When a Tradition Disappears,
More Than an Art Form Is Lost
Northeast India is a land of extraordinary cultural diversity. Its songs carry the memories of generations. Its dances express faith, identity and collective belonging. Its traditional instruments preserve the wisdom of craftspeople that learned to transform wood, bamboo, metal, leather and other natural materials into instruments of music. Its rituals connect people with their ancestors, their environment and their understanding of the world.
Yet much of this cultural wealth
remains fragile.
Some traditions are approaching extinction because only a few practitioners remain. Others continue to be performed, but the social and economic systems that once sustained them are weakening. Still others attract large audiences but are often misunderstood because their deeper cultural meanings are overlooked.
These are three different
problems, and they require different solutions.
For more than four decades, from 1983 to 2026, I have pursued fieldwork, documentation and digital preservation relating to the cultural heritage of Assam and the wider Northeast. My work has taken me into villages, traditional performance spaces, temples and other places where cultural knowledge survives through practice and oral transmission.
Over these years, one concern has become increasingly clear to me: we have often paid greater attention to the preservation of historic buildings than to the people whose knowledge gives those places their cultural life.
A temple may survive for centuries, but what happens when the hereditary singer who performs there disappears? A traditional instrument may be displayed in a museum, but what happens when nobody remembers how to make it, tune it or play it? A dance may continue on a public stage, but what happens when its original meaning is forgotten?
These questions lie at the heart
of safeguarding intangible cultural heritage.
The challenge is not simply to preserve what we can see and photograph. It is to sustain the knowledge, skills, memories, beliefs and community relationships that make cultural traditions meaningful.
Three Conditions of Living
Heritage
My fieldwork has led me to distinguish three broad conditions of performative heritage: critically endangered, vulnerable, and living but misinterpreted.
This is a practical framework for understanding cultural vulnerability, rather than a claim that every tradition can be placed permanently in one category. A tradition may move from one condition to another as its community, practitioners and circumstances change.
The important point is that safeguarding must begin with understanding the actual condition of the tradition.
1. Critically Endangered: When
the Last Voices Fall Silent
Vyās Saṅgīt of Assam illustrates the urgency of protecting traditions that survive through a very small number of knowledgeable practitioners.
During six years of focused fieldwork, I encountered a situation in which, according to my research, only three practitioners remained. These performers possessed knowledge extending beyond a single musical form, including Bārgīt and Ojāpāli traditions.
Their knowledge was valuable not merely because of their artistic abilities, but because they carried memories, techniques and performance practices that had been transmitted through earlier generations.
Yet the continuity of such a tradition cannot depend indefinitely on the memory of a few ageing practitioners. Without opportunities to perform, adequate recognition, financial support and younger disciples willing to learn, even the most accomplished tradition may disappear.
Recording a performance is an essential first step, but it cannot replace the living relationship between teacher and student. A video may preserve the visible movements and audible notes, but it cannot, by itself, ensure that the next generation learns the appropriate techniques, understands the ritual context or develops the judgement required to perform the tradition responsibly.
For a critically endangered tradition, the priorities must therefore be immediate documentation, recognition of practitioners, fair remuneration, support for apprentices and the preservation of knowledge in forms that communities can access.
The International Music Council's Five Music Rights offer a useful ethical perspective for thinking about musical participation, expression and recognition. These principles should encourage us to consider not only whether a tradition has been recorded, but also whether its practitioners have meaningful opportunities to practise, perform and transmit their art.
The
objective must be to protect both the knowledge and the dignity of its bearers.
2. Vulnerable: When the
Supporting System Weakens
A second condition occurs when a tradition continues to exist but loses the social, economic or institutional support that once sustained it.
The Devanaṭī Dance associated with Parihareshwar Temple at Dubi, Assam, and traditions of Vyāh-Gowā Ojāpāli illustrate the concerns raised by this condition in my research.
Traditional performances are rarely isolated artistic activities. They are often connected with temples, religious observances, community gatherings, hereditary responsibilities and systems of patronage. These relationships provide performers with a place, a purpose and, in many cases, a means of livelihood.
When the supporting
system weakens, the consequences extend beyond the performance itself.
A performer who can no longer earn a livelihood from a traditional art may be compelled to seek other employment. Young people may hesitate to learn an art that offers little economic security. Ritual occasions may become less frequent, and the knowledge required to perform within their original context may gradually decline.
The tradition may still be visible, but the conditions necessary for its continuity are disappearing.
This is why safeguarding cannot be reduced to occasional festivals, ceremonial invitations or video recordings. Such activities can provide visibility, but they may not restore the relationships that once sustained the art.
What is needed is a broader approach: support for practitioners, opportunities for intergenerational learning, renewed community participation, responsible institutional assistance and, wherever appropriate, the revival of local patronage.
The central lesson is simple: a cultural tradition cannot remain healthy when the people who sustain it are unable to sustain themselves.
3. Living but Misinterpreted:
When Visibility Conceals Meaning
A third condition presents a different challenge. Here, the tradition remains active and attracts public attention, but its cultural significance is not always properly understood.
Ka Pomblang Nongkrem of Smit in Meghalaya and Pung Cholom associated with Manipuri Saṅkīrtana help illustrate this distinction.
Ka Pomblang Nongkrem is not simply a colourful dance performance. It belongs to a Khasi ceremonial tradition associated with thanksgiving, community identity and the sacred relationship between people and their cultural world. Its ritual setting, participants, movements and ceremonial responsibilities contribute to its meaning.
Similarly, Pung Cholom cannot be understood merely as an energetic display of drum-playing and dance. Within the broader tradition of Manipuri Saṅkīrtana, the drum and the performer's movements participate in a devotional and musical expression.
When such traditions are presented only as entertainment, their audiences may enjoy the spectacle without understanding its cultural foundations.
Tourism, photography, public festivals and stage presentations can all help increase visibility. The problem arises when presentation replaces explanation, or when the demands of spectacle remove a tradition from the context that gives it meaning.
Safeguarding must therefore include responsible interpretation. Communities should have the opportunity to explain their own traditions, correct misleading descriptions and decide how their cultural practices are represented.
The aim is not to prevent artistic adaptation or public presentation. Living traditions naturally change. The aim is to ensure that change does not automatically erase cultural meaning or silence the people whose knowledge sustains the tradition.
These three conditions suggest three complementary priorities: rescue and support traditions facing imminent disappearance; strengthen the social and economic foundations of vulnerable traditions; and correct the interpretation of traditions that remain active but are poorly understood.
Beyond Recording: Understanding
the Life of a Tradition
My long-term fieldwork has reinforced another important distinction: documentation is not the same as understanding.
A photograph can capture a costume. An audio recording can preserve a melody. A video can show a sequence of movements. An interview can preserve an elder's account of the past. All these records are valuable. Yet, taken separately, they may provide only a partial picture. To understand a performance, we must ask five connected questions.
First, what is performed? We need to document the music, dance, gestures, instruments, repertoire and technical skills involved.
Second, who performs it? We must understand the practitioner's training, lineage, responsibilities and relationship with the community. In some traditions, the right to perform particular material may be governed by specific cultural or ritual responsibilities.
Third, in what context is it performed? The location, occasion, season, ritual purpose and participation of the community may be essential to understanding the event.
Fourth, what knowledge does it transmit? A performance may carry historical memories, local terminology, ecological knowledge, religious ideas, and social values and specialized technical skills.
Fifth, what does it mean to the community? This question is particularly important because an interpretation that appears convincing to an outsider may not reflect the understanding of the people who maintain the tradition.
These five dimensions—performance, performer, context, knowledge and meaning—should be documented together.
Such an approach transforms documentation from the collection of cultural materials into a process of cultural understanding.
It also makes long-term fieldwork especially valuable. A single visit may record an event, but sustained engagement can reveal changes in transmission, the transfer of responsibilities between generations, the decline or renewal of community participation, and the changing meaning of a ritual.
The archive developed through my work since 1983, including photographs, recordings, interviews, manuscripts and other documentary materials, should be understood in this context: not simply as a personal collection, but as a resource for studying the changing life of cultural traditions.
Its long-term value will depend on how accurately it represents the communities concerned and how effectively its materials can support future learning and safeguarding.
The Khar-Ghar Theory: Indigenous
Knowledge as Technology
One of the central ideas emerging from this research is what I call the Khar-Ghar Theory.
The theory proposes a comparison between traditional instrument-making and the indigenous technological knowledge associated with gunpowder production in the Ahom period.
The word Khar-Ghar refers here to a specialized workshop associated with the preparation of gunpowder. The historical example raises an important question: how should we understand the technical knowledge developed by communities that worked with locally available materials and passed specialized skills from one generation to another?
Traditional knowledge is sometimes described as craft, custom or inherited practice. These descriptions are not necessarily wrong, but they may fail to convey the complexity of the knowledge involved.
Consider the making of a traditional musical instrument. The crafts-person must know which material is suitable, how it should be selected and processed, how it responds to environmental conditions, and how its physical properties affect sound.
Wood may need seasoning. Bamboo must be selected and prepared carefully. Leather may require appropriate curing and tension. Different materials, dimensions and construction methods produce different acoustic results.
This is not simply the assembly of objects. It is a system of observation, experimentation, technical judgement and accumulated experience.
The historical example of the Khar-Ghar points towards a comparable process of transforming natural materials through specialized knowledge. The preparation of gunpowder involved the selection and processing of materials and the application of technical procedures to achieve a functional result. Its historical significance lies in the organized knowledge and labour behind the production process.
The comparison is conceptual, not a claim that the two activities had identical purposes or techniques. Instrument-making creates the material conditions for musical sound; gunpowder production served a very different function. Their common feature is the transformation of materials through learned technical knowledge.
The Khar-Ghar Theory therefore invites us to recognize indigenous knowledge as a form of technological intelligence.
Its wider significance becomes clearer when we follow the journey from nature to cultural expression:
Nature → Material → Craft Knowledge → Technology → Instrument → Sound → Performance → Social Meaning → Community Identity
Each stage depends on the knowledge accumulated in the preceding stages. The instrument is not merely an object; it embodies decisions, skills and memories. The performance is not merely an event; it activates knowledge through sound, movement and social participation.
This is the deeper meaning of From Soil to Stage. The natural world provides materials, human knowledge transforms them, and cultural practice gives them meaning.
The stage is the visible outcome of a much longer process—one that begins in the environment and continues through the hands, minds and memories of communities.
The Community Must Come First
If communities create, maintain and transmit cultural knowledge, what should be the role of researchers, cultural institutions and governments?
My
proposed answer is straightforward:
The researcher documents | The institution facilitates | The community safeguards.
These responsibilities are related, but they are not interchangeable.
Researchers can record performances, organize archives, analyze historical evidence and help make knowledge accessible. Institutions can provide equipment, training, financial resources, technical support and opportunities for public engagement. Governments and cultural organizations can help create policies and programmes that strengthen the conditions for transmission.
But these contributions should not displace the authority of the communities whose heritage is being documented.
A community should not be treated merely as a source of information for an external project. Its members should participate in deciding what is recorded, how the material is interpreted, what may be shared publicly and what should remain restricted.
This is particularly important when documentation involves sacred practices, specialized knowledge or cultural material that is not intended for unrestricted circulation.
Community participation must therefore extend beyond consultation. It should include meaningful involvement in decisions about representation, access, use and future transmission.
This approach also challenges the idea that heritage
safeguarding is something institutions do for
communities. Institutions can make essential contributions, but their most
constructive role is to enable communities to safeguard their own traditions.
The Pyrnai Model: Turning
Principles into Practice
The need for a practical, community-centred approach led me to develop what I call the Pyrnai Model, informed by heritage-related work at Pyrnai Village in Meghalaya.
The model proposes a low-cost process for documenting and safeguarding living heritage. It is designed to be adaptable to different communities and traditions rather than dependent on expensive equipment or large institutional projects.
The process has eight connected stages.
1. Identify. Begin by identifying the tradition, its practitioners, its custodians, its cultural setting and the principal challenges affecting its continuity.
2. Engage. Establish a relationship with the community before beginning documentation. Listen to practitioners and elders, understand local priorities, and seek appropriate permission.
3. Document. Record performances, oral histories, instruments, craft processes, photographs, relevant manuscripts and information about the social and ritual context.
4. Validate. Return the material to the community. Ask whether the recordings and descriptions accurately represent the tradition. Correct errors and incorporate community knowledge before wider dissemination.
5. Digitize. Organize the material into accessible digital records, supported by clear descriptions, dates, locations where appropriate, terminology and information about the people or practices documented.
6. Connect. Link the records with educational resources, exhibitions, research, community platforms and, where suitable, QR codes that allow visitors to access reliable contextual information.
7. Transmit. Use the material to support young practitioners, workshops, community learning and educational activities. Documentation should help people learn, not merely allow them to watch.
8. Safeguard. Review the process with the community, identify continuing needs and ensure that the knowledge remains useful for future generations.
The stages are not intended to form a rigid administrative checklist. They describe an ongoing cycle in which documentation, validation, learning and transmission reinforce one another.
The Pyrnai Model also recognizes that digital access must be governed responsibly. Not every record should necessarily be placed online. Some materials may require restricted access, community-controlled permissions or special protection.
Technology is useful when it strengthens community ownership and continuity. It becomes problematic when digital visibility is mistaken for safeguarding itself.
The ultimate objective is not to create the largest possible
archive. It is to create a meaningful connection between existing knowledge and
the people who may carry it forward.
Digital Heritage: A Bridge between
Generations
Digital technology offers valuable opportunities for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage, particularly when traditions depend heavily on oral transmission.
A traditional manuscript can be photographed and catalogued. A musical performance can be recorded. A dance can be filmed. An elder's memories can be preserved through an interview. Information about an instrument's materials, construction and tuning can be recorded alongside photographs and demonstrations.
Together, these materials can form a digital record that connects the visible performance with the knowledge behind it.
QR codes can make selected records accessible to visitors at heritage sites, while digital collections can support researchers, teachers and community members who may be unable to attend a performance in person.
Yet digitization has limitations. A recording cannot fully reproduce the experience of learning directly from a master. A digital description may omit knowledge that is communicated through practice rather than words. An online archive may also become inaccessible if its files, equipment or management systems are neglected.
Digital preservation must therefore be accompanied by appropriate storage, regular maintenance, clear documentation and plans for future access.
Most importantly, communities must have a say in how their knowledge is stored and shared.
A successful digital archive should serve as a bridge between generations, not as a substitute for the living relationships through which culture is transmitted.
Different Problems Require
Different Solutions
The three-condition framework and the Pyrnai Model together suggest a practical approach to heritage safeguarding.
For critically endangered traditions, the immediate priority is to document the knowledge of surviving practitioners, support apprentices and create opportunities for active transmission.
For vulnerable traditions, safeguarding should strengthen livelihoods, community participation, performance contexts and the social relationships that sustain practitioners.
For living but misinterpreted traditions, the emphasis should be on contextual research, accurate terminology, community validation and responsible public interpretation.
These priorities may overlap. A tradition that is misrepresented today may also become vulnerable tomorrow. A vulnerable tradition may eventually become critically endangered if its transmission system collapses.
Safeguarding must therefore remain flexible and responsive to changing circumstances.
It should also be evaluated by more than the number of photographs taken, performances organized or digital records uploaded. More meaningful questions include: Are young people learning the tradition? Are practitioners receiving recognition and support? Are communities able to influence how their heritage is represented? Is the knowledge being transmitted in appropriate contexts? Can future generations access the records and continue the practice?
Such questions shift attention from administrative activity to
cultural continuity.
Keeping the Stage Connected to
the Soil
The phrase From Soil to Stage expresses more than the physical transformation of natural materials into instruments and performances.
The soil represents the land, ecology and natural resources on which many traditional practices depend. Craft represents the skills and technical knowledge through which materials are transformed. Sound and movement represent the musical, ritual and artistic expression that emerges from this knowledge. The stage represents visibility, public engagement, documentation and opportunities for transmission.
But the stage must never become detached from the soil.
When a performance is separated from its community, context and meaning, it may remain visually impressive while losing part of its cultural significance. When an instrument is preserved without its making techniques, much of the knowledge embodied in it may disappear. When a tradition is documented without the participation of its custodians, the resulting archive may preserve images while overlooking the people who give them meaning.
The way forward is not to reject modern technology, public presentation or institutional involvement. It is to connect these resources with the knowledge and priorities of the communities concerned.
Researchers must listen as well as record. Institutions must support rather than dominate. Public presentations must inform as well as entertain. Digital archives must enable learning as well as provide access.
Above all, cultural practitioners must be recognized not simply
as performers, but as bearers of knowledge whose skills, memories and judgement
are essential to the survival of living heritage.
Not to Be Lost, but for the Next
Generation
The cultural heritage of Northeast India is not a collection of isolated songs, dances, instruments and rituals. It is a network of relationships between people, places, materials, memories and beliefs.
Its survival depends on recognizing those relationships and creating conditions in which they can continue.
The task is urgent for traditions approaching extinction. It is equally important for those whose supporting systems are weakening and for those whose meanings are being overlooked.
My experience since 1983 has strengthened my conviction that safeguarding must begin with careful listening, sustained engagement and respect for community knowledge. Documentation is essential, but documentation alone is not enough. Recognition matters, but recognition must be accompanied by meaningful support. Digital access is valuable, but it must lead towards learning and transmission.
The true measure of safeguarding is not simply whether a tradition can be displayed today. It is whether its knowledge can continue to live tomorrow.
We must preserve not only the song, but also the singer; not only the instrument, but also the crafts-person; not only the dance, but also the community, context and meaning that sustain it.
The responsibility belongs to all of us, but the custodians of these traditions must remain at the centre of the process.
Our objective is not merely to document what survives today, but to ensure that what is valuable is not lost for the next generation.
Not
to be lost, but for the next generation.
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