Sung and Unsung Traditions

Abstract

Valmikis, among the most transregional Dalit communities of north India, are known for providing the backbone of the sanitation labor force in Uttar Pradesh and beyond. It is less well known that they constitute a major portion of the musical labor force of north India as well, supplying brass bands, jagaran troupes and qawwali parties with their artists. How might the collective religious life of Valmikis, and its relation to Hinduism, be illuminated by attending to the careers and narratives of professional devotional musicians from the community? This paper follows the lives of Mehbub Ali and Dev Kapur—these are pseudonyms—who are brothers working in parallel sectors of the religious music industry in Lucknow: Ali in the qawwali scene at Sufi shrines, Kapur as a bhajan singer in Hindu festivals. Where Ali’s career illuminates scarcely studied but widespread traditions of Valmiki involvement in qawwali and in Islamic collective life more broadly, Kapur’s indexes the rise of popular practices of devotion to Hindu goddesses in a Punjabi style. Based on interviews and participant-observation spread over a ten-year period, the paper examines what shifting and enduring traditions of Valmiki devotional music reveal about the apparent Hinduization of a transregional Dalit caste.