"When that first person heard that second person's voice by virtue of a crystal set or whatever it was on, they had not only the most unique experience in music - of music in the sense of the voice as sound, obviously, but they had the one true approach to radio. They were able to get at something quite special... that original human contact, that incredible spine tingling awareness of some other human voice or persona"
-Glenn Gould.
The Jhonda are a sub-sect of the Khonda tribe. They are residents of the south eastern parts of Orissa and northern Andhra pradesh. Their introduction to the radio was far less dramatic than mainstream cultural representations of encounters between the "primitive" and technology. The jhonda have adapted the radio as a folk instrument using it prominently in their repertoire. This rare recorded piece is a marriage song sung in the kui language with the radio static providing a strange, distant rhythmic counterpoint.
No 1/1
