‘Lachumamma under the kanigele tree’: Telugu poet Gaddar’s voice in the Kannada landscape

Over the last four decades, there have been many compilations and interpretations of “songs of resistance” from varied perspectives. Each progressive group has also presented and published its ideological positions on them. Even though I have had an umbilical relationship with “songs of resistance”, I have refrained from sharing my position or experiences so far. Nor did I feel the need to bring out a compilation of the songs I have translated from Telugu and the songs that I have written in Kannada. But recently I have begun to consider it a historical responsibility to trace and record the imprints of the journeys that “songs of resistance” have made across the region in the ways that I have seen it.

Songs of struggle

I will begin when the phrase horatada hadugalu (songs of resistance) was coined. This was when songs of struggle were still on the tongues of singers and the pages of their notebooks. At that time, the Kolar branch of the Dalit Sangharsha Samiti wanted to bring out a collection or compilation. At that point, singing these songs was the domain of N Venkatesh, who would belt out several of them in his sore voice.

Our own “Gaddam” Venkatesh brought these songs from neighbouring Andhra...

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