Which instrument dominates a Nautanki performance?
- A.Tabla
- B.Nagada or nakkara
- C.Sarangi
- D.Pakhawaj
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is B, the nagada or nakkara. Nautanki is played on an open platform to an audience of hundreds, often through the whole night, so it needs an instrument that carries. The nagada, a large kettledrum struck with a pair of sticks, announces the play, marks the verse metres and punctuates the dialogue, with the harmonium and the dholak filling in the melody and the lighter rhythm.
Option A, the tabla, belongs to classical music and to Kathak, where it accompanies the footwork, and it would be lost in the open air of a Nautanki ground. Option C, the sarangi, is a bowed instrument used to shadow the voice in thumri and khayal and in Kathak, not to drive a folk opera. Option D, the pakhawaj, is the barrel drum of dhrupad and of the Jaipur gharana of Kathak. All three appear in Uttar Pradesh music, which is why they make good distractors, but only the nagada is the mark of Nautanki.
Read the full article: Folk Music, Dance and Theatre of Uttar Pradesh: Kathak to Nautanki
Practice Questions
View allWhich gharana of Kathak developed in the court of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah of Awadh?
- A.Jaipur gharana
- B.Lucknow gharana
- C.Banaras gharana
- D.Raigarh gharana
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The Lucknow gharana of Kathak took shape in the court of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah of Awadh, who was himself a dancer and a composer of thumris under the pen name Akhtarpiya.
Read the full explanation →The Charkula dance belongs to which region of Uttar Pradesh?
- A.Bundelkhand
- B.Braj
- C.Purvanchal
- D.Rohilkhand
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Charkula is danced in the Braj country around Mathura, where a woman balances a tiered wooden pyramid hung with rows of lighted earthen lamps, traditionally counted as one hundred and eight, on her head and moves to Rasiya songs of Krishna.
Read the full explanation →Ramlila, the traditional performance of the Ramayana, was placed by UNESCO on which list?
- A.World Heritage List
- B.Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity
- C.Memory of the World Register
- D.List of Creative Cities
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Ramlila is a living performance tradition rather than a building or a document, so it was inscribed in 2008 on the list that UNESCO maintains for intangible heritage, the same list that carries Kutiyattam, Vedic chanting and Ramman from India.
Read the full explanation →Which pair of towns are the two main centres and styles of Nautanki?
- A.Hathras and Kanpur
- B.Mathura and Agra
- C.Varanasi and Jaunpur
- D.Lucknow and Faizabad
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Nautanki grew into two recognised styles, the Hathras style in which the sung music and the verse metres dominate and the audience comes for the singing, and the Kanpur style in which dialogue, acting and stagecraft carry more of the play.
Read the full explanation →Bismillah Khan of Varanasi, honoured with the Bharat Ratna, was a master of which instrument?
- A.Shehnai
- B.Sarangi
- C.Sitar
- D.Pakhawaj
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Ustad Bismillah Khan of Varanasi took the shehnai, until then an instrument of weddings and temple gateways, on to the concert platform and made it a solo classical instrument.
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