L13: Folk Performing Arts — Overview

Good morning, good morning! Welcome back, everyone. Before we dive in, I want to just quickly acknowledge the assignment submissions on the market plant observations — I have read through many of them and I am genuinely impressed. Several of you wrote about seeing dried kokum at the Mapusa market and made the connection to the Garcinia species we discussed. Very good. Keep that observational habit — it will serve you well through this unit. A quick recap: in Lecture 11 we studied the flora of Goa — the plants of the Western Ghats, the mangroves, the khazan fields, the coconut palm and cashew as cultural keystones. In Lecture 12 we moved to fauna — the gaur, elephants, the Malabar Giant Squirrel, the state bird the Indian Roller, the King Cobra in ritual life, the dolphin in fishermen's knowledge, and the Olive Ridley turtle on our beaches. Now we shift completely in register. We move from the natural world to the expressive world. Today is Lecture 13: Folk Performing Arts — An Overview. [INTRODUCTION — 0 to 10 minutes] I want to begin with a very basic but important question: what is a performing art, and why do we call something folk? A performing art is one that requires live human performance — music, dance, drama, storytelling — as opposed to a visual or material art like painting or pottery. The word folk comes from the German Volk, meaning people — and in academic usage, folk arts are those that emerge from and are sustained by communities, transmitted orally and through practice, rather than through formal institutions like schools or conservatories. Folk arts are community arts. They belong to everyone and to no one. Goa has an extraordinarily rich corpus of folk performing arts. When you consider that Goa is 3,702 square kilometres — smaller than many Indian districts — the density and variety of performing traditions here is remarkable. And this richness comes from Goa's unique cultural layering: pre-colonial tribal and Hindu traditions, the four and a half centuries of Portuguese Catholic influence, the Muslim communities of certain talukas, the merchant and trading communities who came from outside. All of these have contributed threads to the performing arts fabric of Goa. I want to put one important idea on the table at the start: performing arts are not decorations on society. They are not entertainments added on top of real life. In Goa's folk tradition, performing arts are woven into the fabric of agriculture, of seasonality, of worship, of courtship, of mourning, of political commentary. The Dhalo is danced in winter fields. The Fugdi is danced at women's religious gatherings. Tiatr is social commentary in song. The Mando emerged from the cross-cultural contact between Goan Catholics and Portuguese music. Every form has a reason for existing, a community that created and maintains it, and a context in which it lives. [CORE CONTENT — 10 to 40 minutes] Let me give you a map of Goa's folk performing arts today — a taxonomy, if you will — and then in subsequent lectures we will go deep into each major tradition. I want to organise the performing arts of Goa into four broad categories. Category One: Seasonal and Agricultural Performance Forms. These are forms tied to the agricultural calendar and the monsoon cycle. The most important are Dhalo, Fugdi, and the various harvest celebration forms. Dhalo is a women's folk performance tradition associated with the harvest season — specifically the month of Paush, which falls roughly in December-January. Groups of women gather in the open courtyard of a house or temple, and they dance in circles and lines, singing traditional songs called Dhalo. The songs are narrative — they tell stories of gods and heroes, of domestic life, of the natural world. The dance involves interlocking arms and swaying movements. Dhalo is a community practice, not a stage performance — it belongs to women's social space. Fugdi is another women's form, also danced in circles, at festivals like Ganesh Chaturthi and in domestic and temple contexts. The Fugdi is physically vigorous — the word comes from fugna, to spin — and it involves fast spinning movements and clapping. There are many regional variations of Fugdi across different talukas. Both Dhalo and Fugdi are examples of what scholars call participatory performance — every woman present joins in, there is no audience separate from performers. This is fundamentally different from proscenium theatre. Category Two: Ritual Performance Forms. These are performing arts embedded in religious ritual. The Perni Jagar is a shamanic performance tradition of the Gawda tribal community, in which a spirit medium or jagar enters into trance and channels the voice of a deity. The performance involves drumming on specific instruments, chanting, and the medium's physical transformation. This is a very serious ritual, not entertainment. The Kunbi dance, associated with the Kunbi farming community, is performed at festivals and marriage ceremonies. The Kunbi wear distinctive costumes — a kasan saree worn in a specific style — and dance with tremendous energy. The Kunbi are considered among the original inhabitants of Goa, and their dance tradition is pre-colonial. The Tonya Mell is a seasonal ritual performance of the Hindu fishing and farming communities of coastal Goa, associated with the Shigmo festival — Goa's spring festival, celebrated in March. Shigmo processions feature enormous decorated floats and multiple performing groups. It is the most spectacular folk performance event in Goa. Category Three: Theatre and Musical Drama Forms. This is the most elaborate category, and includes Tiatr, the Khell, the Zagor, and the Dashavatar. The Dashavatar is the oldest Goan theatre tradition — a ritual drama depicting the ten incarnations of Vishnu, performed at temples especially in coastal and midland Goa. It is a night-long performance — families come to the temple courtyard after their evening meal and watch, often falling asleep and waking back up as the drama unfolds. The Dashavatar combines devotion with entertainment in a seamless way. Zagor is a ritual theatre of the Gawda community, involving deity propitiation, possessed performers, and a community gathering that lasts through the night. It is found mainly in South Goa. The Khell — also called Ram Khell — is a dramatisation of episodes from the Ramayana or Mahabharata, performed in village settings. Tiatr, which we will spend all of Lecture 14 on, is the most popular form of Konkani theatre today — a community theatre tradition of Goan Catholics with roots in the late 19th century. Category Four: Musical and Song Forms. Here we have the Mando, the Dulpod, the Dekni song, and the Ghumat traditions. The Mando is the classical song form of Goan Catholic culture — a slow, melancholic song form that is among the most sophisticated pieces of musical heritage in all of India. The Dulpod is its more energetic partner, a quick-tempo dance song. These we will study in detail. The Ghumat is a drum — an earthen pot drum sealed with a monitor lizard skin — that is the quintessential percussion instrument of Goa and appears across multiple performing traditions. Now let me say something about context and occasion, because this is crucial to understanding folk arts. Many of these traditions are dying or transforming because the occasions and contexts that gave birth to them are disappearing. The Dhalo was danced in open courtyards during harvest season. As nuclear families replace joint families, as apartment buildings replace courtyard houses, as harvest festivals lose participation, the natural habitat of the Dhalo shrinks. The Dashavatar was performed in temple courtyards for audiences who had nowhere else to go on a festival night. Today, mobile phones, television, and OTT platforms compete for that attention. The question of how to sustain folk arts in a changing context is not just sentimental nostalgia — it is a serious cultural policy question. The government of Goa has made some efforts. The Kala Academy — Goa's premiere cultural institution in Panaji — organises performances, workshops, and competitions. The Konkani Academy and the Goa Konkani Akademi support practitioners. The Goa University's departments of Konkani literature have documented many of these traditions. But documentation is not the same as living practice. A form that is performed only on a stage for a competition is not the same thing as a form that is performed in a field at the end of harvest. There is also the question of who gets to perform. Many of these forms are community-specific or caste-specific or gender-specific. The Dhalo is performed only by women. The Perni Jagar is performed by practitioners of the Gawda community. As social structures shift, the custodianship of these forms becomes contested or simply unoccupied. There are villages where the knowledge of a particular folk song has been reduced to one elderly woman, and when she goes, the song goes with her. One more important dimension: the role of music. Goa has a distinctive musical ecology. The Ghumat drum — made from a clay pot and monitor lizard skin — is unique to Goa. The Shehnai is used in temple contexts. The Clarinet and Violin entered Goan Catholic music through the Portuguese connection. The Guitar and Mandolin are part of the Catholic musical tradition. Goa is one of the very few places in India where Western classical instruments were absorbed into folk music — and this happened because the Portuguese colonial administration actively promoted European music through church choirs, brass bands, and music schools. By the 19th century, Goan Catholics were accomplished violinists and pianists, and this European harmonic sensibility was woven into forms like the Mando. [ACTIVITY AND DISCUSSION — 40 to 55 minutes] Let us do a brief mapping exercise. I want each of you to draw a quick table — two columns. In the left column, write the names of all the performing art forms I mentioned today. In the right column, for each form, try to write: the community associated with it, the occasion on which it is performed, and the dominant emotion or purpose — is it devotion, celebration, courtship, political commentary, mourning? Take about six minutes to fill this in based on what you heard. It is fine to leave blanks — the blank spaces are questions to investigate. [pause] Good. Let me now open up for discussion. Discussion Question 1: Many of these folk art forms are either community-specific, gender-specific, or occasion-specific. In a modernising society where these communities, gender roles, and occasions are all changing — is it possible or even desirable to preserve folk arts exactly as they were? Or must they evolve and change? Discussion Question 2: The Portuguese colonial presence introduced European music into Goa. Do you think this cross-cultural musical influence enriched Goan performing arts, or do you think it disrupted a pre-existing tradition? Can both be true simultaneously? These are genuinely complex questions and I want you to think carefully. Heritage is never simple. [SUMMARY AND ASSIGNMENT — 55 to 60 minutes] Today we laid out the landscape of Goa's folk performing arts. We established four categories: seasonal and agricultural forms like Dhalo and Fugdi; ritual forms like Perni Jagar, Kunbi, and Zagor; theatre and drama forms like Dashavatar, Khell, and Tiatr; and musical and song forms like Mando, Dulpod, and the Ghumat tradition. We discussed how these forms are embedded in community life and how the changing context threatens their survival. Assignment: I want you to interview one older person in your family or neighbourhood — a grandparent, a neighbour above 60 years of age — and ask them which folk performing arts they remember from their childhood. What did they watch or participate in? What has disappeared? Write a one-page account of the conversation. This oral history exercise is itself a form of documentation. Next class — Lecture 14 — we will go deep into Tiatr. Tiatr is one of the most important Konkani cultural institutions alive today, and it has a fascinating history. We will look at its origins, its structure, its social role, and its greatest practitioners. If you have ever been to a Tiatr show, bring those memories to class. See you Thursday!