Popular Culture and Ideology: The Phenomenon of Gaddar

The cultural sphere has its own advantage over politics in terms of pulling people into its fold. Through his songs and cultural performances, Gummadi Vittal Rao, popularly known as “Gaddar”, the Telugu poet singer, maintains the historical continuity of people’s lives and their struggles. He brings politics into everyday life situations and translates terms like “working class”, “new democracy”, “revolution”, “classless society”, “bourgeoisies state”, “capitalist class”, etc, into concrete life experiences of people. He explains the political economy of Marx or Mao’s philosophy in simple songs or words without borrowing any textual language of Marxism. This paper is an attempt to explore the emergence of the Gaddar phenomenon and its significance by focusing on the performance of people’s culture.