Arts Lab

Kappalile (In the Boat)

The Jewish Malayalam song Kappalile (In the Boat) has inspired artists and researchers to co-create a new form of expression of intangible heritage conservation. Researchers and artists across three countries, Kerala, Israel, and Scotland imagined a multimedia project combining animation, music, and videography, based on a Jewish Malayalam wedding song that was first published in the bilingual Malayalam-Hebrew book Karkuzhali-Yefefia-Gorgeous (2005). The artist Meydad Eliyahu (Kallingal) and Gamliel collaborated since 2016 on a knowledge exchange geared toward salvaging the erased heritage of Kerala Jews from oblivion and decay. The musician Resmi Sateesh began performing Jewish Malayalam wedding songs in research seminars and performances in Kerala in collaboration with scholars and the Aazhi Archives. Sreedevi P. Aravind, Assistant Professor at the School of Film Studies (Malayalam University, Kerala), and cinematographer Arun Bhaskar brought them together in their production of the documentary Mozhiyazhaku on the Malayalam language. Finally, when the production was nearing completion, the team approached the translator and scholar Fathima E. V. to produce a beautiful translation in collaboration with Gamliel. The production was carried out under the auspices of the University of Glasgow Heritage Lab coordinated by the co-directors John Reuben Davies and Ophira Gamliel. The animation is juxtaposed with images of the scenic landscape of Jew Town Road in Kochi: the landing ghat (kadavu), the ruins of the adjacent Kadavumbhagam Synagogue (established in 1344, renovated in 1550, collapsed in 2019), and the tomb of the poet-saint Namya Mutta (died 1616). Credits: Lyrics - Anonymous. Art & Animation - Meydad Eliyahu. Research & Co-ordination - Ophira Gamliel. Music & Composition - Resmi Sateesh. Director - Sreedevi P. Aravind. Cinematography - Arun Bhaskar. Executive Producer - John Reuben Davies. Video Editing - Sarath Usha Sasidharan. Voice - Resmi Sateesh. Clarinet & Saxophone - Thomas Joe. Bass & Keys - Paul J. Mathews. Music Programming & Arrangements - Paul J. Mathews. Mix & Mastering - Sabaridas T. K. Recording Studio - Audiogene, Kochi, Kerala. Production Partners - The Scottish Funding Council, University of Glasgow, Aazhi Archives. Poetry Translation & Subtitles - Fathima E. V. Acknowledgements: Riyas Komu, M.H. Ilias, C. S. Venkideshwaran, Arathi P. M., Anwar Ali, Basil C. J. With deep gratitude to the many mothers and daughters who sang this beautiful song during so many weddings in Kadavumbhagam Kochi Synagogue.

The Lab's activities over the past two years, and the networks that have emerged, have helped us to secure a GCID small grant for a pilot project, bringing in collaborators from the University of Hyderabad, the University of Tübingen, and the University of Sydney.

We start from the position that indigenous languages and literatures are repositories of knowledge about human-environment relations. We intend to develop methods of generating socio-ecological datasets out of manuscripts and their interpretation anchored in local and Indigenous insights. The project is centred around politically, culturally, and environmentally vulnerable communities of the Malabar Coast (south-western India), their lived heritage, and their literary inheritance as embodied in a 15th-century Malayalam ballad. A Malayalam-English bi-lingual workshop, joint reading sessions, and remote fieldwork will test an educational model that gives Indigenous knowledge systems a structural position in sustainable development research frameworks.  

The activities of the Lab formed the background for a successful AHRC Research Grant application in 2023, with Ophira Gamliel as Prinicpal Investigator. The project, in turn, formed the background for our Lab symposium on South Asian Coastal Heritage in October 2023. 

The AHRC/DFG research project begins from the position that Indian Ocean history tends to focus on material exchange and to rely primarily on European records and foreign travel accounts. In contrast, this project seeks to place the circulation of ideas, concepts, and values in the foreground by relying on sources produced by and for local communities, with the coastal communities of southwestern India (Malabar Coast) as the case study. To do so, we explore origin legends of Hindu, Muslim, and Jewish communities along the Malabar Coast, analysing selected tellings of these legends for identifying patterns of inter- and intra-religious demarcation. We use literary, linguistic, and content analysis for a study of cross-communal relations and transregional contacts during a period of significant transformations in global trade and geopolitics. Juxtaposing our findings against the European interventions in the region, our analysis targets the emergence of new types of networks between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean and the role of religion therein.

The project will run until 2027.