HYDERABAD: When Gummadi Prabhakar went back to his village in Nellore, he went for his usual stroll in the fields. Amidst the familiar bird chirp, crunch of leaves under his feet and smell of earth, Prabhakar heard the happy tune – music that fill his ears only when he visits home. A realisation stuck him – he should compile these songs. This is how dalitsong.com, one its kind website that offers a collection of Dalit songs was born.
“I started the website so that these songs do not die out. Dalit music is an important part of Dalit movement and their existence is important not only for researchers but also for people,” says Prabhakar, a PhD scholar in Department of History, University of Hyderabad. While the trial run of the website was done this February, it was officially launched on April 19 by the renowned Telugu activist and poet, Gaddar, as part of Ambedkar Jayanthi celebrations in the University.
Dalitsong.com classifies songs on the basis of language, lyricist, legend (BR Ambedkar and Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule). “I talked with people, searched for the songs and then categorised. I listened to all songs, noted their scripts, typed them and uploaded them on the website,” explains Prabhakar.
While the Phd scholar initially wanted to name his website dalitmusic.com, since the domain was already registered by someone, he had to opt for dalitsong.com. But he has no regrets so long as he is able to do preserve dalit music.
Though the website currently has Telugu and Marathi songs only, Prabhakar plans to include Tamil and Malayalam songs too. While lyrics of Telugu songs are in Telugu, for Marathi songs, English transliteration is given. Works of Gaddar, Guda Anjaiah, Gorati Venkanna, Vimalakka and Ande Sri find prevalence on the website.
He also plans to collect more videos and have English transliteration of all songs. Though the process, from collection to transliteration would be considered time consuming, for Prabhakar it is not the case. Passionate as he is, he is also very modest, “Whatever you see on the website should never be considered as the effort of one individual. It is a collective effort done by a lot of people from the community,” he emphasises.