Songs of Sivakami
For three years South African writer, Pravasan Pillay, documented the songs and stories of unknown ninety-one year old South African-Indian folklorist, Sivakami Chetty. Last year after her death, Pillay dedicated an article to her in Unsigned. We speak to him as part of our Contributor Notes Series.
Unsigned: Do you consider yourself an ethnomusicologist/folklorist?
Pravasan Pillay: No. I’m not a trained musicologist or folklorist and I have no interest in academic research or its methods. It was something I fell into after a friend introduced me to Sivakami. I had no experience of field recording before then.
U: Tell us about Sivakami.
PP: She was born in 1916, lost her husband relatively early, and worked as a market gardener until her late seventies. In most respects she was a traditional older Indian woman. It was only when she was singing or telling a story that her personality changed. She’d go into a trance-like state and would barely acknowledge my presence. Her music and stories were concerned with, what I would call, bad men – either human or supernatural.
U: Do you plan on publishing any of these stories or songs?
PP: They’re not mine to publish. My feeling is that they should be out there but Sivakami’s family don’t agree. Our dispute, if you want to call it that, revolves on their request to cut the so-called occult passages from the transcripts. This would mean destroying around eighty per cent of the recordings. I don’t see the point of releasing them in that heavily edited form.
U: Two issues ago (Unsigned#23) you contributed an article, ‘Some Plantation Creatures’, which you dedicated to Sivakami , whose content – complete with diagrams – seemed to suggest that you take the existence of supernatural beings seriously.
PP: I never stated that I believed. It was an investigation.
U: I suppose what I’m getting at is whether the article was in jest. At one point you discuss an albino that rides a giant rat from the canefields. Are you being ironic?
PP: I don’t think that’s what I’m trying to do.
U: Any plans for future recordings?
PP: There are a few story threads that Sivakami left unfinished. I would like to find out how they end, but I’m not sure who could finish them.
Unsigned is a culture journal based in Nijmegen in The Netherlands. Sivakami’s surname has been changed in accordance with her family’s wishes.
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