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Ambore Gangu in 1997 (photo Andréine Bel) |
Ambore Gangu
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A leper woman, poet and a singer from village Tadkalas Parbhani district, state of Maharashtra (India) |
I take your name, God, |
गंगुबाई अंबोरे या ताडकळस, जिल्हा परभणी, महाराष्ट्र, भारत, इथे रहाणार्या महारोगी बाईंची मुलाखत १९९६-९७ ला ध्वनीमुद्रित केली. त्या आपल्या मनातले अगदी जवळचे विचार जात्या वरील गणी व भक्तिपरंपरेतील अभंग, गौळणींच्या आधारावर अभिव्यक्त करतात.
Work with Ambore Gangu was part of the project "Unfettered Voices" undertaken in 1996-1997 by the Centre for Cooperative Research in Social Sciences (CCRSS, Pune) in collaboration with Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH, New Delhi).
"Unfettered voices" is a project to extensively document the specific forms of expression and communication peculiar to women in rural areas of Maharashtra. While doing extensive documentation, social animators felt the need to come back to a few individuals who seem to be different within their society. These persons seem to be eager to pass on their personal experience, something that is not very easy within their existing social structure. So far the process of collection of these songs has been through recording groups of women grinding and the transcription of their words. Among these are women who hold a larger repertory of grindmill songs and these sessions do not do them justice.The approach was to capture some of the various social forces and events in their daily existence that appear as messages in their songs.
