Siang & Adi Belt · Eastern Himalaya & Brahmaputra Belt
Origin, migration and clan genealogy, recited in an archaic register by a miri. It is the historical record of a society that kept no written one, and the reason clan relationships across widely separated villages can still be traced.
Sung at: Ritual, at Solung and at rites of passage. Performed continuously for hours; different sections belong to different ritual occasions.
The agricultural year and the myths attached to it, sung by a central miri and answered by a circle of dancing women.
Sung at: Solung.
Everyday life — the field, the river, absence, attachment. The category rather than a single song, and still composed in.
Sung at: Work, courtship, mourning.
Love and longing in short couplets. Included here because it is the same genre and the same language family, sung by the community that carried Tani speech down out of these hills onto the sandbars — the clearest audible evidence of the corridor.
Sung at: Sung across the floodplain, all year.
Welcome, hospitality and good-humoured challenge, sung as call and response with improvised lines against a fixed refrain.
Sung at: Gatherings and the close of festivals.
Invocation of Mopin Ane, the goddess the festival addresses, and petitions for a good crop and freedom from illness.
Sung at: Mopin, early April.
The folk songs of Siang & Adi Belt — what they are about, who sings them and when. (6)