Tamasha
Tamasha ( Marathi तमाशा Tamasha,) is the best known folk dance theater in the Indian state of Maharashtra , which with widespread in North India tradition of Swang related. The entertainment style, which arose in the 16th century and is peppered with humor and eroticism, consists of a sequence of songs ( lavanis ), dances and dramatic parts with dialogues in prose. The word tamasha is derived from the Persian tamchā and found its way into the north Indian languages Urdu , Hindi and Marathi with the general meaning “entertainment show” and “theater” .
The two variants of Tamasha are the sangita-bari style, which specializes in songs and dances, and the dholki-bari style, which is more focused on dramatic staging , named after the leading accompanying instrument, the barrel drum dholki . The themes of the plays presented on wooden platforms as an outdoor stage or in city theaters come mainly from the orally transmitted stories about the youthful god Krishna and the milkmaids ( Gopis ). In a form staged as a farce ( vag ), current political and social issues are dealt with in an ambiguous language.
history
Entertainment theaters have been known in Maharashtra since ancient times. In the cave inscription of Gautami Balashri, mother of the Shatavahana ruler Gautamiputra Satakarni (r. 106–130), in Nasik , we can read that the king had utsava (festival gatherings) with samaja (social gatherings) for his people. Samaja referred to at least since Ashoka in the 3rd century BC. A kind of entertainment theater. In one of his inscriptions, the devout Buddhist condemned samaja as morally reprehensible. Nevertheless, in jatakas , stories from the life of the Buddha, several samaja festivals with music, dance, drama, storytellers, acrobats, wrestling and exhibition fights of various animals appear.
The Shatavahana king Hala (r. 20–24 AD) collected in the collection of poems Gatha Saptashati (Gaha Sattasai) ascribed to him songs ( gathas ) in the Prakrit dialect Maharashtras, which give numerous references to dances, plays and musical instruments; the word for theater prelude , purvaranga , is also mentioned. In the love drama Rati Natak , from which the exact sequence of a performance can be inferred, a comparable erotic undertone can be seen as in today's Tamasha. Gatha Saptashati contains the first unambiguous love story between Radha and Krishna in Indian literature. Other gathas contain Prakrit folk tales , which, according to the practice of the time, an actor first sang and then explained in detail.
There are several references to costumed performers in the 13th century verses of the saint and poet Dnyaneshwar (Jnaneshvara). In his theoretical work Dnyaneshwari , a commentary on the Bhagavadgita , he mentions the musical narrative form kirtan as a special kind of religious drama or dance drama. Chapter 17 is about a performance that includes all the elements of a later dance drama like Tamasha, including singing, erotic dances, and an audience that donates money for the dance girls. According to Dnyaneshwar's portrayal, male actors could take on female roles without being aware of the difference between their own sex and the sex they portrayed. He also mentions the popular actor bahurupi (from Sanskrit bahu , "many" and rupa , "form"), who equally slips into the role of a king or a queen. Bahurupis are still on the move in certain areas today. The saint and poet Samartha Ramdas (1608–1682), guru of the marathic freedom hero Shivaji , lists in his extensive treatise Dasabodha various types of teachers and their skills that they need to teach singing, musical instruments, dance and other arts. According to Ramdas, the entertaining drama includes the same elements as those already listed by Dnyaneshwar.
The mystical poet Kabir (1440–1518) wrote in one of his verses with irony about swang and tamasha as a shallow entertainment theater, primarily suited to keep the yawning audience awake and happy during the instructive lectures on religious-mythological topics. In general, the originally Persian word tamasha denoted any form of entertainment in India. The marathic king of Thanjavur , Sahajiraje Bhosale (1684-1711) described in his self-written play Lakshmi-kalyan-natak with tamasha a wrestling show.
The beginnings of the Tamasha theater style coincide with the decline of classical Sanskrit theater. Classical theater was never particularly widespread in the central Indian Deccan and degenerated with the spread of the Muslim sultans from the 14th century. It is speculative to what extent traditions from Sanskrit theater contributed to the development of Tamasha in the 16th century. Two adopted forms of entertainment that can be recognized are the comedic one-act prahasana and the musical monologue bhana . Both were secular stage plays that entertained the people with crude jokes and satire. The one-act plays were probably performed in Sanskrit from the 12th century and, when this language had practically disappeared in the West Indies in the 15th century, replaced by performances in Marathi. The musical pieces were humorous improvisations with love songs. They are known from the end of the 14th century, but their shape is likely to be much older.
Another early influence on Tamasha were the musical entertainment scenes called misrabhana , in which a surviving example dealt with the adventures of young Krishna, as they are performed similarly today in the gaulan scenes of Tamasha. Gaulan is the name of one of the milkmaids around the youthful Krishna. In addition to the Sanskrit and Prakrit traditions (certain entertaining scenes were often written in the people's Prakrit dialects), forms of entertainment such as the lively kathak dance style , the stanzas of the kavali songs and, alternately performed in singing competitions , came from the capital of the Mughal empire at court the sung verses of the ghazal to Maharashtra.
According to another view, during Aurangzeb's (r. 1658–1707) campaigns of conquest, his armies wandered around the Deccan for years , where the soldiers wanted to be entertained somehow. So folk singers and female-looking dance boys were hired from the local population to play women's roles. The soldiers would have called such performances tamasha after a word in their language . Two entertaining elements of musical theater that were added in the 17th century are kala , short skits that can be found in the gaulan interludes of Tamasha, and a clown who acts alongside on the stage.
The Tamasha dance theater reached its peak in the 18th century during the reign of the Peshwa (1707-1818) in the Hindu Marathas when the style dholkichā tamāshā was called. After a series of wars against the British East India Company from the end of the 18th century until the Marathas finally lost their independence in 1818, the earlier religious musical theaters disappeared and the secular Tamasha entertainment with Gaulan episodes, heroic songs and love songs filled the void out.
One source for the religious elements of Tamasha was the simple folk theater bharud . In it, a singer-narrator, whose prose and songs are accompanied by a small choir, appears with practically no dramatic action. His companions play cymbals ( tal ) and a double-headed drum ( mridangam or pakhawaj ). This form of presentation is generally called rupaka . The bharud was probably invented in Maharashtra in the 15th century, cultivated by the low-caste Mahar community and later used by Bhakti followers to spread their beliefs and their social-revolutionary goals. The lecture and singing style is formally little developed, but still significant in terms of music history, because its sensual beauty shaped the singing forms in Tamasha, the South Indian love songs marikatha and the Marathi folk theater gondhal . The devotional songs of the Gondhal Theater, addressed to the mother goddess, which are performed at religious festivals or private family celebrations, are themselves considered role models for Tamasha. In the Gondhal Theater, similar to Tamasha, a narrator, a humorous fringe figure and other actors appear, in a variant of Gondhal two musicians play the hourglass drum damaru and the single-stringed plucked instrument tuntune (related to the plucked drum ektara ), which also occurs in Tamasha.
Lavani
The ancient Indian gathas could also have been early precursors to the lavanis . The development of this sung folk poetry, which is an essential element of the performances, ran parallel to that of the Tamasha play. The word lavani in the work Sangit Chintamani from the 14th century refers to an elegant female dance, also in Sangit Darpan by Damodar (15th / 16th century) lavani is about a dance style. For the first time Manmatha Shivalinga (1560-1613) lavani appears in the title of a poem ( Karadchya Bhavanivaril Lavani ), as well as with a poet named Jotiram, who lived in the second half of the 17th century.
Lavani is associated with a similar Marathi word for “transplant,” so lavanis may have been working songs from women who planted rice in the fields, or the composers of lavanis were inspired by the sight of working women. Lavanis form the basic component of all popular theaters in Maharashtra.
The Lavani chants and dances are closely related to the Kolhati ethnic group. The Kolhati came as a nomadic tribe from Rajasthan , where the former acrobats became dancers. The Kolhati girls are said to have invented lavani dances to attract male lovers and thus earn a living. Today it is often an essential source of income for a Kolhati family when their daughter has found work as a dancer with a Tamasha troupe.
Shahir
Closely connected with the development of Tamasha dance theater is the tradition of the respected marathic singer-poets ( shahir ), who told the story of their people and at the same time acted as news transmitters. In terms of content, the compositions can be divided into (1) sung ballads and popular theater with a political, social and educational function, (2) the glorification of the history of one's own people and the spread of Hindu mythology and (3) love songs. The Marathi song genre associated with the shahirs is called powada . During the 17th century, many shahir became owners and leaders of a Tamasha troupe, whose plays they also composed, thereby improving the artistic quality of the performances.
Agindas was the first famous shahir to write the oldest extant text of a powada in 1659 about the death of General Afzal Khan. Afzal Khan was in the service of the Adil Shahi dynasty of Bijapur and fought against the Marathas. Aginda's nationalist ballads are otherwise about Tanaji Malusare, known as Simha ("lion"), a military leader and confidante of Shivaji, and of course about the heroic deeds of the famous Shivaji himself. His poetry lacked rhymes. It was tailored for times of war and had the purpose of calling the Marathas to resist the Mughal rule. Other shahirs used this style until 1731. It was thanks to the shahirs and other entertainers that the common people also learned about their history. The Peshwa rulers promoted the poet singers in the 18th century, whose ballads, together with the Tamasha Theater, experienced an artistic refinement during this time. In addition to leading Tamasha troops, some shahirs in the Peshwa period also performed love songs.
After the British victory over the Marathas in 1818, their support for the performing arts ended abruptly. It was not until the Indian independence movement against British colonial rule that the ballad and Tamasha tradition, which had been lying on the ground, was given new life. This development probably began in the 1870s, when the social reformer Jyotirao Phule (1827-1890) began an initiative against the caste system and campaigned for the untouchables , using ballads as a medium to spread his ideas. Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920), one of the most important politicians in the fight against colonial rule, also used the compositional style of the poet-singers when he called the Ganesha Festival ( Ganesh Chaturthi ) in 1893 . From the 1930s onwards, a number of well-known singers and Tamasha performers were among the independence activists, some shahir were associated with the communists. After independence in 1949, the singer-poets continued their social revolutionary tradition on various occasions in the struggle for political rights. In contrast, Pathe Bapurao (1865–1945) was probably the last famous Tamasha actor and singer to stand in the romantic song tradition. Between 1910 and 1935 he introduced women to the Tamasha Theater as actresses and organized performances in theaters.
The singer-poet tradition in Maharashtra is still alive. In 1969 hundreds of shahirs gathered under the leadership of Shahir Yogesh (Diwakar Bhishnurkar, 1927–2011) and founded the "Association of Poet Singers of Maharashtra" ( Maharashtra Shahir Parishad ). 328 shahirs came to the conference on the first anniversary of the foundation to exchange ideas. The organization regularly holds singing performances, especially on the occasion of the annual Shiv Jayanti festival (Shivaji's birthday).
Performance practice
Procedure and elements of the performance
Today's Tamasha troop ( phad ) usually consists of seven to eight members (between six and 18). Their leader is called sardar or naik . In addition to the leader, there is a singer-dancer, two to three singers ( jhilkari ), a joker ( songadya ) and the instrumentalists on the stage. They play the double-headed barrel drum dholki , the small single-headed drum halgi , cymbals ( manjiras ) and the tuntune, similar to the East Indian plucked drum, ektara . Larger troops still use the large semicircular tutari natural trumpet and other instruments. The musicians provide comedy during the scenes with acrobatic interludes.
Tamasha is performed on open stages in villages and regularly in theaters in major cities in the state. In small villages the stage consists of a raised wooden platform. If necessary, it is sufficient to mark a stage area on the floor, at the edge of which the audience can sit on three sides. Usually a curtain closes the stage at the back. Larger villages have built a permanent theater building with a high backdrop in the manner of a proscenium . Here some 100 to 3000 spectators sit in front of the stage. In the cities, simple rooms for workers in the outskirts can be distinguished from large halls with state-of-the-art equipment for the more affluent layers in the center. In addition to Mumbai and Pune , Ahmednagar , Aurangabad , Belgaum , Kolhapur , Nagpur , Nasik and Satara are among the cities with Tamasha stages.
In city theaters tonight programs are common in which several groups appear one after the other and present selected highlights. One of the centers for Tamasha is the Aryabhushan Theater in Pune, where about eight singing groups ( sangita-bari ) perform every evening and complete their program for exactly 20 minutes in front of up to 2000 spectators. As soon as a bell rings, one group makes room for the next. The atmosphere in this theater is relaxed and personal. Some visitors pass banknotes onto the stage and wish to hear a certain song, which is then played in the auditorium, facing the client.
A full program consists of five elements in different arrangements: the opening gan , the drama with mythical tales gaulan , the lavani singing style , the devotional song form bhedik-kavane and vag , a humorous drama with socio-political content. Usually the performance is opened with a devotional song ( gana ) to the elephant-headed god Ganesha . He is the patron of the arts and is asked to ensure that the event runs smoothly. The actors of both styles, the singing troupe sangita-bari and the theater troupe dholki-bari , can also recite a devotional song at the beginning, which in the case of the singer-poets called turewala is related to Shiva and Brahma and in the other group of singer-poets, the kalgiwala , addressed to Shakti , the feminine side of Shiva. Afterwards, a provocatively dancing singer sometimes sings a mujra- type song in praise of the old Tamasha composers.
Gaulan , the second part named after one of the cowherdesses (Gopis) around Krishna, is mainly performed by the theater actors. When gaulan come Krishna, his beloved Radha and other cowherdesses from the mythological stories before that in the forest of Vrindavan play. The dancers sing Lavani songs, surrounded by drummers and cymbal players. In certain plays a mavshi also occurs in such scenes , represented by a man speaking in a high- pitched female voice. Mavshi ( mausi , "aunt") is colloquially called any woman of a certain age. In the Krishna stories, mavshi is the guardian of the Gopis, a moral authority who worries about the young girls when they leave the forest to sell milk in the city.
Usually the Tamasha troops write their own dramas. The language is straightforward and direct to reach the urban and rural mass audiences. In addition, since the end of the 20th century, there has been an increasing number of plays with sophisticated, demanding dialogues for the higher classes. The drama begins with a male choir, who poetically and in a high pitch ( mhani ) classify the following story in an understandable way. This is helpful for the audience because the partially improvised dialogues can be long and difficult to understand. The singers with the highest voices usually play cymbals ( manjiras ) and the single-string tune at the same time . Other choir singers cover their ears with their hands as their singing comes in at a screaming volume. The pauses between the lines of the choral singing fill the drummers with wild beats.
The singing groups forego dramatic elements in favor of poetic love songs in the Muslim styles kavali and ghazal as well as popular songs from Bollywood films . In an evening program with songs, around five to ten singing and acting groups appear, each performing songs with dances and individual scenes for 20 minutes to an hour. If a vocal group does the entire evening program, it offers a two-hour sequence of songs, dances and dialogues after the gaulan section.
The fast Lavani dances are a highlight, they are interrupted by humorous interludes with rhythmic word duels in a question-and-answer scheme ( sawal-jawab ). Bhedik-kavane ( kavane, "song") are religious songs, the content of which is clad in puzzle form, and which were introduced towards the end of the Peshwa period.
Akhyan is a devotional poetic tale that was previously recited by the composer himself. A special form of akhyan that comes from the Marathic tradition of religious kirtan songs is called vag . The topic of vag, which was introduced at the end of the 19th century, is current politics and social problems such as village feuds , family quarrels or alcoholism. The dialogues ( chakkad ) often contain a double meaning and a high proportion of improvisation. They are prepared in the form of a farce similar to an Indian television soap opera and are intended to make the audience laugh. The model for vag is the modern theater introduced by the British in the 19th century, which in turn was influenced by the Italian Commedia dell'arte .
Stage conventions
The plays are fantastic and do without realistic, credible storylines. Using certain gestures and movements, a performer can tell the audience what time and where they are. The audience accept the conventions of a stage illusion presented in this way. When the hero wants to announce a trip to a distant city, his companion ( songadya ) immediately kneels on all fours next to him on the ground and snorts like a horse, the hero sits on and as soon as he dismounts, the audience knows that the scene is now plays at the named place If the actor points to an (imaginary) temple with his hand and walks a few meters in this direction, it is clear that the girls now appearing are temple dancers and the scene has shifted to the interior of a temple.
It is also accepted when the performer declares giving up his previous role and slips into a new one without further ado. In this way, few actors can embody a far greater number of roles. Conveniently, the cost of costume and make-up is low compared to other theater styles.
Occasionally, there is interaction between performers and viewers. Funny remarks are spun between the two, which may give the improvised drama a new twist. Furthermore, some viewers pass banknotes up on the stage - especially the dancers - with the request to perform certain songs or dances. This practice, called daulat-jadda , developed during the Mughal period.
Singers and dancers usually wear brightly colored saris with shiny silver applications. Their bracelets, necklaces, ear and nose rings also shine in the lamp or headlights. At the ankles they have attached bell chains ( ghungharu ) that sound with every dance step. The make-up of the actresses is limited to blush on the cheeks, painted lips and dark eye rims. The male actors wear pajamas or a dhoti with a dark gray Nehru jacket, perhaps a large colorful turban and a sticked-on beard, if the role requires it.
The dancers traditionally belong to the Kolhati ethnic group. Actors and musicians used to be mostly mahar. Many members of this lower Hindu caste, as well as its most prominent member, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar , converted to Buddhism at the beginning of the 20th century . Performers do not receive any formal training. The movements on the stage are relatively informal and today are often restricted by the presence of microphones. To compensate for the rather rigid style of playing since the introduction of the amplification systems, hand movements, facial expressions and, above all, intensive play with the eyes were added. The joker acts directly on the audience during the scenes. In the gaulan he plays pranks with Krishna and the milkmaids, and he also appears in the farce that follows.
distribution
Songs are increasingly being adopted from films. On the other hand, scenes from Tamasha plays or Lavani dances in many Marathi films help attract large audiences. Tamasha troops roam around for much of the year as they did in the past, setting up their tents at festive events. The traditional means of transport used by the traveling entertainers were ox carts. This is about an extremely popular group dance in which a man and two women imitate such a journey with rich gestures.
In 1989, the Tamasha Theater Company was founded in London with the aim of presenting the Indian theater tradition in a more realistic guise tailored to Western viewing habits. Her plays are set partly in what is now India and partly in Great Britain.
Related entertainment theaters in the tradition of swang include nautanki in large parts of northern India, khyal in Rajasthan, bhagat in Uttar Pradesh , bhavai in Gujarat and some in Madhya Pradesh .
literature
- Julia Hollander: Indian Folk Theaters. Routledge, Chapman & Hall, London 2012, pp. 75-110, ISBN 978-0415541435
- Tevia Abrams: Tamāshā. In: Farley P. Richmond, Darius L. Swann, Phillip B. Zarrilli (Eds.): Indian Theater. Traditions of Performance. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu 1990, pp. 275-304
- Manohar Laxman Varadpande: History of Indian Theater. Loka Ranga. Panorama of Indian Folk Theater. Abhinav Publications, New Delhi 1992, pp. 163-173
- Keyword: Tamāshā. In: Late Pandit Nikhil Ghosh (Ed.): The Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Music of India. Saṅgīt Mahābhāratī. Vol. 3 (P-Z) Oxford University Press, New Delhi 2011, pp. 1055-1057
Web links
- Tamasha, Indian Folk Theater. Indian Net Zone
Individual evidence
- ↑ Many faces of the bahurupi. The Tribune, March 8, 2008
- ↑ Varadpande, pp. 163f, 166f
- ↑ Varadpande, pp. 167f
- ↑ Abrams, pp. 279f
- ↑ Bharud, Indian Marathi Folk Song. Indian Net Zone
- ↑ Bigamudre Chaitanya Deva, Josef Kuckertz : Bhārūḍ, Vāghyā-muralī and the Ḍaff-gān of the Deccan. Studies in the regional folk music of South India. Text part. (Josef Kuckertz, Walter Salmen, Marius Schneider (Eds.): Ngoma. Studies on folk music and non-European art music. Volume 6) Musikverlag Emil Katzbichler, Munich / Salzburg 1981, p. 16
- ^ Gondhal, Indian Folk Theater. Indian Net Zone
- ↑ Abrams, pp. 277-279
- ↑ Varadpande, p. 165
- ↑ Hollander, pp. 76, 83
- ↑ Povada, Indian folk form. Indian Net Zone
- ↑ James R. Brandon (Ed.): The Cambridge Guide to Asian Theater. Cambridge University Press, New York 1997, p. 109, ISBN 978-0521588225
- ↑ Abrams, pp. 280-283
- ↑ Abrams, pp. 288f
- ↑ Abrams, pp. 300-303; Hollander, p. 76
- ↑ Abrams, pp. 295-299
- ↑ Hollander, p. 104
- ↑ Oxford Encyclopaedia, p. 1057; Abrams, p. 298
- ^ Abrams, p. 295
- ^ Abrams, p. 294
- ↑ Hollander, p. 80
- ^ Anne Fuchs: From Lorca to Bollywood: cultural adaption in the plays of the British Asian Tamasha Company. In: Cynos , Vol. 18, No. 1, 2008