Revitalizing Torwali Folk Music Using Media of Translation, Audio, Video

Torwali is a Dardic language spoken by a community of about 80,000--110,000 in the idyllic valleys of upper Swat district in north Pakistan. It is one of the Pakistan’s 28 ‘definitely endangered languages’ as categorized by UNSCO in its Atlas of World’s Languages in Danger. In 2007 a team of community researchers started the work of its ‘documentation and promotion’ by organizing their efforts into a local civil society organization Idara Baraye Taleem-o-Taraqi (IBT) i.e. institute for education and development. Since then the organization has been undertaking a number of revitalization initiatives targeting youth, children and elders. In Pakistan various linguists and organizations have undertaken a number of similar initiatives. But most of these good initiatives are only focused on ‘preservation’ the languages in question. Some of them altogether ignore the importance of ‘revitalization of cultures especially the music’ because many of these language activists found themselves thwarted by their version of the faith because an overwhelming majority in Pakistan now thinks everything through a religious prism. This often makes the whole endeavors of preservation and promotion of these languages limited to research circles only. But the organization Idara Baraye Taleem-o-Taraqi (IBT) has taken a holistic approach for the preservation and revitalization of the endangered language, Torwali. Initially IBT has developed orthography for the language; and based on that it established schools for children in their own language. The curriculum for the kids contains rhymes and poems. Secondly, IBT started a campaign in order to repackage the poetry and music so as to popularize it among all the community members relevant to all ages and genders. In the classic Torwali music there have been two distinct genres of poetry sung on different musical notes. The most popular of them is called ʑo whereas the other, “Phal” is sung on a different note based on the cultural events for w