Garo Hills · Northeast Hill Massif
Thanksgiving to Misi Saljong for the crop, sung over the dama and rang while the two lines advance. The words are secondary to the drum pattern, which is what actually organises the dance.
Sung at: The harvest festival, October–December.
A ceremonial song form performed at the formal moments of a marriage and at clan gatherings, in which the singer fits the occasion and the people present into a fixed melodic frame.
Sung at: Weddings and formal occasions.
A narrative and exchange form sung in alternation, with one singer answering another. Skill lies in extending the exchange without repeating, which makes it a contest as much as a song.
Sung at: Gatherings and evenings.
Two of the named song forms in the A·chik repertoire, attached to particular occasions rather than to general performance.
Sung at: Social and seasonal gatherings.
Song accompanied on the bowed serenda, on themes of attachment and separation.
Sung at: Courting and evening singing.
The Baptist hymn corpus translated into and then written in A·chik from the later nineteenth century. It is quantitatively the largest body of sung Garo, it standardised a good deal of the written language, and for many speakers it is the main context in which they read A·chik at all.
Sung at: Sunday worship, funerals, Christmas.
Call-and-response songs timed to collective labour on the a·ba, where a whole village works one household's plot in turn.
Sung at: Clearing, sowing and harvest.
The folk songs of Garo Hills — what they are about, who sings them and when. (7)