Canara Coast · Western Coastal Strip
Dance
Men in tall headdresses of peacock feathers and flowers dance village to village with drums and long sticks through the Suggi weeks, collecting contributions and performing at each house. It is a processional form with a route, not a stage form, and the route follows village obligation.
Performed by: Halakki Vokkaliga men. Occasion: Suggi, the harvest and Holi season in March
Singing in a ring to the gumte, a small clay drum with a single head, with a lead voice and a chorus that answers. The drum is played with the fingers of both hands and pitched by pressing the shell against the body.
Performed by: Halakki Vokkaliga men. Occasion: Suggi and village gatherings
Drum-led dance performed by the Siddi community, whose ancestors were brought to this coast from East Africa from the sixteenth century onwards, largely by the Portuguese, as soldiers, servants and enslaved labour, and whose descendants settled in the forest interior. The dance is driven by hand drums and by a call-and-response vocal, and the community itself is Hindu, Muslim and Catholic across different families. It was recognised as a Scheduled Tribe in Karnataka in 2003, and it is one of the few African-descended communities in South Asia with a continuous settled presence.
Performed by: Siddi communities of the Yellapur, Haliyal, Mundgod and Joida forests. Occasion: Weddings, festivals and community gatherings
The northern Yakshagana style's dance — broad circling entries, heavy stamping to the chende, and long sequences of pure rhythm before a character speaks. Badagutittu, the northern style, is prevalent from the Sharavathi down to roughly the Sitanadi in Udupi district; Tenkutittu, the southern style, runs from there into Tulu Nadu and towards Kasaragod, and differs in headgear, drumming and the balance between dance and dialogue. Mixing the two is understood locally as a mistake, not a fusion.
Performed by: Yakshagana troupes of Uttara Kannada and northern Udupi. Occasion: All-night performances in harvested fields and temple grounds
Music
The bhagavata sings the narrative and controls the performance from a fixed position with cymbals, backed by the chende and the maddale. He is director as much as singer — the dancers respond to his tempo, and a performance runs from about ten at night until dawn on his timing.
A large oral repertoire of harvest, wedding, work and ritual songs held mainly by Halakki women and sung unaccompanied or to the gumte. It has been recorded and broadcast since the mid-twentieth century, chiefly through the singer Sukri Bommagowda.
Village devotional singing groups in the areca uplands, working through the Dasa pada repertoire in Kannada with harmonium, tala and mridanga, and competing at festival season. They are the main musical institution in the upland villages after Yakshagana.
The wind-and-drum ensembles that accompany the Gokarna, Idagunji, Murudeshwar and Sirsi processions, and the chende batteries that announce a Yakshagana troupe's arrival hours before it performs.
Theatre
All-night dance-drama on episodes from the epics and the puranas, staged in the open on harvested fields or temple grounds, in season from roughly November to May. The prasanga — the sung text — is fixed, but the spoken dialogue is improvised by the performers within it, so two nights of the same story are not the same play. The Idagunji Mahaganapati Yakshagana Mandali founded by Keremane Shivarama Hegde is the best known of the Uttara Kannada troupes and is one of the reasons the northern style was documented and professionalised when it was.
Yakshagana with the costume, dance and stage removed. Performers sit in a row and argue the story out in spoken Kannada while the bhagavata sings, and audiences come specifically for the quality of the argument. It is a monsoon form, because it needs no ground and no light.
The broader open-field theatre category that Yakshagana belongs to, covering the smaller village troupes and the amateur companies that perform once or twice a season under a temple's patronage.
Crafts
Registered as a geographical indication for the areca of this upland belt, held through the growers' cooperative at Sirsi. The nut is not a food in the ordinary sense but it is the crop the entire upland economy is built on, and the grading craft is what the appellation protects.
Material: Areca nut. Technique: Green nuts dehusked, boiled in a decoction of previous boilings, sun-dried on courtyards for several days, then graded and cut into commercial classes.
The appemidi mango holds a geographical indication as a Karnataka appellation. The fruit comes from wild and semi-wild trees along the Aghanashini, Bedthi and Sharavathi, individual trees are named and inherited, and the state horticulture service has run conservation plantings because riverbank trees have been lost to submergence and clearing.
Material: Wild tender mango and salt. Technique: Whole fruit picked with the stalk intact and packed in brine in glazed jars, weighted and matured.
A domestic textile made by Siddi women for household use, documented by researchers and shown in exhibitions from the 1990s onwards. It has no protected status and only a small organised market.
Material: Recycled cloth. Technique: Layered scraps held with dense running stitch, with contrasting patches set into the field.
A specialist trade supporting the troupes, with a handful of families making and repairing headgear and ornament sets that stay in use for decades. The maker's name travels with a good set.
Material: Light wood, papier mache, gilt foil, mirror and cloth. Technique: Carved and built forms faced with foil and mirror, assembled onto cloth and cord.
A modern cottage industry built on a by-product that used to be burnt. It runs on small presses in garden villages and it exists because the areca palm sheds sheaths whether or not anybody has a use for them.
Material: Fallen areca leaf sheath. Technique: Sheaths washed, softened and heat-pressed in a die into plates and bowls.
Yards on the estuary banks still build and repair wooden fishing craft, though steel and fibreglass have taken the larger boats. The same yards historically built the coastal trading vessels that worked this shore.
Material: Timber. Technique: Plank-built hulls assembled without formal drawings, by eye and by inherited proportion.
Lime from estuary shell went into plaster and into betel chewing; cane and bamboo work supplies the fishing and areca trades. Both are small, both are seasonal, and both depend on the estuary being left alone.
Material: Bivalve shell, cane and bamboo. Technique: Shell burnt in kilns for lime; cane split and woven for baskets, fish traps and winnows.
The dance, music, theatre and crafts of Canara Coast, from classical forms to village traditions. (18)