Folk Music, Dance and Theatre of Uttar Pradesh: Kathak to Nautanki

Uttar Pradesh gave India one of its eight classical dances and a stage tradition that filled village fairs for two centuries. The state's performing arts divide neatly by region, and that is how examiners ask them: Braj around Mathura for Raslila, Charkula and Rasiya songs; Awadh around Lucknow for Kathak and thumri; Bundelkhand in the south for the Alha ballad and the Rai dance; and Purvanchal in the east for Birha, Dhobiya and Jhijhiya. Learn each form with its region, its instrument and the name most closely tied to it.

Kathak and its gharanas

Kathak takes its name from katha, a story, and from the kathakars, the temple storytellers of Braj who sang and mimed episodes of Krishna's life. In the medieval period the form moved from the temple courtyard to the royal court, took in Persian costume and the tabla, and became the only classical dance of North India. It is danced on flat feet with long chains of ankle bells, and is built of the tatkar or footwork, the chakkar or pirouette, the nritta sections of toda, tukda and paran, and the expressive gat bhava. It is accompanied by tabla, pakhawaj and sarangi, and its rhythmic recitation of bols is its signature.

Birju Maharaj of the Lucknow gharana, honoured with the Padma Vibhushan, was its best known modern master. Nawab Wajid Ali Shah himself wrote thumris under the pen name Akhtarpiya, composed the famous Babul mora, and devised the Rahas, a dance drama on the Krishna theme performed at his court.

Nautanki, the folk opera

Nautanki is the sung folk theatre of the plains, performed through the night on an open platform, with the story carried in verse metres such as doha, chaubola and daur. Its ruling instrument is the nagada or nakkara, a large kettledrum struck with sticks, supported by the harmonium and dholak. Two centres gave it two styles: Hathras, where the music dominates, and Kanpur, where dialogue and acting carry more weight. Favourite plays include Amar Singh Rathore, Laila Majnu, Satya Harishchandra, Sultana Daku and Indal Haran, and the form is said to be named after the play about Princess Nautanki. Gulab Bai of Kanpur, the first woman to take the Nautanki stage when the female roles had always been played by men, was honoured with the Padma Shri.

Raslila, Ramlila and the other dances

Raslila of Braj enacts the childhood and the rasa of Krishna; the boys who take the parts of Krishna, Radha and the gopis are called swarups and are treated with reverence through the performance, which mixes sung verse, dance and spoken dialogue. Ramlila, the open-air enactment of the Ramayana, reaches its grandest form in the month-long Ramnagar Ramlila at Varanasi, and the tradition was placed by UNESCO on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008. Among folk dances, Charkula of Braj has women dancing with a tiered wooden pyramid of lighted lamps balanced on the head, traditionally counted as one hundred and eight. The Mayur or peacock dance also belongs to Braj. Pai Danda, a stick dance of the Ahir cowherds, and Rai and Shaira belong to Bundelkhand, while Dhobiya, Domkach and Jhijhiya, in which women dance with a perforated pot of lamps, belong to the Bhojpuri east. Karma is danced by the tribal communities of Sonbhadra.

Folk song and the music gharanas

The song forms follow the farming and ritual year: Sohar at a birth, Banna and Banni at a wedding, Kajri and Jhoola in the rains of Mirzapur, Hori and Fag at Holi, Chaiti in spring, Barahmasa through the twelve months, and Birha, the long ballad of the Ahirs of the east. Bundelkhand keeps Alha, the warrior ballad of Alha and Udal drawn from Jagnik's Alha Khand. In classical music the state carries the Banaras tabla baj, the Rampur-Sahaswan and Agra vocal gharanas, the Kirana gharana named after Kairana, and the Etawah or Imdadkhani gharana of sitar and surbahar. Khayal is traditionally said to have been nurtured at the Sharqi court of Jaunpur. Varanasi gave the shehnai of Bismillah Khan, a Bharat Ratna, and the thumri of Girija Devi, while Begum Akhtar of Faizabad is remembered as the Mallika-e-Ghazal. The Marris College of Hindustani Music, founded at Lucknow in 1926 by Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande, is today the Bhatkhande Sanskriti Vishwavidyalaya.