Note: Evening reading of the Ramayana at the temple. Audience mostly children, male musicians present as permanent part of congregation. Chaupai singing with cymbals, Chowtal features increasing tempo. Many "traditional” songs often adopted from latest movies. Work songs might be songs women like but are not associated with task. Music generally associated with ceremony. Religious hymns feature word “shanti” (peace). Women rarely play instruments, they dance for occasion of weddings and birth of baby, lyrics and gestures may be obscene. Men dance at pageants reenacting Ramayana. There are stick dances, though stick fighting no longer done. Original immigrants from Calcutta in 1845 now submerged in Northern immigrant population. Some pockets, recorded by Lomax, remain. Muslim festival of Hussain employs same types of drums as Hindu festivals. There is drinking of rum. It is a “jump up,” a tourist attraction looked down on by native Pakistani Muslims. Majority of Indians are Hindus in rural areas. Fifteen percent Muslim and fifteen percent Christian are mostly urban. Until the 1950s Indian schools were run by Canadian Presbyterians. Now there are Hindu schools. Learning is by rote. Alan Lomax notes extreme precision of men singing together. Dr. Klass: Groups of men work together in cane fields in teams, like Conrad Arensberg’s “army of brothers.” They also help neighbors harvest rice in groups called Aur that race to see who will finish first. Alan Lomax's experience participating in the Chowtal was one of the high points of his life. Woman’s household routine described. Dr. Klass thinks that Indian machismo is rather like that of the Mediterranean. But there is an air of melancholy. Indians believe we are living at the end of a cycle of long decline.