Dalit Rhapsody
On the evening of 6 January 2018, about five thousand people trickled into the grounds of the CSI Bain Matriculation Higher Secondary School, in the Chennai neighbourhood of Kilpauk. The rows of chairs in front of the stage quickly filled up, leaving the open ground for the rest of the audience to occupy. It was the Tamil month of Margazhi, which lasts from 16 December to 13 January. In Chennai, this “auspicious” month is synonymous with the Carnatic music season. Scores of music lovers from around the world, most of them from the Brahmin community, throng the concert halls of southern Chennai to listen to their favourite classical musicians, who are also mostly Brahmin.
That year, however, a 19-member musical group called the Casteless Collective, composed of artists songs—a genre of Dalit urban folk songs, sung on the streets of northern Chennai—with rock and rap music, and belted out 20 songs of resistance in front of a mass audience.
