Thumri

Thumri is a semi-classical vocal form in which the words and their emotional shading matter as much as the raag. Where khayal unfolds a raag with meticulous care, thumri goes straight for the emotional core of the text — most often shringar, the erotic and romantic sentiment, and especially viraha, the pain of separation. Krishna's ras leela with Radha and the gopis of Vrindavan is a constant presence in the lyrics.

Like khayal, a thumri has a sthayi and an antara. It favours talas with a distinct lilt that khayal rarely uses — Deepchandi, Roopak, Addha and Punjabi — and raags such as Kafi, Khamaj, Jogiya, Bhairavi, Pilu and Pahadi, chosen because they do not depend on rigid note sequences for their identity. That flexibility is the point: a thumri singer can shade a phrase by stepping outside the nominal raag or mixing in another, a freedom that strict khayal avoids. A bol banao thumri moves slowly and ends with a laggi, a fast closing passage in which the tabla player is given room to improvise. Besides tabla and tanpura, the characteristic accompanying instruments are sarangi, harmonium and swarmandal.

Thumri is usually placed at the end of a classical concert, for the emotional impression it leaves. Two broad streams are recognised. The purab ang or Banaras gayaki is represented by Rasoolan Bai (1902-1974), Siddheshwari Devi (1908-1977), Mahadev Prasad Mishra (1906-1995), Girija Devi (1929-2017) and Chhannulal Mishra (b. 1936). A separate group of singers came to thumri from outside that hereditary line — Gauhar Jan, Begum Akhtar, Shobha Gurtu, Naina Devi — while khayal singers including Abdul Karim Khan, Faiyaz Khan, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Bhimsen Joshi, Rajan and Sajan Mishra and Prabha Atre took up thumri and sang it in their own manner. Naina Devi (1917-1993) came from a family married into royalty and took up the repertoire of the tawaifs against considerable social stigma.

Accounts of thumri's origins vary in how far back they reach. One traces its devotional roots to the Vaishnava tradition and the Krishna bhakti of Jayadeva, Ramanuja and Ramanand, peaking in popularity around the time of Chaitanya in the sixteenth century, with Vaishnava and Sufi thought together shaping both thumri and kathak; on this account the singing style grew out of the seasonal and festival songs of eastern Uttar Pradesh — Holi, Chaiti, Sawan, Kajri and Dadra.

The documented history is nineteenth-century and has two distinct phases. The first, bandish ki thumri or bol-baant, was tied to kathak dance and flourished in Lucknow under Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, where it was sung by tawaifs — courtesan performers who were central to its transmission. Late in the nineteenth century a second form appeared in Varanasi, independent of dance and much slower: bol banav, which gave the singer time to turn a single line over and over for its meaning. Most of what is sung as thumri on the concert stage today descends from this Benares branch.