Arts and artisanal heritage

BhangraFolk

A harvest dance from the western districts of undivided Punjab, danced to a dhol in a loose circle with shoulder and arm movements built around the harvest gestures themselves. After 1947 it was restaged as a standardised troupe form for state folk festivals, absorbing steps from jhummar, luddi and sammi into a single choreographed item, and in that form it became Punjab's public face. From the 1980s Punjabi communities in Britain crossed the dhol rhythm with recorded pop production, and bhangra became a global music genre distinct from the dance that named it.

Performed by: Men. Occasion: Originally the wheat harvest; now everything

GiddhaFolk

Women form a ring, one or two step into the centre, and the dance is punctuated by boliyan — sharp rhymed couplets called out and answered, with the ring clapping the rhythm. The verses are the point: they are improvised, frequently satirical about husbands, mothers-in-law and marriage itself, and giddha is one of the few licensed public spaces in which they can be said aloud.

Performed by: Women. Occasion: Weddings, Teej, festivals

JhummarFolk

Slower and more circular than bhangra, in a swaying triple feel, from the bar uplands of western Punjab and carried east by families displaced in 1947. It is danced in a ring around the drummer and is closer to what Punjabi harvest dancing looked like before the stage version standardised it.

Performed by: Men. Occasion: Weddings and gatherings

Malwai giddhaFolk

The men's counterpart to giddha in the Malwa districts, danced to the bugchu, the chimta and the ghara, with boliyan traded between the dancers. Older men perform it, and it has none of bhangra's athleticism.

Performed by: Men of Malwa. Occasion: Fairs and weddings

Sammi and luddiFolk

Sammi is a women's dance from the western bar country with a distinctive arm-and-chest gesture; luddi is a men's dance of victory or celebration, danced with a hand behind the back. Both came east with partition migrants and survive mainly inside stage bhangra's borrowed vocabulary.

Performed by: Women and men respectively. Occasion: Community gatherings

KikliFolk

Two girls cross hands, lean back and spin, singing a fixed rhyme. It is a children's game and the first Punjabi dance most people learn.

Performed by: Girls. Occasion: Play

GatkaMartial

Stick-and-sword sparring practised as a martial discipline with its own footwork, drills and drum accompaniment. It is demonstrated at Hola Mohalla alongside horsemanship and is now taught competitively.

Performed by: Sikh martial practitioners, particularly Nihang orders. Occasion: Hola Mohalla, nagar kirtan processions

Gurmat sangeet

The kirtan tradition of the Sikh scripture. The Guru Granth Sahib is arranged not by author or theme but by raag, and a shabad carries the raag it was composed in, so the musical setting is part of the text. The instruments of the tradition — the rabab, saranda, taus, dilruba and jori — were associated with the Gurus' own courts, and there has been a sustained revival of them against the harmonium that displaced them in the colonial period.

Dhadi

A standing ensemble of two dhadd players and a sarangi that narrates vars — heroic ballads, chiefly of Sikh history and martyrdom — alternating sung verse with spoken exposition. The form is credited to the sixth Guru's establishment of ballad singers at the Akal Takht, and it remains an oral history delivery system as much as a musical genre.

Kavishri

Unaccompanied group recitation of long narrative verse at speed, with the performers trading lines and driving the metre by voice alone. It is strongest in Malwa, needs no instruments and no stage, and its texts run from Sikh history to social criticism.

Sufi kafi and qawwali

The Punjabi kafi — a short stanzaic poem with a refrain, in the tradition of Bulleh Shah, Shah Hussain and Sultan Bahu — sung solo or in qawwali form with harmonium, dholak and clapping at the Sufi shrines of the region. Much of the poetry's geography lies west of the 1947 line, but the shrines on the eastern side, particularly at Malerkotla and Sirhind, keep the singing alive.

Heer and the qissa tradition

The long verse romance, sung to a fixed melodic formula that any Punjabi audience recognises after two lines. Waris Shah's Heer of 1766 is the standard text, and its stanzas function as proverbs, arguments and laments quite apart from the story.

Tumbi, algoza and dhol

The single-string tumbi plucked with one finger for a bright repeating drone, the algoza twin flutes played with circular breathing, and the double-headed dhol that sets everything else. The tumbi's association with Punjabi folk singing owes a great deal to the twentieth-century singer Lal Chand Yamla Jatt, who made it a solo instrument.

Kali and the modern folk-narrative song

Narrative songs of legendary and historical figures sung in a declamatory style, a repertoire carried into the recording era in the later twentieth century and the bridge between the qissa tradition and today's Punjabi music industry.

Naqqal

Improvised satirical sketch theatre performed by hereditary naqqal families, with stock characters, mimicry and a licence to mock the powerful in front of them. Malerkotla has been one of its centres. Very few troupes remain.

Village theatre movement

From the middle of the twentieth century, Punjabi theatre was deliberately taken out of city auditoriums and into village courtyards, performed on flat ground with no set and a tractor's headlights for lighting. It became one of the principal channels for social argument in rural Punjab.

Ramlila, Ras and Raas Leela in the Powadh belt

The eastern districts share the Braj and Haryana performance calendar, and Ramlila cycles are staged in the towns of Powadh and northern Haryana in the autumn.

Phulkari embroidery GI registered Patiala, Bathinda, Ferozepur, Hoshiarpur, Amritsar

Made for the household, not for sale — a girl's phulkaris were begun at her birth and given at her wedding, and the type of piece indicated the occasion and the giver. Commercial production today is largely machine embroidery on synthetic cloth; genuine hand darn on khaddar survives in small cooperatives and among older embroiderers.

Material: Untwisted floss silk (pat) on hand-spun cotton khaddar. Technique: Long and short darn stitch worked from the reverse of the cloth by counting warp and weft threads, so the motif is built blind and appears on the front. There is no drawn design and no frame — the geometry comes out of the weave count itself, which is why old phulkari patterns distort if the ground cloth is machine-made.

Punjabi jutti GI registered Malerkotla, Patiala, Amritsar, Muktsar, Faridkot

Malerkotla is the largest cluster and its households have made juttis for generations. Registered as a geographical indication. Machine-made imitation now dominates the low end of the market, and hand tilla work survives mostly at the wedding end.

Material: Tanned leather, silk thread, gold and silver tilla wire, small mirrors. Technique: Vegetable-tanned leather cut, the upper embroidered flat before assembly, then hand-stitched to the sole with cotton thread and no nails. The pair is made on a single last with no left and right; wear differentiates them.

Jalandhar sports goods GI-worthy Jalandhar

A cluster that grew very sharply after 1947, when the industry centred on Sialkot was split by the border and artisans and firms who moved east re-established themselves in Jalandhar. It supplies a large share of India's sports equipment and exports internationally — a whole industry created by a partition line.

Material: Leather, willow, composite and moulded plastics. Technique: Cutting, stitching, lamination and assembly of balls, bats, hockey sticks and protective gear.

Khes and darri weaving GI-worthy Malwa and Doaba

Dowry weaving done at home, largely by women, and displaced by mill cloth. A surviving weaver can still be found in most large villages, but the number who can set a double weave is small.

Material: Cotton yarn. Technique: Double-weave on a pit loom for khes, so the cloth is reversible with the pattern inverted on the back; plain weft-faced tapestry weave on a horizontal frame for darris.

Nala and parandi making Across the region

Small textile objects made and given within households and sold at fairs, and among the few crafts that a household still routinely makes rather than buys.

Material: Silk, cotton, metallic thread. Technique: Finger-braiding and small-frame weaving, finished with tassels.

Hoshiarpur inlay woodwork GI-worthy Hoshiarpur

A long-established workshop craft in the kandi town of Hoshiarpur, sustained now by furniture and gift markets rather than by court patronage.

Material: Sheesham and shisham-family hardwood with inlaid contrast material. Technique: Fine geometric and floral inlay set into a chiselled ground on furniture, boxes and panels, historically in ivory and, since the ban, in acrylic, bone and pale wood.

Amritsar woollen weaving GI-worthy Amritsar

Founded on nineteenth-century migration of Kashmiri shawl weavers to the plains, and industrialised into one of north India's principal wool textile centres. Ludhiana's hosiery and knitwear industry is its twentieth-century successor at scale.

Material: Wool, pashmina, acrylic blends. Technique: Handloom and later powerloom weaving of shawls, blankets and woollen cloth.

Ludhiana hosiery, bicycles and machine parts Ludhiana

Not a heritage craft, but the region's dominant manufacturing culture and a direct descendant of its artisan economy — thousands of small workshops, mostly family-run, supplying national markets in woollens, cycles and components.

Material: Yarn, steel, castings. Technique: Knitting, forging, machining and assembly in dense clusters of small units.