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The author investigates the life and songs of Pak Duri, a survivor of the “comfort woman” system living at the House of Sharing. Pak Duri composed, pastiched and sang ribald songs drawn from across Korean folk culture. In so doing she retrieved her own identity and sexuality from a life-long experience of sexual domination and suffering at the hands of men, and she contemplated the nature of female-relations, love, the body, and mortality. She brought the eloquence and the understandings that she cultivated in song and storytelling to bear as a keen participant in the political movement, while from publicizing the songs themselves and certain aspects of the self they sustained.

This chapter presents translations and interpretations of six women's songs that speak to the power of the feminine voice and the feminine soul. These songs feature feminine shape-shifting relations between birds and women, fish and women, and similar mimetic transformations in history, such as the rubber boom. In this context, the spoken word becomes musicalized, and the body realizes different cosmological capacities. The chapter shows that the aesthetic features of these songs resonate with the mythological and metaphysical qualities of the Iluku bird, discussed in Chapter 3. These women's songs are also a form of shamanic practice in which the singer experiences her body as a special locus of subjectivity as defined by relations with birds and other alters. When women sing, they report feeling the power (ushay) “in their flesh” (paygunác aychay) of the birds or animals about which they sing.

This chapter begins with the author's account of her first visit to a village in Kangra, India, in April 1975. She then describes returning to Kangra in 1991 to research songs. She lived in Kangra for many months, recording songs in many different villages, in many households, among different castes, and in the course of many different ritual events. She also gained local mentors: singers with large repertoires who directed her education. Other topics covered by the chapter include how women's songs are identified by the names of particular genres tied to ritual events; and how women's sung stories are usually not peculiar to Kangra, but exist as a specific retelling amid many alternate versions.

This chapter looks more closely at Kangra as a distinctive cultural region and offers an overview on songs. As a way to introduce ideal life stages and associated fears of what might go wrong, the author presents three genres that have most preoccupied her through the years. The first is Pahari songs, or “old women's songs” that encompass songs about women's experience in the historical past and songs retelling stories from the Sanskrit Puranas, the “old books” that are compendiums of Hindu mythology. The second is “Suhāg”, which refers to the auspicious happiness of a married woman. Songs of this genre are especially chorused around a bride at weddings, including the weddings of goddesses. The third is pakhaṛu or “songs that are long and tell a story,” “songs about suffering,” and even “our life stories”.

This chapter focuses on one of the author's mentors, Jagadamba Mataji. From the very first time they met, Jagadamba Mataji met the author's wish to learn with an exuberant willingness to teach. Many of the songs that the author recorded, and that Jagadamba Mataji oversaw, were about Krishna. While the stories carried in the Kangra songs echo the Sanskrit retellings in the Bhagavata Purana, as vernacular, regionally based appropriations by women, these were distinctive reimaginings of Krishna. The author claims that whenever she encountered the poetry in Kangra songs, she often felt like she was being transported through the colored borders of miniature paintings. Krishna became present: blue skinned, curly black haired, wearing his distinctive saffron-yellow garments, and very often surrounded by delicate- featured adoring women.

This chapter examines the metaphor of “going” and how songs provide a means for rising beyond the immediacies of daily responsibilities and the impasses posed by difficult situations. Offering a medium for safe personal expression while also evoking larger communities of pain, songs are perceived as a way of going from one emotional state to another. Through singing, individuals lift themselves up and out of tedious tasks, distressed moods, and confined circumstances. The chapter is organized around oral traditions associated with Saili, the sacred basil goddess, whose worship promises travel to heaven. It also draws on the songs of Janaki-devi that associate women with plants: withering in harsh circumstances, roaming in gardens when sad, and blossoming with happiness like bright orange marigolds.

This chapter presents the author's reflections on songs as a form of “bathing” (nauhṇā). Dipping into the flow of sound, and in particular the repetition of divine names through songs, singers and listeners alike are offered the possibility of inner peacefulness and a sense of transcendence. While the last three chapters focused on deities, this chapter honors Asha-devi while assembling songs about devotees attuned to the divine. At first glance, these are male devotees: Sudama and Uddhava from Krishna mythology, and Kabir from historical legends. But a closer look reveals women's central roles in instigating and mediating these men's relationship with Bhagavan. The chapter concludes with a song addressing the goddess from the perspective of a devotee.

This chapter focuses on Sita-devi, an old woman who shared her favorite songs with the author. Like many accomplished singers of her generation, Sita-devi most valued songs carrying mythological events and metaphysical insights. To convey a sense of the vast knowledge that a person without written literacy can carry, the author provides a summary of the songs from their first meeting. For each song, she highlights the names of the deities involved, the legendary figures described, or the metaphysical principle being celebrated. She also mentions the genre that Sita-devi identified, which was often a devotional bhajan but inflected with other genres associated with life-cycle events.

Gaelic women’s poetry and song track the reception of Reformed theology in Gaelic communities both geographically and diachronically. They also allow insights into the spiritual, ethical, and societal concerns of those whose voices are otherwise unheard. Whether ostensibly secular or explicitly spiritual, Gaelic women’s songs carry a record of the religious, cultural, and domestic life of Highland Scotland in many individual voices. The earliest Gaelic evangelical songs belonged to the oral tradition, and were specifically directed towards making biblical teaching and Reformed doctrine accessible within non-literate Gaelic-speaking communities. Women’s spiritual songs quickly became a forum for personal and communal religious expression, public exhortation, and discussions on faith and doctrine. They show women, both literate and non-literate, acting as spiritual mentors, actively engaging in biblical exegesis, relating scriptural teaching to contemporary issues, and demanding that Christian ethics be applied in both personal and public life.