lifted during and within the precincts of the festival.
Karbi oral culture is also richly expressed through proverbs (sarlamthe), folktales (tomo) and other
verbal art forms like tongue-twisters, riddles (tomo-patar or story-quiz) and jokes (kangnek ahanmi).
Proverbs and folktales are windows to the Karbi worldview while tongue-twisters and riddles are brief,
concise and empowering intellectual exercises. Jokes are not only light banters and parts of entertaining
communicative skills, but they also strengthen social ties.
Besides, there are countless numbers of sacred prayers which are performed by priests as healers.
Shamanic rituals of soul calling (karjong kekur) or retrieval (karjong kephur) are performed with the
accompaniment of oral singing and sacred prayers. Significantly, these oral performances are all poetic in
nature.

Poetic Art and Archaism -

Karbi traditional verses abundantly employ poetic language known as lamlir or refined language.
Grammatical structure assumes secondary importance in such verses as the poet’s primary concern is
directed to maintaining the rhyme patterns which are apparently many. An accomplished performer
effortlessly navigates from one to the next or any rhyme scheme to suit a situation or an event.
The folklore of Rangsina the Wise suggests that the multiple rhyme schemes were created by the
divine muse and there are more than twenty such patterns which however generally display multiple lines
repeating the same rhyme from beginning to end. Examples of such traditional patterns are Tampe
(ending with e), Hoidoi (ending with oi), Senglong (ending with ong), Mandung (ending with ung),
Mahin (ending with in), Marang (ending with ang), Rangno (ending with o) etc. A particular performance
may subscribe to only a given rhyme scheme throughout and it depends on the versatility of a poet to
construct and continue his/her verses by adhering to this golden rule.
Following are two demonstrative stanzas (Timung, 1995; 37& 85)-

Tampe
Niso ke sopirthong tampe

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 Sister [this is] a young world
Phi-phu pen nanglele nangle
Ancestors have been here
Nakai ke dim ahot nangle
My life has brought me here [too]
Kaling ne ta nangcho Nokbare
I have assumed this Nokbare territory
Ladak ke deng-phan alongle
It is a territory known for its traditions
Nang’e pharkong pen pharche
Silk cotton and coral trees were planted
Apor singkrengpi nangle
Winter has arrived
Kangthu pharkong pen pharche
Silk cotton and coral trees are in bloom
Apor ke tangme dei tangme
The season is so colourful
Sim’et kesok cheborche
Yellow birds are sucking the [flower nectar]
Sim’et kesok vo mongve
Spring birds too sucking the [nectar]
Sar sar  tangme dei tangme
Old folk are taking delight
Apor singkreng le nangle…
If winter arrives again…

Gist: It is a praise song. The poet is praising someone who has attained an elated status.

Senglong
Niso ke pengsomir senglong
My sister Pengsomir
Sopeng pen jangphong vangrapchom
(It’s time) when mangoes and jackfruits grow tother
Sopeng pen jangphong the chingdon
Mangoes and jackfruit are growing equally tall
Sopeng kurme chak thirklong
Mangoe roots are firm
Angsong ke rome pakumphong
Branches are forming an umbrella
Apor singkreng aboron
It’s a winter season
Kasim atoi chejanbong
Birds in their flock
Nanglo sim avojangphong

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 Came wild yellow bird (Oriolus xanthomus)
Kardon thonme sekemklong
Perched securely on the branches
Si’im ajutang nangron
Announcing king’s tradition
Ronjeng ahir jume’ong
Reciting so sweet to the ears
Si’im ajutang binong
It’s King’s true tradition
Sarsar lita saro no dingrong
Elders (are we) delighted to hear?
Si’im acharnam binong…
It’s how King’s tradition is

Gist – It is a poetic censure. The poet is criticising the meaningless boast of an upstart.

Another important hallmark of Karbi traditional verses is the extensive application of reduplication. A
traditional poet flourishes with such linguistic strategy. Otherwise too, reduplication is a prominent
linguistic trait of a Karbi speaker. All ritual speeches and sacred prayers are similarly constructed.
Reduplication as a ‘mnemonic device’ (Dundes, 1961) also plays a very important role in oral poets’
ability to recite lengthy verses. The melody too perhaps plays a role in it to large degrees as suggested by
Vansina (1985; 46).
As already stated, a Karbi verse may appear archaic as only ‘words are strung together’ (Dundes,
1961) with heavy doses of lamlir without grammatical order for an uninitiated listener. To appreciate
such verses, one must share the cultural vision of the performer as only he/she seems to exactly ‘see’ the
sequences or contexts of events being narrated. Metaphors are used randomly as a literary device and
unless the listener is aware of the cultural context (Joubert, 1961; 126), the integrity and meaning of the
narrative performance would be missed or lost.
Another striking feature of the performance is the repetitive melody which is the case in general. A
listener therefore is likely to be greeted with certain amount of ennui after listening to a few stanzas. Folk
melody in Karbi also embodies an inherent sentimentalism that evokes a sense of nostalgia or
melancholy. The intense emotional content of Karbi folk melodies was somewhere labeled as ‘virtual
obsession with tragedy’ (Datta, 2012; 72) which probably echoes the western authors who described
‘...“Oriental” music as melancholic and sad.’ (Pennanen, 2010)

Singing the Story -

More than a century ago, Lyall and Stack who authored the first ethnographic account of the Karbis
stated –
‘Old men tell historical legends to the young ones, and there are also legendary songs, sung at
festivals; but there is no class specially set apart for the preservation of such traditions, and the
memory of the race is short.’ (Lyall & Stack,1908; 5)

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 A huge corpus of unwritten oral songs is probably lost in the last one hundred years since this
observation was made, but old men and women continue to sing legends and historical tales as if
challenging the colonial myth of ‘short memory’.
When colonialism took over the Karbi land, oral culture was beginning to dissipate as indicated by the
observation that there was ‘no class specially set apart for the preservation of such traditions’. In the oral
setting of the past the youth dormitories provided the young ones the perfect environment to master the
verbal art of singing, chanting, praying and performing them in rituals, farming, fishing or hunting
activities. The impact of colonial literacy via the Baptist missionaries was slowly and unevenly
distributed. Walter Ong describes the Karbi situation well when he said - ‘Oral cultures indeed produce
powerful and beautiful verbal performances of high artistic and human worth which are no longer even
possible once writing has taken possession of the psyche.’ (Ong, 1982; p.14)
The oral heyday is no more. The youth dormitories have long disappeared and the spontaneity of
transmission of verbal arts has slowed down to trickles. But there still are amazing singers of ancient tales
in the new setting and they are continuing with the grim battles to carry on the tradition on individual
shoulders.
The dirge song of the charhepi which lasts in excess of 30 hours is definitely one of the finest
examples of performative folklore. Charhepi is the female dirge singer whose job it is to guide the soul of
the departed to the world of ancestors. The exceptionally long oral performance, like a carefully crafted
historical drama, has many plots and sub-plots that the charhepi brings to life through her epic narrative.
The sheer length of the performance and the performer’s incredible stamina definitely merits a
comparison with the best of folk epics. The thirty hours of oral singing by a lone charhepi far outweighs
even Homer’s Illiad, the celebrated Greek oral epic of the ninth century B.C. But charhepi’s epic poem is
not all about the dead and the dreary geography of the other world; it is an extended oral history in song
which is performed with such a relentless intensity and pathos. Each stanza of the poem begins with a
crescendo of a mournful refrain which marks the gradual progression of the sequences of events. Like a
solo opera singer, the charhepi goes through all the emotions with a calm exterior as she constantly
communicates with the soul of the departed. It is only she who alone can guide the soul and reunite it with
the ancestors; otherwise the whole ceremony or elaborate festivities aimed to ensure the safe passage of
the departed carry no meaning. Charhepi’s song has elaborate details of the return journey of the soul
through rocky-mountains and mighty rivers as it encounters antiquated village lifestyle, farming
economy, social relations, cultural practices, and towards the final stages, partakes the delightful ‘fruit of
forgetfulness’ (theli-the-bonglong) beyond which all memories of the earthly life and the ‘self’ disappear
in preparation to reunite with the ancestor spirits. Charhepi sings the final encounter of the memory-less
soul with a giant one-legged bird standing at the juncture of a cross road as the punisher of the guilty and
letting off the innocent to take the road on the right. The lengthy poetic narrative is an exposition of the
complex philosophy of Karbi life and death. In one of the many episodes, charhepi sings the miringrang,
apparently the obscene songs about sex and sensuality, represented through the Karbi version of the
universal symbolism of a labyrinth (miringrang) which is a ‘…cycle of life-death-rebirth and eternity.’
(Tricarico, 2009 &2015; pp. XV)
The lengthy lament of charhepi’s songs has survived and gives ample scopes to researchers and
scholars to delve deep into the immensely creative, rich, literary and philosophical nature of Karbi oral
performances.

Conclusion : Performance and Language Revival -

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 Performance and language study share a ‘central dynamic’ relationship. It has been rightly argued that
‘...performances are not simply artful uses of language that stand apart both from day-to-day life and from
larger question of meaning…’ (Bauman & Briggs, 1990; 59-86) As Bauman and Briggs argue,
performance indeed ‘…provides a frame that invites critical reflection on communicative processes’ and
that a performance is ‘tied to a number of speech events that precede and succeed it.’ A critical emphasis
has been reiterated on the need of a ‘sensitive ethnographic study’ for an ‘adequate analysis of a single
performance…’ that can ‘yield insights into diverse facets of language use and their interrelations…’ and
‘can open up a wider range of vantage points on how language can be structured and what roles it can
play in social life.’
In the present day context, performative folklore is becoming a rare event and still much lesser
emphasis is laid on oral performance as a critical element in understanding language use and its multiple
social functions. Consequently, the historical, cultural and literary meanings and context encoded in
‘refined languages’ or lamlir so predominantly used in the construction of oral songs are either lost or
misinterpreted. Unfortunately, there is a serious lack of ‘sensitive ethnographic study’ and very often the
‘native’s point of view’ is discarded as ‘irrelevant, distracting, and patently false’ which Bauman and
Briggs have rightly argued as the result of ‘dominant Western conceptions.’ What is further more
worrying is the fact that there is a marked tendency in mainstream discourse to ignore the native
performers only as informants and not as potential ‘intellectual partners’.
An oral performance has therefore a dynamic function which can tremendously enhance the processes
of language preservation and revival, cultural awareness and contextualization in the present socio-
political and cultural milieu. The charhepi’s lengthy lament song is a case in point which has the
potentiality to open up a serious relook into the performative folklore that the Karbis can be proud of as a
source of oral poetry, literature, history, music and philosophy.

References –
1. Teron, Dharamsing, 2011 – ‘Reclaiming the Ancestors’ Voices…’ (Karbi Studies, Vol. 2); Assam
Book Hive; pp. 19
2. Dundes, Alan, 1961 – ‘Mnemonic Device’; Midwest Folklore, Vol. 11, No. 3, Indiana Issue, III,
Indiana University Press; pp.139-147
3. Timung, Mon, 1995 – ‘Pengsomir’; Karbi Lammet Amei, Monjir Press, Diphu; pp. 37 & 85
4. Vansina, Jan – 1985, ‘Oral Tradition as History’; James Curry Ltd., pp. 46
5. Joubert, Annekie, 1961 – ‘Trends in Linguistics – The Power of Performance – Linking Past and
Present in Hananwa and Lobedu Oral Literature’; Mouton; pp. 126
6. Datta, Birendranath, 2012 – ‘Cultural Contours of Northeast India’; Oxford University Press; pp.
72
7. Pennanen, Risto Pekka, 2010 – ‘Melancholic Airs of the Orient – Bosnian Sevdalinka Music as
an Orientalist and National Symbol’; Music and Emotions, Studies across Disciplines in the
Humanities and Social Science 9; Helsinki, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. 76-90. See
https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/25832/009_07_Pennanen_rev.pdf;sequence=1
accessed 16 September 2017
8. Lyall and Stack, 1908 – ‘The Mikirs’; D. Nutt, London; pp. 5; see
https://archive.org/details/mikirsfrompaper00lyalgoog accessed 16 September 2017
9. Ong, Walter J., 1982 – ‘Orality and Literacy-The Technologizing of the Word’; Routledge; pp. 14

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10. Tricarico, Giorgio, 2009 &2017 – ‘The Labyrinth of Possibilty – A Therapeutic Factor in
Analytical Practice’; KARNAC
11. Bauman, Richard & Briggs, Charles L., 1990 – ‘Poetics and Performances as Critical
Perspectives on Language and Social Life’; Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 19 (1990);
Published by Annual Reviews; pp. 59-88