Everyday Creativity: Singing Goddesses in the Himalayan Foothills by Kirin Narayan (review)

The region of Kangra in northwestern India is the abode of goddesses—Parvati is the daughter of the mountains, and a network of shrines dedicated to Sati connects the region. Yet the "singing goddesses" that Kirin Narayan alludes to in her book's title are in fact upper-caste Hindu women, on whom this book focuses. Appending devi (goddess) to their names after marriage, these women disseminate an oral repertory of songs that invoke the goddesses and make these deities present in the lives of their communities. Though the women are known for their songs, their primary identity is not that of singer, but rather of daughter, sister, wife, or mother. This book is about how these women embody the songs of the goddesses that they sing and thus cultivate their own lives as well as the lives of the communities in which they live.

One of the book's strengths is its limited scope. Narayan spent decades conducting ethnographic research in Kangra and published extensively on songs and folktales from that region of India. Her choice to limit the amount of material included in this book prevents the reader unfamiliar with these traditions from being overwhelmed. To organize the chosen material, Narayan employs the metaphors used by the "singing goddesses" to talk about parts of a song as growing plants: chapters 1 and 2 are the "base," and chapters 3 through 6 explore the "fruits" of singing. She ends with a reflection on the benefits of singing, which acts as the "head" of the work. A commonly sung coda outlining some of these benefits orders the internal chapters. Each chapter expounds on a benefit by examining songs about a particular god or goddess and focuses on a specific woman singer as a main character. Each also looks at a particular genre of song that correlates to women's life stages: wedding songs for younger women and new brides, ballads about everyday life as a householder, or devotional songs sung by older women to gain religious merit. Limiting the material allows Narayan to pay close attention to the particular roles the songs play in these women's lives.

Narayan's choices on organization and content allow her to make the case for "everyday creativity"—the book's key theoretical contribution. She modifies creativity with everyday to take away the assumption that creativity equates innovation and instead draws attention to the women's resourcefulness in curating and reconstructing oral material. Many singers do not recite memorized texts but rather choose elements within storylines to emphasize or embellish. For this reason, each rendition of a song is different. Narayan's transcriptions of these oral texts are one way that she demonstrates the creativity of the women. The song transcriptions within her book all stem from a particular performance and do not represent every performance of that song. In a few instances, she includes transcriptions of the same song from two different singers; she traces how certain verses become inserted into different songs, or how the same character or event appears in songs across genres. These instances demonstrate the creativity involved in curating oral material.

Even as Narayan focuses on the musical choices of individual singers, she does not lose sight of the cultural context in which this creativity occurs. She briefly provides background on where and when these songs are sung and what role they fill in community life. She also places the songs within a larger tradition of sung stories about deities and devotees within Indian religions that cross oral and written bodies of work. Narayan's writing, however, continuously forefronts the personal pleasure that the women derive from curating and singing these songs. So, as Narayan examines oral literature—a common topic in anthropology and ethnomusicology—she constantly reminds the reader that its significance derives from the people who...