Kongu Nadu · Deccan Inland Plateau
Dance
A processional line dance to a drum, performed without props in a slow synchronised step that speeds up through the piece. It is described in the folklore literature as a Kongu form descended from an older court dance, and it is danced at village temple festivals rather than on a stage.
Performed by: Men, in a line. Occasion: Temple festivals
A decorated pot balanced on the head and danced with, to naiyandi melam. Its origin is a ritual water offering; the version now booked for functions is frankly a professional entertainment and its performers say so.
Performed by: Professional troupes. Occasion: Mariamman festivals, village functions
Stick fighting with a bamboo staff, worked in circular patterns at speed. It survives here as a demonstration art at temple festivals and in village gymnasiums, and its practitioners keep the training vocabulary intact even where the fighting use has gone.
Performed by: Men, trained from boyhood. Occasion: Temple festivals, demonstrations
A frame drum played with two sticks, one thin and one flat, whose players were historically both musicians and the village announcement system. The instrument has been deliberately reclaimed in recent decades and is now taught in urban classes.
Performed by: Hereditary drummer families. Occasion: Funerals, processions, announcements
A slow line dance built on a repeated forward-and-back step, with handkerchiefs and bells, sung as it is danced. It runs across the southern Tamil country and is at home here.
Performed by: Men in a line with ankle bells. Occasion: Temple festivals
Music
The village wind-and-percussion band — nadaswaram, thavil, dholak and cymbals — that plays processions, weddings and Karagattam. It is louder, faster and less formal than the temple periya melam, and it is a full-time hereditary occupation.
Bow song — a narrative sung by a lead performer who beats time on a large bowstring strung with bells, answered by a chorus. It carries the Annanmar epic in this region, and a performance is part story, part sermon and part topical commentary.
The classical wind tradition attached to the big temples, where the instrument is played outdoors and at length for processions, and where the repertoire includes the long alapana that concert halls rarely allow time for.
Women's circle songs, clapped or played with sticks, sung at Pongal, at weddings and in the Aadi festivals — the domestic music of the region, and where most of its surviving folk verse lives.
Theatre
The Kamadahana story performed over several nights around Masi, with the burning of Kama enacted and mourned by a village that then abuses the deity responsible in verse. It is one of the few Tamil ritual dramas where the audience is expected to take sides against a god.
The eighteen-night performance of the Annanmar epic, staged in front of the twin brothers' temples with the bow, the pot drum and a lead narrator, and attended as a religious obligation rather than as entertainment.
The touring Tamil commercial theatre of the twentieth century, assembled per performance from freelance actors booked separately — hence the name. The Kongu towns were a core circuit, and the form still plays village festivals.
Crafts
Registered as a geographical indication in 2005–06. The craft began as a deliberate response to imported mill cloth and now defends itself against power-loom copies with the same name.
Material: Coarse cotton yarn, and artificial silk in the finer grades. Technique: Pit-loom weaving with the weaver seated below floor level, working the treadles with the feet so the whole body weight can be used on the beat. Two grades are made — a coarse cotton carpet and a softer art-silk version that takes a decorated border.
Registered as a geographical indication in 2014–15, and a saree designed for a hot dry climate.
Material: Cotton with silk and zari. Technique: Handloom weaving of a cotton body against silk or zari borders, chiefly at Sirumugai.
Registered as a geographical indication in 2005–06. The town has hundreds of manufacturers and makes the large majority of India's wet grinders, because it had granite, motors and lathes in the same square mile.
Material: Granite, mild steel, electric motor. Technique: Granite rollers turning inside a granite-lined drum, crushing rather than cutting, so the batter does not heat and the fermentation survives. The tilting design was worked out locally in 1955 and the product has changed remarkably little since.
Registered as a geographical indication in 2007–08.
Material: Mulberry silk, zari. Technique: Handloom silk weaving in a belt that also runs one of the largest power-loom clusters in the south.
Registered as a geographical indication in 2019. The Erode market complex is one of the largest turmeric trading floors in the world, and prices set on it are quoted nationally.
Material: Curcuma longa rhizome. Technique: Boiling, a fortnight of sun-drying and drum polishing, then grading by colour and curcumin content.
Registered as a geographical indication in 2023. A South American root crop introduced in the colonial period, turned into a Tamil pantry staple by one district.
Material: Tapioca starch. Technique: Tapioca is rasped, the starch settled and washed, then rolled into pearls and roasted on hot plates. The industry is organised around a single regulated market through which almost the whole crop is sold.
A handloom belt converted almost entirely into an export made-ups cluster from the 1970s onward.
Material: Cotton and blends. Technique: Weaving, dyeing and made-up stitching of table, kitchen and bed linen for export.
A draught breed developed and maintained by the region's herding households, and the grazing system that goes with it, which is itself the rarer survival.
Material: Live animals and the grazing commons that support them. Technique: Selective breeding on korangadu silvo-pasture — a fenced grazing system of grass, legume and thorn kept for cattle rather than ploughed — producing a compact, hard-hoofed draught animal suited to black soil and heat.
The dance, music, theatre and crafts of Kongu Nadu, from classical forms to village traditions. (20)