Pandya Nadu · Eastern Coastal Plains
Andal's thirty verses, composed at Srivilliputhur in this region, addressed by a girl waking her companions before dawn to keep a vow. Sung across the whole Tamil and Telugu Vaishnava world; this is where it was written.
Sung at: The thirty mornings of Margazhi.
Songs in a swinging metre matched to the step of a pilgrim carrying a kavadi. The nineteenth-century poet Annamalai Reddiar gave the genre its literary form, and pilgrims still sing his lines on the road.
Sung at: The walk to Palani, Thaipusam.
Fast, rhymed, frequently bawdy songs sung to naiyandi melam while the dancer balances the pot — the humour is part of the offering, not a lapse from it.
Sung at: Amman festivals.
Sung while tossing and catching small balls or seeds in a fixed pattern, so the metre is set by the throw. Long narrative ammanai ballads carry local histories that appear in no other source.
Sung at: Women's gatherings and festival evenings.
Improvised lament sung by women at funerals, addressed to the dead and cataloguing the household they have left. In this region it is often accompanied by parai drumming.
Sung at: Death.
Work songs timed to the pace of a bullock or a picottah lift, including a substantial body of songs about the tank — whether it filled, who repaired it, and who took more than their share.
Sung at: Ploughing, sowing, drawing water.
Bow-song epics about local guardian deities and deified heroes, performed overnight, in which the deity's own story is the entertainment and the ritual at once.
Sung at: Village temple festivals.
The folk songs of Pandya Nadu — what they are about, who sings them and when. (7)