Flow in The Living Tradition of Kabir in Malwa: Dipanjali Deka

“To flow” is to move in one direction, ceaselessly and easily. There is an element of ‘organicity’ and ‘effortlessness’ associated with the understanding of flow. However, the anatomy of flow is not devoid of tension. In fact, flow often emerges through the delicate balance of opposing forces: movement and stillness, rise and fall, presence and absence. What else flows? Does a tradition not flow-from one period and generation to the next? If so, what is, at the micro level, the anatomy of a tradition that sustains its flow over centuries?

When we think of tradition generally, it is always at the macro level where its meaning is most decipherable. It is considered “tradition”, because it is long, continuous, expansive etc. But at the micro level, where tradition transfers through people, participation, and performance, what happens to its “stuff”? In this paper, I consider songs as that very “stuff” of oral tradition.

An oral tradition is one that relies not on the written texts, but on performing bodies for the transmission of cultural material. Such a tradition that travels in time through the memory of living bodies is often called a living tradition. In this essay, I shall closely read an instance of a musical exchange from such a tradition, between renowned folk singer Prahlad Singh Tipanya and his Guru Chenaji Maru, as documented in Shabnam Virmani’s film Koi Sunta Hai:Journeys with Kumar and Kabir (2008). These singers are part of the longstanding oral tradition in Malwa, Central India, that performs the poetry of the 15th century nirguni (devotion of the divinity beyond attributes) poet Kabir and other sants (saint-poets). I build on an existing analysis of this exchange in Linda Hess’s book Bodies of Song: Kabir Oral Traditions and Performative Worlds in Northern India (2015), where she engages with questions of orality and performance in the context of Kabir’s embodied singing traditions. At the end, I draw upon my own bodily experience to reach a philosophical understanding of how to think through the idea of living tradition and flow together. The aim, for me, is to connect the flow of music to something more fundamental: the flow of breath, the ultimate substance of life. Overall, the method in this essay will be a philosophical and musical close reading of a moment of musical exchange and performance.

The Tamboora Plays On!

The documentary Koi Sunta Hai by Virmani delicately weaves together the folk and classical, the oral and the written, in tracing the many expressions of Kabir across rural and urban landscapes. In one particularly memorable scene, Kabir folk singer Prahlad Singh Tipanya visits his aging guru, Chenaji Maru (now deceased), in the village of Kalukhedi, Madhya Pradesh, in 2004. What unfolds is a tender, humorous, and deeply human moment of musical transmission.

As the scene opens, Tipanya and Chenaji sit together, reminiscing about fellow singers who have passed on. In a tone of playful affection, Tipanya urges Chenaji to share the treasure trove of songs still alive within him, songs that no one else has ever heard. When Chenaji replies, “I haven’t tied them up in a bundle, have I?”, Tipanya shoots back with a smile, “Maybe just a little?” and laughter erupts.

Chenaji picks up the tamboora and kartal while Prahlad ji sits beside him. Befitting his age, Chenaji begins singing mann tum jaoga hum jaani (my heart, you will go away, I know). But soon after, he begins to cough and, clearly fatigued, has to stop. At Virmani’s suggestion, Tipanya steps in to offer a song he learned from his guru. This time, Tipanya holds the tamboora and manjeera, and Chenaji takes the harmonium.

Tipanya begins singing-

humein sahib se milna hai, arre satguru se milna hai

maiṇ nashe me choor yaar, mere guru se milna hai,

main nashe meṇ khoob yar, maalik se milna hai

I’m on my way to meet the guru,

on my way to meet the lord.

I’m smashed, completely drunk, my friend,

about to meet the lord.

Chenaji joins in, but soon both begin stumbling over the lyrics, murmuring half-remembered lines, each leaning on the other to fill in the gaps. Chenaji sings with eyes closed, while Tipanya watches intently, willing his teacher to recall the next verse. At one point, Tipanya sings in jest, “Aage badho!” (“Sing the next few lines!”), trying to coax the song forward. 

The tamboora drones on, but confusion persists.

Tipanya eventually reaches what seems to be the chhaap (the poet’s signature verse), only to be interrupted by fellow Malwi singer Dayaram Sarolia, accompanying on the manjeera, who gently points out: “These lines don’t belong to this song.”

Still, the tamboora plays on.

A little later, Chenaji, looking uncertain but childlike, softly sings: is had ko cchod behad me jaana hain (Shedding all boundaries, I’ll go to the boundless!), unsure if he remembered correctly. 

“Bingo, there you go! Sing Sing!”- Prahladji exclaims, beaming.  

But as they continue and return to the signature verse, they realize that once again, it is the wrong song. They catch the mistake instinctively as the final word veers into the refrain of a different Kabir song: saheb ne bhang pilai (My guru gave me a drink of cannabis). 

“We have sung half of one song, half of another,” saying so, they laugh! 

Nonetheless, they continue singing Saheb ne bhang pilaai and decide to conclude with that. 

Analysis

Linda Hess offers a thoughtful analysis of this encounter in her work, aptly describing it as a “charming” exchange (86). It struck me as an interesting adjective when I first read it. In this section, I aim to explore what exactly makes this exchange “charming” and how it relates to the idea of ‘flow.’

One key element is the sense of camaraderie between Tipanya and his Guru. The back-and-forth banter, the laughter, and the casual language, reveal a warmth and ease that speak volumes about their relationship. This is the kind of refreshing camaraderie not often seen in most orthodox classical music contexts, where acquired knowledge is guarded with pride, and hierarchical dynamics dominate guru-shishya (teacher-disciple) interactions. 

Another related factor contributing to the charm is the liberal attitude toward the songs themselves. This openness is central to the concept of flow within the oral music tradition. For me, the charm of the exchange is a byproduct of that flow, or perhaps it is the other way around? In either case, what does this flow imply musically?

Commenting on the performance situations in Kabir oral traditions, Linda Hess observes that songs are connected in intricate and ever-changing ways: “[s]ong A may lead directly to song B on one occasion, to song C on another, or to song X on another, and in each case, the transition will appear seamless” (154). According to Hess, it is this direct movement from one song to another that makes the transition seamless. All these ideas for me point to the same idea- flow. A seam, literally, is the joining of two pieces (as of cloth or leather) by sewing, usually near the edge. Hess’s metaphorical use of “seamless” to describe song transitions invites us to consider how such seamlessness is achieved in live performance.

In the Tipanya-Chenaji exchange, two distinct songs with different lyrics flow effortlessly from one to the other. This seamlessness is the result of two intertwined factors: one musical, the other cultural. Musically, the songs possess qualities that facilitate such smooth transitions. Culturally, the oral tradition embraces an attitude that encourages spontaneity and flexibility in how songs are handled.

Musical Flow     

In the regional oral bhakti (devotional singing) tradition, a resemblance in tonal structure can often be heard across a wide range of bhajans, where the same melodic framework (or compositional notation) is used for multiple songs. For example, Kaluram Bamaniya of Malwa sings Mann lago mero yaar fakiri mein (Oh friend, my mind has taken to living free!) and Mann mast hua phir kya bole (My mind’s intoxicated, what can I say?) using a very similar notational melodic structure.

In the context of the Tipanya-Chenaji exchange, the two songs Saheb se milna hai and Saheb ne bhaang pilaai share an identical melodic framework. Expressed in the language of swaras (notes) of the Indian scale, the refrain follows this pattern: Ga re re sa sa re ga re re sa, ni ni ni sa re ga re re sa. 

The intoxicating, lilting quality of the melodic rendering mirrors the theme of intoxication present in the lyrics of both songs. The first celebrates the ecstatic yearning to meet the Guru, while the second describes a high brought on by bhaang (cannabis) a metaphor for the nectar of divine love offered by the Guru. This thematic resonance, paired with their shared tonal structure, makes these songs especially conducive to seamless transitions during performance.

Albert B. Lord, in his study of Slavic epic poetry, identifies a living oral tradition in which composition happens in the moment of performance. This spontaneity is made possible through the poet’s reliance on traditional formulas and recurring themes. Rather than memorizing fixed compositions, performers draw from a vast repertoire of ready-made phrases and motifs, allowing them to create a new version of the poem each time they perform.

Thinking through this framework, one can see a similar dynamic at work in the living oral tradition of Kabir songs. Here too, the repetitive nature of both musical forms and thematic content gives singers the flexibility to generate, forget, and recall song texts in real time. However, it is not just the musical structure that enables this sense of flow. There is also something deeper: an attitude, a particular way in which singers hold and relate to the songs, that makes such fluidity possible.

Flow and Collaborative Remembering

I return to the idea of attitude in song traditions, once again through the work of Linda Hess. Hess observes that “[o]ral folk traditions foster a liberal attitude toward words and meanings, in contrast with situations where there is an obligation to adhere to what is correct” (87). This liberal attitude invites exploration of both its causes and its implications.

Perhaps the most immediate implication of this openness is the light-heartedness with which forgetting and remembering occur in oral traditions. Forgetting is not considered       as a grave or unforgivable lapse. As seen in the scene discussed earlier, the performers laugh off their mix-up of songs, turning the moment into a shared joke rather than a mistake.

What is held in memory is subject to being forgotten. The bodies that hold these memories fade away and so do their memories, hence they transfer it to another memory, i.e., the memory of the public. In the beginning when Prahlad ji requested his guru to give away the songs he knew, it implied precisely the transference of valuable cultural material from the boundaries of the physical body of the individual to the larger body of the collective. The request was the allowance of the transition, the flow of the song to the next generation. It is in temporary, transient living bodies that memories reside, and in the singing, sharing and participating, it flows into the larger memory, what Diana Taylor calls the “repertoire”. 

This shared nature of memory also raises questions about ownership. In oral traditions, ownership of songs is rarely attributed to a single source. Memory is multidirectional, as seen in the moment when each performer looks to the other to confirm a lyric, as Dayaram Sarolia intervenes in the above case in point to correct the mix-up. What takes place is an act of “collaborative remembering” that is not reliant on a single individual, but on the collective memory housed within the sung repertoire. In this tradition, knowledge is not emitted from a singular authority. Instead, it circulates within a cohort that holds and shares it freely.

Additionally, as someone who has been also practising these songs as a performer, thinking through the role of music in living traditions has led me to further personal insights on flow and transition that I will explore in the next section.

Living and Dying in Living Traditions

Very recently, I had the opportunity to give a lecture-demonstration on Kabir as part of a course titled Living Traditions, taught by a friend at O.P. Jindal University. I had spent some time reflecting on the phrase “living tradition.” But approaching it through the oral song tradition of Kabir, whose philosophy is steeped in the themes of death and impermanence, I sensed a deeper, more meaningful connection waiting to be made.

I began the session with a simple exercise. I asked the students to close their eyes and breathe normally. Then, I invited them to observe their breath and flow with it. After a few moments, when I felt their minds may have settled from the background noise of the day, I guided them further with a few prompts:

Notice the in-breath, followed by the out-breath.

Observe how the in-breath seems to make a choice on your behalf, while the out-breath releases without effort.

Try to locate the exact point where the in-breath ends and the out-breath begins.

Similarly, where does the out-breath end and the in-breath begin?

After spending some time in this quiet observation, I asked them to open their eyes.

Later in the talk, I connected this cycle of breath to the idea of life and death itself. With every breath, we die once. In the release of the out-breath, there is surrender—just like in death. And with every in-breath, there is intention, a choice to live. This seamless rhythm of will and surrender mirrors the rhythm of life itself. This seamless flow of will and surrender is also what constitutes the rhythm of something as large a phenomenon as a living tradition.  It is not a singular, vast entity that only lives and never dies. Rather, like breath, it contains within it, constant cycles of living and dying, forgetting and remembering.

Let me connect this idea back to the case study of this essay through a description that is found on ajab shahar’s own YouTube channel. 

Ajab Shahar’s rather poetic description of this bit of the film on their YouTube channel goes like this:

The flesh withers. The notes falter. The world loses interest. We focus on the strong, the vigorous and the shining. Do we pause to sense the beauty of the aging? On a hot afternoon in the Malwa summer of 2004, a precious encounter unfolds between the older (now deceased) Chenaji Maru and renowned folk singer Prahlad Singh Tipanya as they sing together, reminisce and recall (and also forget) the songs of Kabir and other mystics! (“Singing with the Guru”)

Here, the description posits two binary images emerging out of the scene. I want to bring attention to two sets of ideas in this description that resonate with a deeper meaning. The first set — “withers”, “falter”, “the world loses interest”, “beauty of aging”, “older”, “forget” — reminds us of the transience and eventual death of material realities. The other set of words — “strong”, “vigorous”, “shining”, “they sing together”, “reminisce”, “recall”— emphasizes life, living, and the (re)birth in the form of memory. Forgetting becomes part of the release and surrender, akin to death. Remembering and singing together, in contrast, births something new from the ashes. 

What the musical exchange between Tipanya and Chenaji Maru captures is, in essence, the dual nature of the transition of songs through oral memory: forgetting and remembering, release and renewal, death and birth. Hence, what I argue is that a living tradition is not something that only lives and never dies, but something that holds within itself many deaths and births. The flow of a living tradition, hence contains within itself, both births and deaths of many forms, ideas, versions. 

Conclusion

This essay set out to closely examine a specific moment of cultural transmission within a long-standing oral musical tradition. What emerges is the recognition that tradition, at its micro-level enactment, is shaped not only by the formal and thematic qualities of songs but also by the attitudes of the bodies and voices that carry them. It is this interplay that generates the sense of flow inherent to such traditions. Philosophically, the essay has also reflected on what it means to call a tradition living in relation to flow. Just as life is not a continuous, unbroken chain, a living tradition too is composed of many lives and deaths of forms, ideas, and expressions over time. A living tradition, then, is not static or linear, but dynamic, layered, and always becoming.