FOLK MUSIC OF MAHARASHTRA

The origin of music in the primary state of man was a natural process. Human beings found the sound from nature. Listening to these natural sounds, he tried to replicate and use them for his own self-expression. Man tried to create sound from his vocal chords and other available things such as wood, stone, bones of animals, etc. After a gradual process of developing these sounds, rudimentary instruments were created. Using own vocal chords, human beings produced basic vowels and consonances, this in further several thousand years, developed as language and then man started expressing communicating with language. Music and language are the two sides of the same coin in development of human culture. But it is sure that human beings experienced music before language as he used natural sounds and his own vocal chords much before the origin of language. Here we are going to have a brief survey of music as in folk form, which played a multiple role – it symbolized the human society and culture as it was the simple way of entertainment and celebration; and also was a medium of expression to communicate his feelings and thoughts. The folksongs expressed the primal emotions of human beings with simple words and simple tunes. As the culture grew up with complicated patterns of living style, the folk music also became complicated or became formulized and codified.