Bhojpur & Purvanchal · Middle & Lower Gangetic Plain
Dance
Boys and men dressed as women dance and act at village weddings and in Bidesiya theatre. It is the oldest continuous performing tradition of the region, and its performers, drawn mostly from the poorest communities, live with a stigma that has never lifted.
Performed by: Male dancers in women's roles, with a small orchestra. Occasion: Weddings, fairs, all-night performances
A women's night-long performance of mock marriages, role reversal and bawdy song.
Performed by: Women of the household. Occasion: Weddings, after the baraat leaves
Circling dances shared with Mithila and the Jharkhand plateau, danced to dhol and jhaal.
Performed by: Village groups. Occasion: Navratri, monsoon, harvest
Caste-associated dance forms of the Bhojpur villages, performed with dholak, jhaal and a lead singer, and full of topical satire.
Performed by: Community troupes. Occasion: Weddings and fairs
Music
Three lineages at once — the tabla school founded by Ram Sahai with its distinct baj, carried by Kanthe Maharaj, Samta Prasad and Kishan Maharaj; the shehnai tradition of the temple naubat, which Bismillah Khan took to the concert stage; and the thumri and tappa singing of the city, which Girija Devi carried into the recording era.
A song form associated with Mahendar Misir of Saran, built on the theme of the woman left behind when the men go east to Calcutta and beyond. It is the diaspora's own genre, composed at the moment the migration was at its height.
Bhikhari Thakur's cycle about a man who leaves for the city and the wife who waits — the songs are sung independently of the play and are the region's most quoted verse.
Sung narrative in a high open voice, historically the Ahir herdsmen's form, now a competitive stage genre with professional singers, long improvised passages and enormous night audiences.
Monsoon and spring song respectively, both existing in a village form and a classicised light-classical form. Mirzapur's kajri is the standard, and the Mirzapur kajri competitions are the genre's home ground.
Songs of the formless divine sung at deaths and night gatherings, in a tradition that runs straight back to Kabir's own city.
Theatre
Bhikhari Thakur's early twentieth-century play about labour migration, performed with launda naach, song and comic interlude. It is theatre made by and for the class it describes, and it is still performed.
A thirty-one-night Ramlila staged across the town of Ramnagar since the nineteenth century, in which the whole town becomes the set — separate locations for Ayodhya, Lanka and the forest, and audiences walking between them nightly by lamplight.
Touring sung folk-opera performed at fairs, in the same tradition as the Uttar Pradesh companies.
Crafts
The largest handloom silk cluster in India, employing several lakh people. Most weavers are Muslim Ansari families; most traders are Hindu; and power looms, Chinese silk yarn and Surat copies have squeezed the craft hard over the last two decades.
Material: Silk, gold and silver zari. Technique: Pit-loom and jacquard weaving with supplementary weft; in the kadhua method each motif is worked with its own needle so no thread floats behind, which is what separates a hand-woven sari from a power-loom copy.
India's largest carpet-making belt and a substantial export earner, built on a village outwork system with a long-scrutinised child-labour history and a certification regime that grew out of it.
Material: Wool, silk, cotton warp. Technique: Hand-knotted on vertical looms, Persian and Indo-Tibetan knot structures, then clipped and washed.
A rose-pink enamelling technique held by a small number of families in Varanasi, distinct from the Jaipur blue-and-green tradition it descends from.
Material: Gold and silver, enamel. Technique: Pink enamel fired into engraved metal in successive firings, the pink applied last and lowest-fired.
Temple vessels, lamps and images in beaten metal, and the bright lacquered wooden toys sold in every ghat lane.
Material: Brass, copper, koraiya wood. Technique: Repousse hammering from the reverse; turned wooden toys lacquered on the lathe with coloured shellac.
A pottery tradition of a single town, and among the most distinctive-looking ceramics in India.
Material: Local clay, zinc and mercury amalgam. Technique: Fired in a smothered kiln so carbon penetrates the body and turns it black, then burnished and inlaid with silvery patterns.
The quarry that supplied the stone for the Ashokan pillars, including the lion capital at Sarnath. It is still worked, mostly for building stone.
Material: Buff Chunar sandstone. Technique: Quarrying, dressing and carving; historically polished to a high finish.
A whole social institution rather than a product — the paan shop is where the city's conversation happens, and the fold and filling are adjusted per customer.
Material: Betel leaf, katha, chuna, supari, and dozens of fillings. Technique: The leaf is cured for days until it softens and pales, then filled and folded to order. The Magahi leaf from Bihar is the preferred base.
The dance, music, theatre and crafts of Bhojpur & Purvanchal, from classical forms to village traditions. (20)