Kondagaon Workshop – Day Three

To engage the people that need it most, CGNet holds workshops all over Central India. CGNet can often be difficult to understand, so it is important to train people who can act as ambassadors and correspondents into the future. This series of blog posts will follow three workshops held in the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh to give you an insight into how we work.

Preparing to record a song

Music is a big part of CGNet’s activities. Every workshop we hold features dancing and singing. Three of our staff (Charan Singh Parthe, Amar Maravi and Gokaran Verma) are highly skilled musicians and singers. Not only are these frequent musical interludes a natural reflection of life in this part of the world (and, moreover, corking good fun) they also serve a serious purpose.

Dancing and singing together relieves tension and creates the kind of relaxed atmosphere necessary for a successful workshop. In addition to the serious work done here we also want everyone to have a little fun; let’s admit it, sitting and listening to lectures is not most exhilarating activity in the world and a little music can make everything a little more engaging.

Dancing!

 CGNet’s relationship with music also goes beyond its use in workshops. One of the services our central server offers is a space for the recording of Gondi songs. Without any Gondi radio stations or television channels, Gondi culture and creativity is rarely given any kind of wider platform. When a song is recorded on CGNet not only is it archived and preserved, it is republished on the mobile accessible recording banks and anyone across the region can listen to it whenever they want.

This feature also helps people develop a kind of attachment to CGNet that hinges specifically around the area. CGNet stands for, after all, Central Gondwana Net: rather than being an arbitrary computer service, it taps into the cultural identity of this region. Songs are a way to do this and they give the people listening to the service a sense of ownership over it, like it is their service (as opposed to many government offices, whose English or Hindi distant bureaucratic functioning can often be alienating and obscure to many of the citizens of this region.).

Using CGNet

CGNet founder Shubhranshu Choudhray takes a trip into Kondagaon town