Arts and artisanal heritage

KuchipudiClassical

Kuchipudi is a village in the Krishna delta before it is a dance form, and that order matters. The village families held a land grant — confirmed in the late seventeenth century under Golconda rule — on condition that they continue performing the dance-drama. So the form was a hereditary obligation attached to a piece of land, performed all night in the open by an all-male troupe as narrative theatre with speech, song and dance in one body. Its transformation into a solo proscenium classical dance performed largely by women happened in the twentieth century, principally through the school of Vempati Chinna Satyam. Both versions exist; the village one is the older and the rarer.

Performed by: Originally the brahmin men of one village; now taught and performed everywhere. Occasion: Temple courtyard, village stage, and the concert platform

BhamakalapamClassical

A full-length dance-drama in which one performer sustains a single character for hours, introduced by the jada — the entry in which Satyabhama's plait is brought on stage before she is. It is the core Kuchipudi text and is attributed to Siddhendra Yogi.

Performed by: A single actor-dancer, traditionally male, playing Satyabhama. Occasion: Night-long performance in the Kuchipudi repertoire

Veedhi BhagavatamFolk

Street dance-drama on the same repertoire as Kuchipudi, played on open ground with a hand-held curtain and no stage. It is the substrate the classical form was refined out of, and it is still performed at village level.

Performed by: Village troupes. Occasion: Temple festivals

KolatamFolk

Stick dance in concentric moving circles, where the pattern of strikes carries the complexity.

Performed by: Village and school troupes. Occasion: Sankranti and temple festivals

Gangireddu and Haridasu at SankrantiRitual

A decorated bull trained to nod, bow and dance to a nadaswaram at a household's door; and a singer with a brass bowl on his head who walks the street at dawn and accepts grain rather than money. Both are calendrical, both are door-to-door, and both are contracting fast.

Performed by: Hereditary performers going house to house. Occasion: The Sankranti week

Burrakatha

Ballad performance by three: a lead with a tambura, and two responders playing gummeta clay drums, one of whom handles comedy and one topical commentary. It carries mythological, heroic and — from the 1930s — explicitly political material, which is what made it a mass medium before radio reached the villages.

Harikatha in the delta

The Vizianagaram-born narrative form took deep root here, and the delta's temple festivals are where most Harikatha is now performed. The genre travelled south along the coast within a generation of its codification.

The delta's Carnatic tradition

Vijayawada, Rajahmundry and Kakinada sustained sabha concert circuits, teaching lineages and, from the 1930s, a recording and film-music pipeline. The Telugu playback tradition draws its early personnel almost entirely from this stretch of coast.

Nadaswaram and dolu

The temple and wedding double-reed with its barrel drum, played standing, outdoors and at volume. It marks processions across the delta and is the sound of a temple's daily sequence.

Padya natakam

Verse drama, in which the actors sing metrical Telugu verse and the audience calls for repeats of lines it likes — an interruption that is part of the form rather than a breach of it. Mythological and historical subjects, and a strong amateur circuit in the delta towns.

Tholu bommalata

Leather shadow puppetry, with large translucent hide figures worked against a lit cloth screen and a sung narrative. It is registered as a geographical indication at state level, and its surviving families are scattered across the Telugu country rather than concentrated here.

Machilipatnam Kalamkari GI registered Krishna (Pedana and Machilipatnam)

Registered as a geographical indication in 2007. The craft grew under Golconda-period patronage and then on export demand — this was the chintz that went out of the Coromandel ports to Persia, Southeast Asia and Europe — so its motifs are Persianate florals and repeating grids rather than temple narrative. Most of the working units are at Pedana rather than in Machilipatnam itself.

Material: Cotton, myrobalan, iron acetate, alum, madder and other plant dyes. Technique: The cloth is treated with myrobalan so that it will take a mordant, then printed with carved teak blocks carrying the mordants rather than the colours. Colour appears only when the printed cloth is boiled with the dye — iron gives black, alum gives red — and the whole is washed repeatedly in running water between stages. The dyer prints an invisible pattern and develops it afterwards.

Kondapalli Bommalu GI registered NTR (Kondapalli)

Registered as a geographical indication in 2005. The wood is light enough to carry a large figure and soft enough to carve fast, and the whole craft is timed to a single festival's demand.

Material: Tella poniki wood, tamarind-seed paste, enamel and vegetable colour. Technique: A soft white wood is carved in parts, the parts joined with tamarind-seed paste, the surface sealed and then painted. Figures are made as sets — a village, a Dasavataram, a wedding party — because the buyer is assembling a Sankranti display shelf.

Uppada jamdani weaving GI registered Kakinada (Uppada)

Registered as a geographical indication in 2008. The technique arrived from the Bengal jamdani tradition and was substantially revived here in the late twentieth century after nearly dying out.

Material: Silk and cotton, zari. Technique: Supplementary-weft figuring worked in by hand at the loom without a shuttle, two weavers to a loom, with the motif built up thread by thread.

Mangalagiri weaving GI registered Guntur (Mangalagiri)

Registered as a geographical indication in 2010. A cloth whose selling point is structural rather than decorative, which is unusual and is why it moved so easily into institutional and office wear.

Material: Cotton, zari. Technique: Pit-loom plain weave of high density with a nizam-technique zari border and no body ornament

Narasapur crochet lace GI registered West Godavari (Narsapur)

Registered as a geographical indication in 2020. Home-based piece work done by a very large number of women through an agent chain, producing table linen and furnishing lace almost entirely for export.

Material: Cotton thread. Technique: Hand crochet with a fine hook, worked in motifs and joined into panels

Durgi stone carving GI registered Palnadu (Durgi)

Registered as a geographical indication in 2014. The stone is the same soft limestone that the Amaravati sculptors used two thousand years earlier, quarried from the same belt on the Krishna.

Material: Soft local limestone. Technique: Carved green and allowed to harden, so large pieces can be worked fast with hand tools

Udayagiri wooden cutlery GI registered Nellore (Udayagiri)

Registered as a geographical indication in 2015. Wooden cutlery that does not taint sour food, which in a kitchen that pickles in oil and cooks in tamarind is a functional specification rather than a novelty.

Material: Local hardwoods. Technique: Hand-carved spoons, forks and knives finished without varnish