Five years after Goalpariya folk singer Pratima Pandey-Barua, popularly known as hastir kanya (daughter of elephants), passed away, her daughter Alaka Pandey has embarked upon a campaign to “save” her mother’s musical legacy. She wants the Government to set up an academy to preserve and propagate this school of music.Alaka has been travelling from district to district, meeting cultural groups and singing at street-corners for a month now to gather public support for a research institute for Goalpariya folk songs. “I will do this for two months, and then see what happens,” she said.“While people in the Goalpara region of Assam have been singing these songs since time immemorial, my mother gave new meaning to it by taking it to the world. But little has been done to save this after her death in 2002,” said Alaka.She also accused the Government of turning a deaf ear to her repeated pleas. “My mother won the Sangeet Natak Akademi award and was also conferred the Padmashri. Musicians like Bhupen Hazarika and Bappi Lahiri sang her songs. But when I requested the Government to do something after her death, there was no response,” Alaka complained.Pandey-Barua, who popularised folk songs sung by phandis (elephant trappers), boatmen and buffalo-keepers of the Goalpara region, in fact came to be known as hastir kanya after Hazarika discovered her in 1955 and took her to sing for her first record. A member of the royal family of Gauripur, Pandey-Barua was the niece of legendary actor Pramathesh (Devdas) Barua. “She used to often refer to her father’s haathi mahal (elephant stall) as her music school, and his mahout her first guru,” Alaka said, taking time off from her campaign.Pandey-Barua’s songs about elephant-trappers became so popular that she was referred as hastier kanya. While Hazarika has also sung her songs including one in MF Husain’s Gajagamini, Lahiri’s Yaar bina chain kahan re was based on one of the Goalpariya folk songs that her mother gave new life to, Alaka said. “With no institutional support or control over the music industry, Goalpariya songs and music that my mother saved from extinction are now rapidly becoming corrupt and is being plagiarised. Since the Government is doing nothing, I am trying to whip up a awareness among the people,” she said.
