However, many people like the village culture and the old traditional customs and want to spend their life in a closet to nature. But it is unfortunate in modern era People adopting modern things in daily life and leaving old tradition. The modern marriage ceremony missing such norms and old tradition and there is loud of noise and expulsion by the use of huge mass of firecrackers in the marriage ceremonies But in Baltistan, We can see very few People very rare nowadays which following Balti tradition, culture, and customs. Its really an alarming situations for our culture norms. Today I want to share an amazing article about the Village marriage Ceremony vs modern wedding of a villager of a small town Khaplu valley Baltistan.
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| Balti Folk Calture Dance |
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The two days marriage ceremony of my sister-in law, Dr Medeha Zahra with Aeronautical Engineer, Waseem S Aasi celebrated with great zest and zeal in Khaplu (a small town) and now has ended up a day before Eid festival. All of our family members, the relatives, guests, friends, religious scholars of the area, elders and notable of the society etc. participated in the party with great zest and zeal. Congratulation to both bride and groom on this special occasion in lifetime and I pray for them for a great success, prosperity, better health and wealth in future life.
It was really a fantastic ceremony and all invited guests were entertained with delicious foods, sweet dishes and dry fruits. The marriage ceremony is now over and I noted some old trends that was found missing. I noted that the old prevailing custom of Balti marriage ceremony has now modified into new and modern ceremony mainly based on religion faith rather than musical or old tradition of the society.  |
| Balti groom in calture wedding dress |
In recent past, almost over a half century ago, it has been a custom of the area that a group of folk dancers from Groom side lead by an expert dancer used to performed a special classical dance, called ‘Sneopa’ a type of classical sward dance on the occasion of marriage ceremony. Since there are more than 40 classical or semi classical dance style that has been coined in Balti culture and tradition. Importantly, each classical dance style have a historical background and meaning, secret message to each other, battle tactics, attacks, defence strategies against enemies and lifestyle of a person etc. The famous classical Balti dance style, the SNEOPA is one of them and was used to perform on the occasion of marriage ceremony. The term SNEOPA refer to those close relatives of groom family which are invited by bride family on that particular day.  |
| Culture dancing at wedding |
The number of guests are finalized earlier from both groom and bride side just before a day that may be comprises 20 or 25 person etc and out of which 8 to 10 might be classical dancers. The dancers had to follow the musical tune of expert musicians and used to performed dance on way from groom to bride house and on reaching at groom house where they displayed a seven steps classical dance, the Sneopa. The jubilant crowd also fascinate the dance and the try to understand the theme, meaning and the secret message of the classical dance display in front of them. It is so interesting to note that this seven steps Balti classical dance style almost have the same message and meaning that is somehow very related to the William Wordsworth’s famous poem, ‘the seven stages of life’
This seven segment classical dance is performed by dancers with the musical tune of expert musician group in order to hint a secret message and lesson both for groom and bride regarding the stages of life, clashes with others, good and bad com, strategies and planning of life etc. All of these secret massage is hidden in the musical tune and the sign and signals of the dancers and it is indeed a masterpiece of Balti culture and tradition.
The last segment of the sneopa dance is called, Biafo Kar, which means rooster dance. The rooster dance is the last segment of this dance style in which two head dancer of the group from each end comes in the center in a typical fashion and perform dance by conveying secret message both of the couple (bride and groom) to live love and harmony, cooperation, altruism, understanding, sacrifice to each other, magnanimity and generosity. Interestingly, the dancers lead by head dancer has to follow the musical drums and the tune of clarinet of the expert musicians and cannot miss a single or minor point.  |
Musical drums and the tune of clarinet |
Unfortunately, this tradition has almost entirely vanished from Balti society. And I am so sorry to say that the crumbling Balti culture and tradition is almost near to extinct and will be vanished very soon .The modern marriage ceremony missing such norms and old tradition and there is loud of noise and expulsion by the use of huge mass of firecrackers in the marriage ceremonies. The explosive firecracker has often damaged people, buildings and trees, but this new trends has become an essential component and neither the local administration nor the local communities is ready to stop this wasteful activity.
Written By: sukoor Ali
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