Marathwada · Deccan Inland Plateau
Dance
A night-long invocation performed by a standing troupe with sambal drum, tuntune and a lit torch, calling the goddess into the house before a wedding can proceed. Tuljapur is its centre of gravity, and the performance is an obligation discharged rather than an entertainment booked.
Performed by: Gondhali performers. Occasion: Weddings, and vows to Bhavani or Renuka
Men in dhoti and pheta circle a dhol player in a tightening spiral, arms raised, to a fixed accelerating rhythm. The songs address Biroba, the shepherds' own deity, and the form belongs to the transhumant grazing economy of the Balaghat uplands.
Performed by: Dhangar shepherd communities. Occasion: The Biroba festival, and Bail Pola
A circling clap-and-step dance in full mirrored dress, with the songs in Gor Boli rather than Marathi. The Marathwada tandas share the repertoire with those in Telangana and northern Karnataka.
Performed by: Gor Banjara women. Occasion: Teej, Holi and weddings
Present here but not native — Lavani's institutional home is the Desh, west of the Balaghat, and Marathwada receives it through the touring tamasha circuit that works the jatra season.
Performed by: Professional women performers, with dholki accompaniment. Occasion: Tamasha stages and jatra fairs
A whip-carrying devotee moving through the village to a drum, striking his own back, collecting for the goddess of epidemic disease. It is a survival of a village public-health ritual and reads as such.
Performed by: Devotees of Mariai. Occasion: Village rounds, especially before the monsoon
Music
Sant Eknath's invention at Paithan in the sixteenth century — a devotional song written in the voice of a drunk, a beggar, a bangle-seller or a possessed woman, so the theology arrives disguised as comedy. Around three hundred survive, and they are still performed as a stage form rather than read.
The Varkari repertoire, sung in Marathi to taal and mridang by a standing kirtankar and a chorus. Janabai of Gangakhed and Goroba of Ter are among the composers the tradition carries, and both are from this region.
Ballads of battle, delivered fast and declaimed rather than sung, by a shahir with a daf. The form is Marathi country-wide; Marathwada's shahirs work the jatra circuit and the political meeting alike.
The Muharram repertoire of the Deccani neighbourhoods, in Dakhni Urdu rather than the Lucknow register, and the qawwali sung at the region's Sufi dargahs. Both are audibly Deccan — the vocabulary and the syntax carry Marathi and Telugu structures.
Ambedkarite song, sung by shahirs and jalsa troupes and circulated on cassette and now on phones. Marathwada has a large Buddhist population and the genre is in continuous live use here, not archived.
Theatre
Eknath's texts staged with a single performer switching between the characters written into the song. It is the oldest continuously performed Marathi stage form that can be attributed to a named author.
The touring troupe form — gan, gavlan, batavani and vag — playing the jatra season on temporary stages. The companies are largely Desh-based and the audience is here.
Every village deity's annual fair carries a night stage. What plays on it — tamasha, bharud, a devotional drama, or a hired orchestra — has changed repeatedly, but the fair's calendar has not.
Crafts
The motif vocabulary — bangdi mor, asawali, muniya, lotus — is old and largely fixed. Most commercial output has moved to Yeola in Nashik district, which is outside this region, so the GI covers the technique and the name rather than a single town.
Material: Mulberry silk and gold-gilt silver zari. Technique: Tapestry weave. The weaver builds the pallu and border by interlocking coloured wefts against the warp by hand, using the kadiyal method where border and body are different colours, so there are no floating threads on the reverse and the two faces are identical. A heavily worked sari takes many months on the loom.
Down to a very small number of working handlooms in the old city. The name is now attached mostly to power-loom shawls sold to visitors, which is the usual endgame for a craft with no protected name.
Material: Silk and cotton. Technique: Extra-weft figuring on a jacquard-fitted pit loom, the pattern lying on the surface of a plain ground.
A village whose name means the paper-makers' quarter, settled by papermakers in the medieval period beside the Daulatabad fort. Papermaking there has all but stopped, and the toponym now carries more of the history than the trade does.
Material: Cotton rag and hemp fibre. Technique: Rag pulped, sheet-formed on a mould, sized and burnished by hand.
The same tradition holds a geographical indication on the Karnataka side, registered for Sandur; the Maharashtra tandas work in the same idiom without one.
Material: Cotton ground, mirror discs, cowrie shell, coin and floss. Technique: Counted-thread and appliqué work with lehariya, kaudi and mirror-anchoring stitches, worked without a drawn design and carried entirely in the maker's memory.
Made by the shepherds who own the sheep, for their own use. The wool of the Deccani breed is coarse and unsuitable for garments, which is precisely what makes the blanket shed rain.
Material: Deccani sheep wool. Technique: Hand-spun on a takli and woven on a horizontal ground loom, in narrow strips joined lengthways.
A living trade in temple repair and idol-making, and the direct descendant of the skill that produced Ellora. Basalt's difficulty is the reason the region's ancient sculpture is blocky and deeply undercut rather than fine.
Material: Deccan trap basalt. Technique: Chisel work on a hard, fine-grained volcanic rock that takes an edge poorly and holds it well.
The dance, music, theatre and crafts of Marathwada, from classical forms to village traditions. (19)