Author: Denyse Baboolal

  • DHOLAK

    DHOLAK is a hand drum which is also popularly known as dholaki. Dholak is a classical North Indian percussion instrument. A dholak may either have traditional lacing or turnbuckle tuning. While the Dholak has a simple membrane and a handle on its right side it’s left-hand membrane has a special coating on the inner surface.…

  • Udukkai

    Udukkai is an hourglass shaped, membranous drum used in devotional and folk music throughout India but in the Caribbean it’s only used in Mariamman/Kali temple or commonly known as Madrasi worship. The udukkai is played with the hand and the pitch may be altered by tightening the lacing in the middle. It is made of…

  • Thappu

    Thappu consists of a circular wood frame with one end closed with goat/ cow skin or plastic and the other end open. Tappu is played using two bamboo sticks with one being thicker than the other. It is performed DURING dances It is performed in dances, funerals, temple festivals and sport events. Thappu drum or…

  • Tassa Drums

    Tassa Drums are North Indian indigenous drums brought to the Caribbean and South America by the Bhojpuri people from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh by in 1838 – Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad and other islands as, Martinique, Guadeloupe, St. Lucia, Grenada, Jamaica, Barbados, etc. In the 1970, there was a wave of migration to the United States…

  • Londa ke Nache

    Londa ke Nache

    Londa Ke Naach (londa ke nache) is a rare dance form preserved by the Indians of Suriname, in which male dancers called “Naachaniyas” dress like women and perform at births, weddings, fairs, and other social occasions. The dance attends artistically to individuals and groups among the audience. Like all accomplished artists anywhere, the virtuoso Londa…

  • Holi or Phagwa

    Holi or Phagwah, the festival of spring is also the season of budding romance and desire. Dances center on the amorous dalliance of Lord Krishna and his devoted and admiring Gopis (cowgirls). The dance is characterized by circles (chakra) short sequences of dance (Tukra) and wide, expansive movements suggesting dizzy intoxication and the riotous merriment…

  • Rajdhar

    Rajdhar Means offering or gift to the lord. It is religious when song-dance sequences render katha, sacred stories at ritual performance and sabha, assemblies of priests, leaders and people. It was also darbari, performed for the relaxed entertainment of guests at social events sequences based on love and romance. The darbari style came from the…

  • Chaatni /Chutney

    Chutney derives from certain sort of light, fast Bhojpur folk songs, sung especially by women often with ribald texts about Krishna teasing the cowgirls or the flirtation between the young wife and her brother-in-law. In Trinidad the dance developed its own flavor and the other folk styles influence Chaatni music and dance received its “hot…

  • Aarti

    A temple dance of fire offerings. After invocation and manifestation of the scared ones, their murti (images) are profusely garlanded with colorful blossoms, the purest expression of love and tenderness, offered delectable feasts and caressed with bhajans, devotional songs. Devotees take up brass trays on which rest Diya (small clay bowls) with a lighted wicks…

  • Vandana

    Vandana is a temple dance of invocation. The sacred deities are invoked in temples with mantra (chants) and the sound of shankh (conch) Ghanti (bells) and Ghanta (gongs). The dancing devotee also invokes the presence and manifestation of the sacred ones, through mudra and hastak-hand gestures, and then play the deity through natya, combining acting…