Item 2019-070/001(01) - Singing folk songs and playing the dhol

Item consists of a home movie from a Pakistani-Indian family featuring a trip to Delhi to attend a family member's wedding.

Project and donor(s) contributed description follows: "On one of her trips to Delhi, Mariam attends her mom's cousin's second wedding. Cousins, aunts, and extended family are gathered on the floor and sofas. Women are dressed in bright yellow and orange saris and joy radiates through song as the bright sunlight washes the shot.

The family is singing folk songs and playing the dhol, a South Asian drum, in a town dialect that would only be recognizable to someone from the state of Uttar Pradesh (U.P) and perhaps Delhi.

The songs are familiar to Mariam, but she doesn’t understand what is being said. They are part of an oral tradition, sung in celebration and passed down from generations. The folk songs cannot be found online and aren’t "officially" preserved.

Mariam remembers that holding the camera was very enjoyable, and she documented hours of what she calls mundane footage of family eating lunch and going about everyday activities, mostly on her yearly trips to India to visit extended family. She is a filmmaker, and plans to create short films with selected clips from her home movies.

Mariam’s transition to Canada is complex and layered: ‘Having grown up in Dubai, I carry a sense of knowing what it feels like not being from where you grew up [...] I didn’t process how difficult it was [to move to Canada] because [at first] I was excited to be [in Montreal], and put my heart into classes and the university experience.’"