Annamayya - Aural Tradition of
Dissent
Annamayya-the
Saint-Poet, Composer and Singer, who is
known as Pada Kavitha Pitamata, is one of the earliest creators
of the Aural Tradition and Bhakti
movement in South India, some 600 years ago, who through his life and
stupendous literary work, dissented with the then hegemonic traditions of
unjust practices, rooted in the Brahminical supremacy, that is inimical for the
wellbeing of the common and ordinary people-who were serving the rest of upper
rungs of the Indian society in the form of different caste vocations, and lead
people towards a new era of egalitarian
society, by combining his simple yet emphatic literary articulations with
religious revelations, in a dialect of
the most common of the common people, by integrating everything ultimately with
the ultimate truth, the almighty, through a performing art of his times and
folks, that received unprecedented following by the masses, of the path of
enlightenment that was being enunciated by him. Though initially courted with
the local ruler, under pressure, soon he relinquished all worldly desires and
lust for mundane life, and spent most part of his life in association with Balaji,
the presiding deity of Tirumala, spreading his message through his
Sankeerthanas- a little over 36,000, mostly directed towards self introspection
and realization, by dissenting with the then established unfair practices of
his times and chartering socio-political and religious positions through the
art forms of his times, combining the visual, aural and cultural contexts. The
pinnacle of his dissent was in the form of a Sankeerthana- “Brahmamokate,
Parabrahmamokate”, dissecting the diabolism between the unjust relationships
between the master and the slave, the privileged and the underprivileged in the
Hindu society, portraying the pathetic life of the depressed, of not having
access even to most basic things like drinking water, leave alone a life of
penury.
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