Malabar · Western Coastal Strip
How a person, an animal or a spirit became a deity — a birth, a wrong done, usually a violent death, and the elevation that followed. The song is the deity's credentials, sung before the deity appears.
Sung at: Sung while a Theyyam performer is being costumed. Each kolam has its own thottam, held by the performing family and transmitted orally; a family's repertoire is its livelihood and is not shared outside it.
Thacholi Othenan of Meppayil near Vadakara — duels, cattle raids, ambushes and a code about who may be fought and how. Lokanarkavu is his family's shrine and the ballads still point to it.
Sung at: Ballad recitation, and now stage and recording.
The Puthooram house — Aromal Chekavar, killed in a rigged ankam, and his sister Unniyarcha, who is the ballads' most formidable figure and fights her own fights. A body of oral literature in which women carry weapons and win.
Sung at: Ballad recitation.
Devotion, romance, the sea, separation from a husband who has sailed, and the padappattu battle narratives. Moyinkutty Vaidyar's Badarul Munir–Husnul Jamal of 1872 is the form's best-known romance.
Sung at: Weddings, mosque festivals, gatherings and now the concert stage. The script gave Malayalam an entirely separate written tradition with its own readership, and literacy in it was common among women in households where literacy in the Malayalam script was not.
Praise of the bride, teasing of both families, and advice — sung by women in a circle with the bride seated at the centre.
Sung at: The night before a wedding.
Vattakali is a ring dance to a single drum; gadhika is a night-long healing ritual with a sung text and a possessed practitioner. Both belong to languages with no script and are among the least documented performance traditions in the state.
Sung at: Ritual and community gatherings on the Wayanad plateau.
The folk songs of Malabar — what they are about, who sings them and when. (6)