1. See Ann Grodzins Gold, "Sexuality, Fertility, and Erotic Imagination in Rajasthani Women's Songs," in Listen to the Heron's Words: Reimagining Gender and Kinship in North India, Gloria Goodwin Raheja and Ann Grodzins Gold (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 30-72.
2. See Kathryn Hansen, Grounds for Play: The Nautanki Theatre of North India, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 65-70.
3. See Kirin Narayan's "Songs Lodged in Some Hearts: Displacements of Women's Knowledge in Kangra," in Displacement, Diaspora and Geographies of Identity, ed. S. Lavie and T. Swedenburg (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, forthcoming), pp. 181-213 and her "Women's Songs, Women's Lives," Manushi (No. 81, 1994).
4. While the influence of film songs is certainly apparant in khyal, their musical style remains desi (folk-based) as opposed to filmi (Hindi film style).
5. See Hansen's discussion of a mid-eighteenth century performance where " ... two opposing groups direct questions and answers to each other, using the song type lavani or khyal, ... " (Hansen, Grounds, p. 66). For a Maharashtrian genre called lavni described as "a highly rustic and erotic genre dating from the sixteenth century onwards ..." see Friedhelm Hardy, The Religious Culture of India: Power, Love and Wisdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 215.
6. Ann Grodzins Gold, "Outspoken Women: Representations of Female Voices in a Rajasthani Folklore Community," Oral Traditions (forthcoming).
7. Ghatiyali's local language is close to Marwari but not identical with it. As a non-native speaker, I offer the translations that follow to Manushi's readers with some trepidation, and beg in advance your forgiveness for inevitable errors. I include transliterations of the transcriptions made by male village assistants; these are also subject to error, as I have often learned, because men may misconstrue women's sung words not being themselves participants in female performance traditions.
8. For another song in which a non-literate girl complains of her literate husband's going astray, see Ann Grodzins Gold and Bhoju Ram Gujar, "Drawing Pictures in the Dust: Rajasthani Children's Landscapes," Childhood (vol. 2, 1994): pp. 73-91.
9. On husbands fanning as a frequent euphemism for sexual intercourse in women's songs, see Gloria Goodwin Raheja, " 'Crying When She's Born, and Crying When She Goes Away': Marriage and the Idiom of the Gift in Pahansu Song Performance," in Hindu Marriage from the Margins, ed. Lindsey Harlan and Paul Courtright (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 19-59.

Manushi content is reproduced on India Together with permission. Click here to visit the Manushi home page

---