Item Details
Skip Navigation Links
   ActiveUsers:3615Hits:25709194Skip Navigation Links
Show My Basket
Contact Us
IDSA Web Site
Ask Us
Today's News
HelpExpand Help
Advanced search

In Basket
  Journal Article   Journal Article
 

ID188748
Title ProperIs There Singing in the Time of Crisis? Sounding Flood Songs of Coastal and Riverine Malabar in the Indian Ocean
LanguageENG
AuthorUl-Ihthisam, Ihsan ;  Menon, Rohini
Summary / Abstract (Note)This study examines the flood songs of Malabar written as performative literary texts in the Arabi-Malayalam language that were prevalent among the Muslim community of Malabar in the twentieth century. These songs were written as eyewitness accounts of the historical monsoon floods that afflicted the coastal regions and hinterlands of Malabar on the shores of the western Indian Ocean. Flood songs as a genre offer a combined understanding of ecology, religion and performance of the recurrent floods that occurred in twentieth-century Malabar. They also provide details about the importance of collective memorialisation and the commemoration strategies adopted to record the seasonal disastrous floods which still afflict the region. This paper puts forth two fundamental questions regarding flood songs: first, how did flood songs ideologically define and internalise the origins and causes of environmental disasters in an oceanic-riverine complex? Second, how did these songs aesthetically express the religious experience of the flood, adaptations to them, and ways of managing the risks they imposed? This study investigates the unique manifestations of spirituality, music/sound and nature and the environment in the flood songs of Malabar, topics which remain unexplored in academic literature.
`In' analytical NoteSouth Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies Vol. 45, No.6; Dec 2022: p.1037-1053
Journal SourceSouth Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies Vol: 45 No 6
Key WordsEnvironmental Disasters ;  Arabi-Malayalam ;  Coastal and Riverine Malabar


 
 
Media / Other Links  Full Text