Tradition · hereditary musician communities
Mānganiyār & Lāngā
Also known as Manganiyar, Langa, Merasi, Jaisalmer musicians, Mānganiyār & Lāngā — the hereditary musicians of Marwar
Two Muslim musician communities of Jaisalmer and Barmer who sing for hereditary Hindu and Muslim patron families — Manganiyars for Rajput and Charan jajmans, Langas largely for Sindhi Sipahi patrons. They keep genealogies, marriage songs and the repertoire of their patrons' houses, and play kamaicha, sarangi and murli.
- Function
- Arts & performance
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 26.910, 70.910
Worth knowing
The system is a contract, not employment: a Manganiyar family serves specific patron families across generations and has the right to be called and paid at their births, marriages and deaths. Concert touring since the 1960s has given these musicians an income independent of the jajmani tie for the first time in centuries.
Connections (4)
- AnaloguePābūjī kī Phaḍ
Both traditions run on the jajmani tie rather than on an audience: a Manganiyar family sings for named patron households across generations, and a bhopa serves the shrine of a specific deity whose scroll his family carries. In each the performer is a Muslim or low-caste specialist and the patron is usually not, and in each the twentieth-century festival circuit has replaced a patron who could no longer pay.
- Patronage networkJaisalmer Fort
Jaisalmer and the desert around it are the Mānganiyār country, and the jajmani tie that organises them ran up to the Bhati rulers of the fort as well as down to Rajput and Charan village households. A musician family holds the right to be called and paid at its patrons' births, marriages and deaths, and keeps their genealogies; the patron cannot dismiss them and they cannot serve anybody else. It is a contract in music, inherited on both sides.
- Craft tradition ofPattu weaving of Jaisalmer and Barmer
The Manganiyar and Langa musicians and the Meghwal and Muslim pattu weavers are the two hereditary service communities of the western Thar, each attached to patron households by obligation rather than by wages. Both survived the collapse of the pastoral and princely economy that supported them by finding an outside audience — festivals for one, co-operatives and design markets for the other.
- Patronage networkHinduism
The clearest case in the repository of a religion's repertoire being carried by people outside it. The Mānganiyār and Lāngā of Marwar are Muslim hereditary musicians whose patrons were Rajput and Charan houses, and whose repertoire is therefore largely Hindu — they invoke Krishna before performing, sing to Rajput tutelary deities, and keep genealogies for families whose gods are not theirs. Patronage, not belief, decided what they learned, and five centuries later the songs are still what they were paid to sing.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Manganiar”. Sangeet Natak Akademi documentation; and the standard field studies of each tradition named in the entry.
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