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Songs of Traditional Wedding Ceremonies in North India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2019

Bonnie C. Wade
Bonnie C. Wade*
Affiliation:
Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island
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Extract

This paper concerns the music of wedding ceremonies that I recorded and filmed in four communities in the vicinity of Delhi: the town of Gurgaon and the villages of Jharsa and Jhanjholi in the state of Haryana, and Singola village in the Delhi Government District. It concentrates primarily on songs for two ceremonies in the Hindu cycle of wedding rituals — the lagan and the ban, and also includes songs for the other rituals that took place on the day of a phera (‘the marriage itself') in the villages of a groom (Singola) and of his bride (Jhanjholi). The music for such ceremonies is always provided by women, members of the families of the bride and groom and other appropriate female members of the community. Before presenting and discussing these ceremonies and the music for them, I want to describe the socio-cultural context of marriage in India.

Type
Articles
Information
Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council , Volume 4 , 1972 , pp. 57 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © 1973 By the International Folk Music Council 

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References

Footnotes

1. The term “song” applies to a text and the melody to which the text is set. I recorded no instance of a melody-type, that is, no melody which served as a vehicle for several texts. Any reference to only text or only melody is specified as such.Google Scholar

2. Kapadia, K.M. Marriage and Family in India (London, 1955), p. 169.Google Scholar

3. Lewis, Oscar, Village Life in Northern India (New York, 1965), p. 50.Google Scholar

4. Nair, Kusum. Blossoms in the Dust (New York, 1961), p. 74.Google Scholar

5. Op. cit., p. 161.Google Scholar

6. Ibid., p. 172.Google Scholar

7. Arati is a ceremony of worship or means of honoring someone by rotating before him or her a tray bearing lights and incense. (Oscar Lewis, op. cit., p. 349.)Google Scholar