Culture & Heritage

Fair & Festival

Makar Parab (Tusu Parab)
This festival primarily symbolizes the worship of agriculture and harvesting. It is held during the winter season (January). The villagers pray for prosperity to the god.
Saharul
Sahrul is celebrated in the spring season. It is a festival of worshiping nature. Through this festival, the nature is greeted.
Karam Parab
The festival is celebrated in “Sukla Ekadashi” of the bengali month “Bhadra”. This festival is about prosperity in agriculture. “Jawa Geet” or “Karam Geet” is the principal part of this festival.
Indra Puja
This festival symbolizes worship of Lord Indra with an expectation for good rainfall resulting in prosperous crops. This is primarily a festival patronised by the Royal families of Jhargram. Parva Dance is one of the most attractive parts of this festival.
Bandna (Saharai)
Bandna is a festival to express gratitude to the animals used in the agricultural activities. Not only animals, the agricultural devices also get worshiped. “Ahira Geet” is an integral part of this festival. This festival is celebrated on “Kartika Amawasya” of the bengali calendar.
Baha Banga
Baha festival is one of the important festivals of the santhal community. It starts on the day after “Dol Purima”. The worship takes place at the “Jaher Than”. The dance associated with this festival is called “Baha Dance”.
Mah Mare
This festival started in Bengali month “Baisakh” (April) and continues upto seventh day of “Asharh” (June). The worship takes place in “Jaher Than”. The dance forms associated with it is “Parab Dance”

Culture Tradition & Art Forms

Music Dance – Genres prevalent in the district

Parva

The word Parva signifies Prava or brilliance. It is a folk drama performed in Bengali language. Performers use various types of mask to denote the characters they are playing like Goddess Durga, Goddess Kali, bhaluk (bear) kak (crow),\ jamdali ,buro and buri (old man and woman). Around 20 performers are required to enact this art. Among them 10 person dances, 2 person sings and rest plays musical instruments. The theme of the drama centers around mythical and social oriented issues. This form of dance is a type of Chhou but very unique to Jhargarm known as ‘Chilkigarh Chhau-Parva’. This form is mainly encouraged and patronized by the Kings of Lalgarh and specially Raja Man Govinda Dhabal Deb of Jhargram Royal Family. He had taken tremendous initiative to keep this dying art form alive.

Mundari Panta Dance

Mundari

Mundari is a ritualistic dance form of the Munda tribes. They pray to their partron deity Karam Thakur for good harvest through this dance movements. There are three types of Mundari dances, they are to please Karam Thakur, Jadur Naach and Dong. Madal, Dhamsa, Karki Jhumka are the musical instruments accompanying the dance.

Sarpa Dance

Adibasi Sarpa Nritya

Adibasi Sarpa dance is mainly performed by group of women varies from 15 to 20 in numbers. They use a wooden made folk percussion instrument known as Sarpa and a small bowl made of brass known as Ginhe. They produce sound with these two instruments and dance on its rhythm. This dance is held between the period of Durga Puja and Kali Puja.

Tusu

Tusu and Kirtan

Tusu and Kirtan are the folk songs both have religious intonations. Generally young girls from Kurmi tribes sing tusu songs to worship goddess Tusu, usually they sing without using any musical instruments.

Kirtan is basically love ballad of Lord Krisna and is sung using musical instruments like khol, kartal, harmonium, ghungur.

Bhuang and Kendri

Bhuang (a percussion instrument made of guard) and Kendri (a string instrument) are the two types of musical instruments which are played in this type of dance thus the name of the dance is referred as Bhuang and Kendri. The team of dancers sings song and dance together.

Pata Naach

Pata naach,Bhuang & Kendri are the folk dances of Kurmis, Santhals. In Pata Naach male folks plays instruments and sing songs and females dance on that rhythm. The dance has two forms Barabar gaan and Bandana.

Chou Dance Group

Chhou

It is a dance drama mainly based on mythological plot, but nowadays some societal issues are gaining popularity as plot of the dance drama. It is a masked dance in which dancers wear elaborate head gear along with mask and gorgeous silken attire studded with sequins and beads.The musical instruments used are nagra, dhamsa, tikar, harmonium, ramjhal.

Dong & Dangery

This dance is mainly performed by the Munda tribe during all their special festivals and occasions. The dancers move to the beats of musical instruments like flutes,pipes,drums and cymbals wearing colourful traditional dresses.

Dangery is the hunting dance of the Lodhas. It is performed in group consisting of 15 to 20 men or more than that. This dance is performed before going out for hunting. The high energetic dance movement symbolizes the valour, courage ,virility of the men folk of the community.

Baha

Baha is tribal dance. Baha is performed during different tribal occasion. It is practiced from the Bengali month of Falgun and continues till Boishakh. Both male and female performers wear traditional dresses. Women wears panchi Sarees and men wear Panchi Dhotis and fasten gamcha around their head as head gear.

Karam

Karam dance is performed during the autumnal festival of Karam Puja during the Bengali month of Bhadro. The tribal group presents this dance as a part of worshiping Karam Devta, ‘God of Fate’ so that He shower his blessings on them.The tribe believe that Karam Devta brings prosperity in their lives so they try to propitiate Karam Devta with Karma dance.

Jhumur

Jhumur is the folk song. Generally practiced by the Kurmali community.Nowadays young tribal men and women are coming forward with modernized Jhumur song in whish apart from traditional themes related to nature and environment they are infusing social relevant themes too. One of the good factor is that,now talented,educated and young generation from Kurmali community is coming forward and are researching invariably to develop this art form to enhance its accessibility throughout the world.