Tradition · sung narrative tradition
Burra Kathā
Also known as Burrakatha, Burra Katha, Jangam katha, Burra Kathā — the Andhra three
A Telugu narrative form for three performers: a lead singer with a tambura, and two others with clay drums who interrupt him — one as comic questioner, one as political commentator. The interruption is structural, not incidental, which made the form unusually easy to turn to argument.
- Function
- Arts & performance
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 16.300, 80.440
Worth knowing
Because the second drummer's job is to comment on current affairs, burra katha was used heavily by the Communist-led Andhra Mahasabha and during the Telangana armed struggle of 1946–51, and the Madras government banned performances for a period. Few traditional forms have been banned for being too topical.
Connections (2)
- Devotional corpus onHyderabad
Burra kathā's built-in commentator made it the standard medium of the Telangana armed struggle of 1946 to 1951, in which Communist-led peasant squads fought the Nizam's Razakars and then the Indian army over land and forced labour. Performers carried news and argument from village to village where no newspaper reached, and the Madras government banned performances for a period. Few traditional forms anywhere have been prohibited for being too current.
- Craft tradition ofCheriyal scrolls, Telangana
The Cheriyal scrolls were painted for exactly the storyteller castes who perform burra kathā and its relatives — Kaki Padagollu, Gauda Jetti, Mandhecchu — each community commissioning the scroll that told its own caste-origin epic. The painter and the performer were two halves of one trade, and when cinema and radio took the audiences both ends of it collapsed together. The Nakashi families now paint single panels for sale, and the storytellers are gone.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Burra katha”. Sangeet Natak Akademi documentation; and the standard field studies of each tradition named in the entry.
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