Rarh · Middle & Lower Gangetic Plain
The moner manush — the person within — sought inside the body rather than in scripture or temple. The songs are deliberately riddling, and a great many of them are structured as a question the listener is left holding.
Sung at: Melas, akhras and everyday performance. Sung to ektara, dubki, khamak and ankle bells; the Kenduli mela in January is the largest gathering.
Desire, absence and rural life, in short driving stanzas by named composers. Sung with the Nachni tradition and also on its own.
Sung at: Fairs, nights of performance, harvest.
Sung by unmarried girls to Tusu, treated as a daughter of the house, about her arrival, her keeping and her departure to the water. New verses are composed every year, and they carry a running commentary on prices, politics and marriage.
Sung at: The month of Poush, ending at Makar Sankranti.
The same structure as Tusu in a different season, associated in local tradition with a princess of the Panchkot house who died before her wedding.
Sung at: The month of Bhadra.
Shaiva devotional and dramatic songs performed by processional troupes moving between Birbhum villages, mixing myth with local incident.
Sung at: Gajan, at the end of Chaitra.
Cattle, the sal flower, the ancestors and the village's own founding, sung in line at the akhra with tamak and tumdak drums.
Sung at: Sohrai after the harvest, Baha at the sal blossom.
The Radha–Krishna cycle elaborated over hours, with the singer stepping out of the narrative to comment on it and then back in.
Sung at: Vaishnava festivals and temple singing.
Topical satire, sexual comedy and village politics, alternating with straight devotional pieces, in a form whose whole point is that nothing local is off limits.
Sung at: All-night Alkap performances.
The folk songs of Rarh — what they are about, who sings them and when. (8)