Abstract
The biraha music culture of northern India has a unique makeup and history which allows for detailed study of changes in song structure over the last 100 years. While studies of musical change of such scope are somewhat common when the subject is any number of well-documented classical traditions, it is rather unexpected in this instance since birahf is a folk music of low-caste Indians. Indeed, many have thought that historical studies of individual Indian folk musics were near impossible for lack of available historical documentation. Aided by song texts dating from the 1880s to the 1980s and by interviews with biraha singers and poets, both young and old, the present study sheds light on the process of composition for biraha songs over this period.1 The last 100 years has been a time of great change for the biraha genre. Initially an obscure tradition restricted to one or two closely related castes, biraha developed to become the single most popular folk music genre of its immediate region by the 1970s and '80s.
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