Dappu debate

The Dappu foregrounds the hegemonic structure within which the Veena as a musical instrument operates.

Definition of culture and hence the acts of domination and hegemony are a part of the everyday. This is reflected in the debate around the Dappu and the Veena as shown by Samata Biswas.

The Dappu is a drumming instrument primarily used by the Madigas while the Veena is a string instrument associated with the Hindu Goddess Saraswati. Biswas notes three reactions to the mess notice board about the Dappu player. One was of cultural relativism where it was treated as a piece of new information about another culture. The second was of disgust that ‘real/material’ issues weren’t being addressed. And the third was of anger of “bringing in” caste in something like music. These three reactions are crucial to understand how the Veena has always stood for secular and hence cultural while the Dappu represents caste. It is the relational mode of analysis that brings to light how the Veena is universal and the Dappu particular. And that the discussion about the focuses on the religious and castist connotations of the Veena.

In essential, this debate points out how the Dappu and the Veena aren’t just musical instruments (standing in for many other cultural practices) but reflect the politics of terming something “national-cultural” and others as “regional.” It also highlights how the process of the Veena being celebrated as classical tradition while the Dappu remains the identity of a few. Different cultural practices are related in a coercive manner and the relationship between the Veena and Dappu is reflective of the violent marginalisations of certain popular practices in society. Evocation of the Dappu then points out the identity of the Veena as systematically and historically marginalizing the Dappu and millions of other such instruments, literature, religion, and ways of life. Hence the Dappu foregrounds the hegemonic structures of class, caste, religion and identity within which the Veena operates.