Bayaluseeme · Deccan Inland Plateau
News, satire and moral instruction sung in a driving metre with a chorus answering on the refrain. It has carried election commentary, epidemics and famine within living memory.
Sung at: Fairs, night gatherings, wherever a crowd forms.
Blessing songs sung by the women of both households in alternation while the ritual proceeds.
Sung at: Weddings and naming ceremonies.
Sung by women carrying the clay Jokumara figure house to house — explicitly sexual, addressed to a fertility deity, and licensed by the occasion.
Sung at: The week after Ganesh Chaturthi.
Philosophy in household metaphor. Shishunala Sharifa's songs are the best known, and are sung as devotional music, as folk music and as concert repertoire without changing a word.
Sung at: Night gatherings, roadside, math courtyards.
The threshing floor, the bullock, the moneylender and the year's yield, sung in the field as work songs.
Sung at: Harvest, from Sankranti onwards.
Desire, absence and sharp social comment in a fast metre over the dholki, performed in the bilingual belt for audiences that follow both languages.
Sung at: Fairs and tamasha nights in the border towns.
The folk songs of Bayaluseeme — what they are about, who sings them and when. (6)