Haryana Bangar & Bagar · Upper Indus–Gangetic Plain
Anything at all — an episode from the Mahabharata, a land dispute, a warning about debt, a courtship — set in a fixed metre with a refrain the audience joins.
Sung at: Saang performances, fairs, night gatherings. Pandit Lakhmi Chand's raginis are the canon; villages still argue over the correct text of individual stanzas.
Spring, licence and the reversal of the usual restraints between men and women.
Sung at: Phalgun, the run-up to Holi.
Sung by girls to the clay goddess they are building on the wall — songs about her arrival, her ornaments, her marriage and finally her departure to the water.
Sung at: The sixteen days of Pitr Paksha.
The life and death of Gugga, the snake-god, sung by Jogi singers to the sarangi as the chhari is carried from village to village.
Sung at: Gugga Naumi in Bhadrapada.
A tragic love ballad of Nihalde and Sultan, sung as a long narrative in the same idiom as the saang and frequently performed as one.
Sung at: Night gatherings.
Praise of groom and bride sung in alternation by their own households, with the teasing entirely one-sided.
Sung at: Weddings.
Swings, rain, a brother's arrival to fetch his married sister home, and the homesickness of a woman married out of her own village.
Sung at: Sawan and Teej.
Satire, riddle and devotion sung over the bhapang, whose pitch is bent by pulling the gut string as the drum is struck — a single instrument that talks back to the singer.
Sung at: Fairs and night gatherings.
The folk songs of Haryana Bangar & Bagar — what they are about, who sings them and when. (8)