At the biennial Design Research Society 2026 in Edinburgh, three Delhi-based researchers presented a paper that challenges how folk music has long been understood in global academic and policy circles.
The study is led by Abhinav Agrawal, along with Mudit Chaturvedi and Gaurang Agrawal. Drawing on 13 years of fieldwork with over 10,000 folk musicians through Anahad Foundation (a non-profit dedicated to empowering folk music in India), the team argues that dominant frameworks—especially those influenced by UNESCO-style definitions—often strip folk music of authorship, creativity, and individual agency.
Their paper, ‘Co-designing culture: A grounded theory of participatory practice in Indian folk music’, is based on interviews with 23 first-generation folk artists across 14 states. It reimagines Indian folk music as a deeply collaborative space, where songs are shaped continuously through interaction between artists and their communities, rather than simply passed down unchanged through oral tradition.
“Having our own India-specific, practitioner-rooted definition lets us study folk music on its own terms, not through a borrowed lens,” says Agrawal, a PhD researcher in Design at IIT.
The researchers argue that mainstream definitions often flatten folk music into something anonymous and purely collective, with its main purpose reduced to preserving tradition. That framing, they say, has real consequences. By treating folk songs as part of the “public domain,” legal systems frequently deny artists ownership and royalties, leaving creators without recognition or control over their work.
Their proposed definition instead describes folk music as a “living cultural artefact created by artists embedded in communities, shaped by lived experience”, and refined in dialogue with audiences. In this view, listeners are not passive consumers but active participants who influence lyrics, meaning, and performance in real time.
The paper also highlights how many folk artists use their work to respond to social issues such as child marriage, environmental harm, and communal tensions. Far from being relics of tradition, the researchers argue, these musicians are often sharp cultural commentators working in real time.
“Folk musicians are changemakers, living lives of real sacrifice… and yet the world kept calling them preservers of the past,” Agrawal notes. Chaturvedi adds that treating folk music as a shared cultural resource has often meant it is legally absorbed into the public domain, leaving artists unprotected.
For the researchers, the goal is to shift both perception and policy. “Folk music isn’t disappearing, it’s evolving,” they say. And with that shift, they hope institutions will begin to see folk artists not as keepers of tradition, but as contemporary creators shaping culture as it happens.
