When Preservation Silences:The Heritization of a Women’s Musical Tradition in Nepa

Abstract

This paper examines the paradoxical dynamics of heritization in the Ratyauli tradition—a historically women-only musical practice from western Nepal—through the lived experiences of 17 women heritage practitioners. Drawing on interviews, focus group discussions, and analysis of YouTube and TikTok videos, it investigates how processes of preservation, promotion, and digital circulation reshape the meanings, forms, and agency embedded in Ratyauli. While traditionally a subversive, intergenerational space for women’s expression of sexuality, resistance, and communal bonding, Ratyauli has increasingly been institutionalized through public competitions and appropriated in male-dominated performance economies. These shifts have introduced new silencing mechanisms, including lyrical “filtering” to fit patriarchal respectability norms, exclusion of marginalized-caste voices from decision-making, and the commodification of sexualized imagery on social media. The paper situates these transformations within Nepal’s federal socio-political landscape, where heritage promotion often overrides gender equity, and argues that visibility under such conditions risks eroding the very agency and authenticity that make Ratyauli a vital site of women’s cultural power. Ultimately, it calls for heritage frameworks that center practitioners’ rights, and voices, resisting the reduction of women’s traditions to sanitized spectacle or decontextualized “content.”