कला और शिल्प परंपरा

Dollu Kunithaलोक

Barrel drums slung at the waist and played while the ring of drummers dances, drops into crouches and leaps. The drumming and the dance are a single act and cannot be separated for a stage.

कौन करता है: Kuruba shepherd communities. मौका: Temple festivals and processions

Halagi melaलोक

Flat single-headed frame drums played with stick and palm by a walking line, in fast interlocking patterns. The characteristic street sound of North Karnataka.

कौन करता है: Village drumming troupes. मौका: Processions, jatras, funerals

Somana Kunitaअनुष्ठान

A masked dance in which the performer wears a very large painted wooden mask of the guardian deity Soma and dances the deity's presence into the village. The mask is heavy enough that the dance is short and the performer is supported.

कौन करता है: Hereditary performers attached to village goddess shrines. मौका: Village jatras

Jokumaraswamy processionअनुष्ठान

A clay figure of the rain and fertility deity Jokumara is carried house to house in a basket with songs that are frankly sexual, then disposed of in water or in a field at the end of the week. It is a rain rite in a district where rain is the entire question.

कौन करता है: Women of specific communities. मौका: The week after Ganesh Chaturthi

Lavani in the border townsलोक

The Marathi song-and-dance form performed in the bilingual towns of the Belagavi belt, where audiences follow both languages and troupes work on both sides of the line.

कौन करता है: Professional troupes. मौका: Fairs, tamasha nights

Kirana gharana

The Hindustani vocal school named after Kairana, a town in the upper Doab far to the north, and built on a slow, note-by-note unfolding of the raga with unusual attention to the exact intonation of each swara. Its centre of gravity moved decisively to this plain when Abdul Karim Khan's disciple Rambhau Kundgolkar — Sawai Gandharva — settled at Kundgol near Dharwad and taught there. Two of his students, Gangubai Hangal and Bhimsen Joshi, became the twentieth century's most recognisable Hindustani voices.

The Dharwad gayaki

Not a gharana but a local phenomenon: a small district town produced or trained an implausible number of first-rank Hindustani musicians across several gharanas — Kirana, Jaipur-Atrauli and Gwalior alike — sustained by household teaching, temple and math patronage, and a college town that took music seriously.

Tatva padagalu

Mystic songs in plain Kannada carrying argument in domestic images, of which the best known are by Shishunala Sharifa of Haveri district, a Muslim singer whose guru was a Lingayat and whose songs are sung in both traditions without anyone finding it remarkable.

Bhavageete

Modern Kannada lyric poetry set to melody and sung in a light-classical idiom. Because so much of the poetry was written here, this plain is effectively the source repertoire of the form, with Bendre's lyrics the most-set of any.

Gee Gee pada

A sung ballad form of North Karnataka in which each line ends on the syllables gee gee, performed by a lead singer with a chorus and a small drum, carrying current events, moral tales and satire.

Doddata

The big open-air night theatre — sung dialogue, immense painted crowns and shoulder-boards, harmonium and maddale, a threshing floor for a stage, running from about ten at night until dawn.

Sannata

The smaller form, with fewer performers and more spoken dialogue. Troupes keep both and choose by the size of the audience and the money on offer.

Sri Krishna Parijata

A single-story night play built around Krishna, Rukmini and Satyabhama and the quarrel over the parijata flower, developed into its present form in this plain in the nineteenth century and performed by specialist troupes that do little else. The Satyabhama role is the one performers are judged on.

The touring companies

Professional Kannada theatre companies worked a circuit of these towns from the late nineteenth century, carrying painted drops, a harmonium and a repertoire of mythologicals and social plays, and they are the institution through which most of the region's actors learned the trade.

Ilkal saree weaving जीआई पंजीकृत Bagalkot (Ilkal)

A town that weaves one garment for a whole region, on pit looms in household workshops, with a red temple-form pallu that is the immediate identifier. Registered as a geographical indication.

सामग्री: Cotton, art silk and silk. तकनीक: Body, border and pallu are warped separately and joined on the loom — the pallu warp linked to the body warp by a series of interlocked loops called tope teni, with three shuttles carrying the weft. The join is woven, not stitched.

Guledgudda khana weaving जीआई पंजीकृत Bagalkot (Guledgudda)

Cloth woven to be cut into one garment and no other. Registered as a geographical indication, and squeezed hard by power-loom imitations sold under the same name.

सामग्री: Silk and cotton. तकनीक: Pit-loom weaving in fixed blouse lengths with dense small-figure patterning and a contrasting border.

Kasuti embroidery जीआई पंजीकृत Dharwad and the surrounding plain

Traditionally worked by women on their own sarees and on the black chandrakali worn at particular occasions. Registered as a geographical indication, and now largely produced through self-help groups rather than in households.

सामग्री: Cotton or silk ground, untwisted silk thread. तकनीक: Counted-thread work with no tracing, no knots and no carried threads on the reverse, in the gavanti, murgi, negi and menthe stitches. Gavanti is a double running stitch that produces an identical face on both sides.

Navalgund durrie weaving जीआई पंजीकृत Dharwad (Navalgund)

A craft carried by a very small number of families, historically associated with weavers who moved into the town centuries ago. Registered as a geographical indication and genuinely endangered.

सामग्री: Cotton yarn. तकनीक: Interlocked-weft weaving on vertical looms, worked from the reverse, with geometric and peacock motifs.

Dharwad pedha making जीआई पंजीकृत Dharwad

Brought to Dharwad in the nineteenth century by a family that migrated from Unnao in the north and has made it in the same lane since. Registered as a geographical indication in the foodstuff category.

सामग्री: Buffalo milk, sugar. तकनीक: Milk is reduced to khova and then cooked past caramelisation, so the sweet turns brown and grainy rather than staying pale and smooth.