51 year old folk performer, Ganesh Rabidas, hails from Kaliagunj, Uttar Dinajpur. Though Ganesh, and his father before him, were born and brought up in his village in Kaliaganj, his grandfather belonged to the Ravidas community from Uttar Pradesh. The family adopted West Bengal as their home and Bengali as their language more than 75 years ago.
Ganesh began his association with Khon pala, the folk drama of Uttar and Dakshin Dinajpur, as a teenager studying in class IX. In fact, he would skip school to take part in these dramas, much to the annoyance of his father. His father himself was a singer of Kirtans and Bhajans and their home is filled with numerous musical instruments. As fate would have it, financial difficulties forced Ganesh to give up studies in the last year of his school in 1993, and he was free to devote himself to folk drama.
He immediately joined up with a local group and went around performing in Khon palas with both Puranic and social themes. The Khon gaan form has its genesis in local salacious gossip. Carefully incorporated into these plays would be social messages that they were being encouraged to propagate by the government. Of course, care would be taken to ensure that entertainment value was not compromised. Ganesh eventually started his own folk theatre group - Robi Shoshi Lok Natto in 1995. However, it was not until his group merged with a registered group, Deep Jyoti Rural Welfare Society, that his team of twelve theatre loving men was able to participate in government funded cultural programmes.
Aside from Khon gaan which is his specialization, Ganesh and his group also participate in traditional folk performances intrinsic to the region – forms like Chuk Chundi, Notua, Kojaguri and Gomira/Gombhira also known as Mukha Khel - a masked dance folk form. The Notua is a folk song performance where the lead singer or gayen and his able assistant, the joker, who provides the comic relief, sing in a question answer format. They are accompanied by musicians playing the mridang, kartal and harmonium and three “chhukris” – young men dressed up as women in rough jute costumes. Khon and Notua performances are not specific to any particular season.
The Gomira/Gombhira (pronounced differently in different villages) is a ritual masked dance that has its roots in animist traditions and the worship of Adya Shakti (primordial energy). The Shakti cult is deeply entrenched in Uttar and Dakshin Dinajpur and every village has its own shrine devoted to Shakti, in her many forms, as the gram devata (guardian deity) of that village. Since Gomira is associated with the worship of numerous Kali-centric folk deities, there is a mask for each of them and Gomira dances are organized to propitiate each village’s particular deity.
Each mask is used for a particular reason and at a particular time. The rituals take place between Choitro Sankranti (mid-April) and mid-July, dates and gram devata varying from village to village. For example, Chamunda worship takes place on Choitro Sankranti. On the other hand, villages where Amatkali is the village deity, the worship takes place during the mango harvesting season (Joishtho – mid-May to mid-June), that also coincides with the worship of goddess Kamakshya. Ganesh and his group use wooden masks.
Ganesh and his group also enjoy participating in centuries old local rituals like the Kojagori and Chuk Chundi. For three days following Lakshmi Puja, the group wander from home to home, singing Bondhuala songs borrowed from Khon palas, in exchange for alms. The song is about friendship and love between a man and a woman and while the two main performers sing and dance, to musical accompaniment, the rest of the group, the doaris, are seated and provide the chorus. The essential joker is also part of the group. The Chuk Chundi ritual is performed for two days after kali puja ends. Here too the group wanders from home to home, performing in exchange for alms. Specific songs are sung in a local dialect and the dance, performed by three pairs of Chhokras and Chhukris is quite unusual. The rest of the group provides the chorus.
Ganesh has conceived the theme for numerous Khon folk dramas and is very proud of the fact that his Khon pala production, entitled Dobhagar Bibaron, was telecast on television (DD Bangla) some years ago. Ganesh says that his passion for folk drama can only be termed as an addiction - "nesha". It feeds his soul.
Ganesh and the members of this group are primarily agriculturists with a passion for folk theatre and dance. They have performed across all districts of West Bengal, but their art alone cannot sustain them. Even though as an Artist Card holder, Ganesh receives a monthly stipend from the state government, he is compelled to supplement his meagre income from performances by other means, and can devote no more than two or three days of the week to his drama. Artist card holders get to participate in government sponsored cultural programmes and their services are also used for advertising state government schemes through song, drama, dance. Ganesh cultivates the little land that he owns and being literate, assists people in and around his village to obtain documents like driving licenses and ration cards. He is held in high regard by the villagers, but the downside is that for this very reason, villagers are reluctant to hire him as a lowly daily wage earning labourer.
With sowing completed in the monsoons, Ganesh is able to devote more time to his art from autumn (Sharot kaal) onwards when there is a lull in agricultural activity. This is the beginning of the festival season in West Bengal - religious, seasonal and harvest festivals - which, in the main, go on till the end of the Bengali year in mid April. Ritual performances apart, there are usually numerous opportunities for folk artists and artisans in the form of cultural programmes, village fairs etc. It is this time of the year that all folk performers look forward to. It is these opportunities that sustain them, body and soul for the rest of the year. Earlier this month, Ganesh and his group put up a very successful Mukha Khel performance in Delhi.
Ganesh has a son and daughter, both of whom are musically inclined, but are yet to decide if they wish to follow in their father`s footsteps.