Jatra was the artform, that originated in Bengal in the 15th century as part of the Bhakti movement. The devotees made mass gatherings and processions dressed as Krishna and promoting the culture, in recent times post the 19th century they became the tool promote and spread social and cultural messages. This paper investigates the life of the artists who have been performing for years as part of the art form and now that media has been seeing its highest boom, these artists do not really get a call and that has changed their livelihoods. We will see how their lives have changed as an effect of advancement of mass media and how that has left them devoid from practicing the said art form. With the urge to earn daily livelihoods they have moved away from the art and thus that has been killing the art form in West Bengal. The paper asks the question,

1. if an art form is eventually killed due to the advancement of media, is the advancement of media a good or bad thing.

2. If media has been advancing, should it kill another medium if expression or should it become a mode of flourishing the art and make it reach to a larger audience?

The paper has taken interview of Jatra artist and has analysed how the lives have changed when media started booming and the mass media started popularising through TV and through phones in recent times and if it has affected the flow of performances and the flow of people who used to come to watch these kinds of performances earlier.

Keywords: – Jatra, Pala Gaan, Performance, New Media, Youtube, marginalised communities

Souvick Roy, Ph. D Scholar, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Tezpur University, Assam

Prof. (Dr.) Abhijit Bora, Professor, Department of Mass Communication, Tezpur University, Assam

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