Mahakoshal & Gondwana · Central Highlands & Forest Belt
The karma tree, the rains, and the young men and women dancing around it. Sung in short cycles that repeat for hours, because the song is a metronome for a dance that lasts until dawn.
Sung at: Karma Ekadashi and the monsoon nights.
Courtship, teasing and village incident, improvised over a fixed refrain that the line sings back after every couplet.
Sung at: Weddings and fairs.
The freeing of the Gond gods from the cave and the founding of the saga divisions. Performed by Pardhan bards to the bana; it is a legal text as much as a poem, since it fixes who may marry whom.
Sung at: Clan rites, over several nights.
Harvest, cattle and the return of the young men from wage work, sung to the beat of struck sticks.
Sung at: Post-harvest, Dashera to Magh.
Krishna, colour and open erotic teasing, sung by men in chorus to the nagariya drum in the Narmada belt villages.
Sung at: Phagun, up to Holi.
A two-line improvised couplet thrown between men and women at work or at a fair. It crosses the Maikal into Balaghat and Dindori and is the shortest song form in the region.
Sung at: Any working gathering.
Sung at the collection itself, before dawn under the trees. The songs are about the tree, the sweeping and the sharing of what falls, and they exist because the work is done in the dark and in company.
Sung at: The March and April collection.
The folk songs of Mahakoshal & Gondwana — what they are about, who sings them and when. (7)