In India, music helps spread Millets’ message

At the request of Government of India, the United Nations has declared 2023 as the International Year of Millets. This is just one of many initiatives India has undertaken over the past decade to promote millets, sometimes called the country’s “forgotten” or “orphan” crop. In fact, the passion for the millet revival was described as “millet craze” as early as 2013.

Millets are grasses with small, hard, round seeds, and nine different species have been cultivated in India since ancient times. But for decades, they were marginalized in favor of more valued commodities, like rice and wheat. An Indian government study conducted in 2022 found that per capita consumption of millet in the country had declined by 88% since 1960.

As farmers grapple with climate change and water shortages, some view millet as a lifeline because they require less water and tolerate more heat than other grains, while being richer in certain nutrients. In 2018, India had its own “National Year of Millets”. Since then, government-sponsored food festivals, competitions, classes and documentaries have promoted these tiny, earthy-tasting grains.

Ragi muda ball shaped dough made from ragi millet pressed together is a traditional staple food in Karnataka, South India. Maïna Bosco, CC BY-SA 4.0

There were also songs. In June 2023, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi co-wrote (and contributed vocals to) “Abundance in Millets”, performed by husband and wife team Gaurav and Falguni Shah. With lyrics like “Cherish the millets year after year” and “Let’s shower our farmers with love,” the song was even nominated for a Grammy Award. However, not everyone was impressed. In a December 2023 editorial in The Indian Telegraph, Chandrima S. Bhattacharya criticized the song and music video as clunky and overly idealistic. “It became where very few songs were before: it became a PowerPoint presentation,” Bhattacharya wrote. “I don’t know how the song got its Grammy nomination and I don’t want to know.”

Despite its detractors, “The Abundance of Millets” has inspired imitators. In November 2023, Odisha Millet Mission, based in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, released its own music video for a song titled “Ama Millets Mission”. A government-sponsored millet song competition was also announced for 2023, and although it ended due to a lack of songs meeting the judging criteria, entries can still be found online.

But chants about millet in India are not new. Across the subcontinent, millets feature in the traditional music that accompanies every stage of their culture. This kind of millet music is the subject of Kings have resorts / People have songs, a 2016 documentary by filmmaker Tarun Bhartiya, part of a series on rural village music in the northeastern state of Meghalaya. In the film, Syndai village elders recreate their memories of “Long Hai,” a traditional song sung during weeding before planting millet.

A woman in Gujarat, western India, prepares a local snack called paunk with the immature green grains of sorghum millet. Sneha G Gupta, CC BY-SA 4.0

“Long Hai” once brought together generations of women to work cooperatively, with lyrics delivered in a call-and-response format that described scenes from daily life and reinforced community values. But because betel nut, or kwai, became more profitable as a cash crop, “all the land we used to grow millet on became kwai plantations,” a Syndai resident explains in the film. At the time of filming, “Long Hai” had not been performed for 60 years.

When the millet planting in Syndai ended, so did the singing of “Long Hai” and the way of life it documented. “We used to do ‘Long Hai’ when we were growing millet,” says a woman in the film, trying to remember the words of the song from her childhood. “How can we preserve it when we no longer grow millet?

There is a striking contrast between “Long Hai”, which comes from a way of life intrinsically linked to millet cultivation, and “Abundance in Millets”, which abstractly extols the virtues of this culture. What Bhartiya calls “the middle-class elite’s obsession” with millet in modern India is often removed from the work of cultivation and the reality of the substantial changes that have occurred in the country since millet was once a commodity. “That’s why the song can only survive if the lifestyle survives,” says Bhartiya. “Even if we want to bring millet back to life, it’s not just a simple crop. This culture embodies certain community values. So you can’t just take it out and say, “Okay, now we’re going to have five fields dedicated to millet.” »

The sidelining of millet in India began under British colonial rule, due to the growing demand for cash crops, but millet remained a staple food until after India’s independence. Wheat and rice became more accessible thanks to government subsidies in the 1960s and 1970s during India’s “Green Revolution,” a national program intended to modernize and increase agricultural production. Farmers were encouraged to plant wheat and rice rather than millet because of their higher yields and the advanced technology that existed to process them.

As no such machine had been developed for millet, it became stereotyped as requiring hard labor for little reward. Farmers have also been encouraged to intensively cultivate single plots in monoculture, rather than continuing the ancient practice of “shifting cultivation”, in which fields are alternately cultivated with multiple crops, left to nature, and then cleared.

Traditionally, “millet cultivation was closely linked to shifting cultivation,” explains Bhartiya. Millet has a shorter growing season than other grains, allowing land to rest or be used for other crops at different times. Bhartiya describes shifting cultivation as “a very, very deep understanding of the land” that requires shared responsibility without private ownership. “Due to the advent of private property, shifting cultivation is increasingly under threat,” says Bhartiya.

As an agricultural crisis looms, shifting agriculture is increasingly recognized for its sustainability. But Bhartiya believes the millet revival must not follow the same “plantation-based, private property-led culture” that led to the current problems.

The desire for a sustainable grain source spurred India’s millet craze, but it’s important to remember that “where people grew these crops, it also depended on a certain sense of community,” says Bhartiya . Traditional songs like “Long Hai” provide context and insight into the role of millet in a sustainable agricultural model that is missing in modern millet music. The task for viewers of his film, Bhartiya says, is to become aware of this context and “not separate your diet from the social and cultural relationships you have with the land.”

Bhartiya describes songs as an ever-changing repository of memory and knowledge. As a result, he says, “the loss of one song actually embodies a greater loss.” The title of Kings have resorts / People have songs draws a parallel between the overgrown ruins of a royal jungle fort near Syndai and the half-remembered local song of millet: both echo the richness of the past.

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