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The Playlist of Migration

The document discusses the complex emotions surrounding migration, highlighting both the pain of leaving and the search for better opportunities. It emphasizes the role of music and art in expressing these emotions, particularly through the Bidesia Project, which preserves folk songs of indentured laborers. The document also notes the historical impact of migration on cultural traditions and the importance of understanding these narratives through various artistic forms.

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medini bhat
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11 views2 pages

The Playlist of Migration

The document discusses the complex emotions surrounding migration, highlighting both the pain of leaving and the search for better opportunities. It emphasizes the role of music and art in expressing these emotions, particularly through the Bidesia Project, which preserves folk songs of indentured laborers. The document also notes the historical impact of migration on cultural traditions and the importance of understanding these narratives through various artistic forms.

Uploaded by

medini bhat
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Playlist of Migration

For economists, migration is a variable used to understand the change in economic


transactions of one agent and its impact on the place left behind and the place chosen as the
new home. Upon micro-level inspection, the pain, the happiness, the curiosity, and other
emotions come into the light: the pain of leaving behind a home, the frustration of not finding
a satisfactory settlement in their own cities, states or countries and the difficulty of venturing
into an unknown place in search of employment, comfort, exposure to innovation and more.
The decision to migrate or immigrate is not a simple one in any form. Migration can be
deliberate and also unplanned. Human beings have always found interesting ways to express
their emotions, and the emotion of migration has been evident in some of the most used paths
of expression through the art forms of music, theatre, poetry, books, paintings and movies.
Music excels at tapping into the emotions of everyone involved in making and listening to it.
Music contains the history of man in it; close listening will help understand the people of that
period and the associated emotions. Migrating to a different place does not guarantee any
solutions to the problems. Forced migration due to wars, colonisation and pandemics leads to
people leaving their homes out of lack of options, and planned happy migration transforms
into a decision taken for the very survival of the people involved, which can also be
understood by the folksongs sung by the common people within the various languages of
India.

In order to preserve
the voices of those
who had been
unlawfully taken
away to work as
indentured
labourers by the
colonisers, Gopal
Mourya, a Bihari
man, started the
Bidesia Project.
This project is a
cultural initiative
that aims to collect,
preserve, and promote the folk songs of the slaves who the colonisers brutally used for their
own benefit. These songs give more detailed insights into the struggle and the reasons behind
the wide spread of Indians in the world. The people who were taken as slaves to countries far
away and, once independence was declared, could not find their way back and had no choice
but to settle in a foreign land. This emotion has been captured in many Bhojpuri folk songs
that the Bidesia Project is preserving. The Bidesia crystallised as a music form in the modern
period following the popularity of the play Bidesia by poet, writer and playwright Bhikhari
Thakur in the 19th century in Bihar. The music of migration has travelled to the distant lands
of Surinam, Trinidad, Jamaica, Fiji and South Africa from colonial times. Traditions such as
Jahaaji songs and Chutney music have come of such musical travels. The attached playlist
contains songs and poems about migration in many languages, which gives evidence of the
melting pots of the areas that the migrated Indians are living in the present. The most trusted
source of information is the one that comes directly from the source and hence must be fully
utilized during research.

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