Travancore & Kuttanad · Western Coastal Strip
Devotional narrative set to the stroke. The metre is nathonnatha, whose long-short-short pattern maps onto the pull and recovery of an oar, so the song is a timing device before it is a text.
Sung at: Rowing, and the vallam kali season. Ramapurathu Warrier's Kuchela Vritham Vanchipattu is the classical example, composed to be sung while rowing with the Travancore ruler aboard.
Invocation and appeasement of Bhadrakali, sung antiphonally between the kolam bearers and the drummers as each mask enters the ground.
Sung at: Padayani nights in Meenam and Medam.
Work rhythm and complaint, sung by a line of women planting seedlings, with the tempo setting the rate the whole line moves at.
Sung at: Paddy transplanting in the Kuttanad polders. Largely displaced by mechanised transplanting; now heard mostly at competitions and on recordings.
The journey and martyrdom of Thomas the Apostle in fourteen sung sections, danced by a ring of performers around a lit lamp with no instrument except the voices and the clap.
Sung at: Syrian Christian weddings and church festivals.
The Ayyappa narrative sung through the night by a specialist group before a lamp, with the household's pilgrims present and the season's vratham already begun.
Sung at: Household vilakku ceremonies through the pilgrimage season.
Maveli's reign and its loss, sung by women circling the pookkalam. The lyric is about a just king in exile, which is why it survives as the one Kerala festival song with a political reading attached.
Sung at: The ten days of Onam.
The folk songs of Travancore & Kuttanad — what they are about, who sings them and when. (6)