IN-BETWEEN SOUND AND LANDSCAPE: INTERCOMMUNITY INNOVATIONS AND SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH DREE FESTIVAL AMONG THE APATANI PEOPLE OF ARUNACHAL PRADESH

Abstract

This paper has developed over a span of four years since I first visited Ziro valley in 2017, guided by reflections and insights that I came upon while revisiting the field in recent years in the Lower Subansiri district of Arunachal Pradesh. The dree ritual was historically an individual household ritual for Apatani people who owned cultivable land for better crops and good harvest before 1967. However, presently Dree is celebrated in a common ground and all villages come together to celebrate it. Through this ethnomusicological study with active fieldwork participation, archiving and tools borrowed from historical ethnomusicology, I have attempted at studying the gradual shift of ritual space within the Apatani community leading to an emerging performing space which is able to accommodate and nurture the diverse range of cultural practices of miji-migung (oral tradition) traditions, traditional dance forms, story-telling and other friendly sports for recreation within the celebration of an egalitarian Dree festival. Diary entries from C.V.F Haimendorf ’s field notes on “Drii”2 helped me to conceptualize further the drastic change in the structure and historical location of the Dree ritual and the specific role played by the Nyibu (ritual specialist and performer of miji) within the Apatani community. Dree festival among the patanis has projected a history where the feeling of nationalism and identity in post-independent India is being not only practised but also been creating a new emerging performance space and soundscapes among the Apatani people of Arunachal Pradesh, which could be better conceptualized as a process of glocalization and inter-community sustainability.