The Pūrvī in Bhojpurī-Speaking India: Structure and Flux in a Disappearing Genre

Introduction

The term pūrvī ("eastern"—it may also be spelled pūrbī or pūrabī) has three musical references. One is to a rāg (e.g., Bor 1999, 136). The second is the eastern style of the classical ṭhumri, sung in Lucknow and Varanasi. (This information was provided by a degreed teacher of Hindustani vocal music in Patna, Smt. Reena Sahay, and is corroborated by Slawek 1986, 201.) The third pūrvī, the focus of this article, is an entertainment genre that was sung at village weddings and other venues in the twentieth century and issued on 45-rpm records in the 1970s. Its melodic style and lyrical content provide the raw material for beautiful and highly emotive performances such as those by Ram Chandra Harijan (Henry 1981, Side B, #3), Usha Bhatt, and Vyas Vyas. (The latter two may be heard at http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/edhenry/index.html). The pūrvū melodic form is used in some kīrtan hymns, and the tunes and some of the lyrics have become incorporated to some degree in one of pūrvī's successors—lok gīt. (Appendix 1 presents five examples of lok gīt that utilize the main pūrvī melody.)

In previous analyses I have examined other kinds of Indian folk music with respect to intra-genre homogeneity and found that many genres—nūrguṇ bhajan, kajalī, qawwālī, birahā and even some of the domestic women's song genres—are stylistically heterogeneous. (See Henry 1991, 221–42; Henry 2000, 90–92.) Pūrvī melodies stand in contradistinction to those: pūrvī displays more unity in melodic style than any other of the entertainment genres from this region. The theme of pūrvīs lyrics is also considered homogeneous in the indigenous discourse. Some of the texts presented here fly in the face of that idea, but this can be explained as a terminal development in conformance with the en-tropic pattern commonly seen in Indian entertainment genres (see Henry 2000, 101–102). What follows is a brief history of the genre and its social contexts and a comparison of pūrvīs from collected live performances, 45-rpm records, and printed sources to show their common, and shifting, features.

Performance and Social Contexts

In the 1970s villagers living in the Bhojpurī-speaking region (eastern Uttar Pradesh and western Bihar) enjoyed much more live music than they do today. Phonographs playing 45-rpm records (now extinct) encroached on live music in the 1960s and 1970s, but cassette players presented a more serious challenge, and these days cassettes and television have significantly usurped the role of live music in the villages. Weddings, the primary venue for village music, were at least three days long in more affluent families in the early 1970s. These families hired an entertainment band (called party, the English term) in addition to the imperative brass processional band for leading the groom's party (barāt) to the bride's family home. On the evening of the first day and throughout the second day the entertainment band played for an audience ranging from dozens to hundreds. The setting was modeled upon the courtly mahfil—an informal gathering in which the focus is on the performance of poetry, music, or dance. The men (women were not a part of the groom's party in those days), lounged on charpoys while attendants served sweetmeats, betel leaf, cigarettes, and sometimes a spray of rose water as musicians performed on a low stage or ground cloths.

The entertainment bands were mainly of two types: the type that performed birahā, and the type that performed pūrvī, Hindi qawwālī, and lok gīt. The pūrvī–qāwwālī–lok gīt bands always employed a harmonium (a hand-pumped portable organ, played by the singer himself or a supporting singer) and a ḍholak (double-headed barrel drum).

The Meaning of Pūrvī

The message locally thought to be most characteristic of the pūrvī—the sorrow and pain of separation from a loved one...