Episode 01
Scholar of Velip oral tradition — Goa
Oral traditionMemoryLanguageArchive
Episode available on YouTube and Spotify
Vithai Zaraunker is one of a small number of people alive who has spent decades gathering the oral literature of the Velip community — songs, stories, genealogies, ritual knowledge — from the people who still carry it. This conversation is about what it means to hold a language inside a living tradition, and what happens when that tradition thins.
Transcript excerpt
A full transcript is in preparation. The excerpt below is from approximately one hour into the conversation.
Host
When you say the song is evidence — evidence of what, exactly?
Vithai Zaraunker
Of movement. Of who was here before. The Velip songs name places — they name rivers by names that no map has. And those names are accurate. The geographers come later, they find the features. The songs already knew.
Host
So the song precedes the document.
Vithai Zaraunker
Always. The document assumes the song does not exist. That is the problem. When people talk about preserving Goa’s heritage, they mean temples, buildings, manuscripts. The voice — the voice is considered supplementary. Decorative, even. But the voice is the oldest archive we have.
Vithai Zaraunker collaborated with The Village Tinto’s host on the documentary Ami Kon (2022), which follows Zaraunker’s work collecting oral literature across Goa’s interior. That prior relationship shapes both what this conversation opens and what it may have made harder to reach.