Songs with Consequences? Songfests and Binding Dohori Contests in the Rural Hills

What is it about?

This chapter focuses on the pragmatics of dohori singing in rural songfests like the one described in the previous chapter. With a comparative focus on different types of songfests across Nepal’s rural hill areas, it addresses how songfests frame performances in ways that allow for particular pragmatic effects. These are based on forms of ritualized material and musical exchange that idealize the production of equality, yet often still reproduce inequality. It tells the history of dohori as a means of communication across social divides, often with significant material stakes in binding contests that could end in marriage.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

It discusses dohori’s historical connections with labor exchange and marriage exchange to show how this practice of singing is grounded in ways of producing equality and hierarchy through the give-and-take of objects, people, and meaningful sung words. It gives examples of how binding dohori contests or song duels have been considered threats to the social order and how their outcomes have been re-integrated, changing aspects of individuals’ lives and social relations.

Perspectives