The folk music of Uttar Pradesh is very rich and diverse. There are songs for every mood and every occasion. Joint families, collective households, and small town life with its close communal ties in Uttar Pradesh gave birth to a folk music that captured the ethos of the region and the people. Folk songs made collective life and collective labour more enjoyable. They were passed on orally from generation to generation.

The advent of the era of digital music has done a lot of damage to the long-standing tradition of folk songs. The younger generation of the state is today running blindly after commercial songs and filmy music and losing interest in the simple and soulful folk songs. This is a loss indeed. Folk songs, in fact, are fast becoming incompatible with the present era of acute individualism. However, there are people who are trying to keep the tradition alive. Here is a brief survey of the folk music of Uttar Pradesh. 

If technology has given us much, it has robbed us of much too and music is its most explicit example. With the onset of the era of music records, digital music, and global connectivity, the best of the world music has become easily accessible to the common man. Cooking, walking, driving, commuting, working, eating, talking, picnicking, taking rest – music can be with us today almost anywhere and anytime, and it is, no doubt, nothing less than a miracle. However, this easy accessibility has deprived us, at the same time, of the position that we previously held – we have been demoted to the position of passive listeners from our earlier position as active creators and singers. There was a time when almost every day-to-day activity was collective and quite unimaginable without songs. There were songs for every occasion, every season, and every emotion. Songs made human labor easier and human labor made songs rich and soulful. This simple relation found simple and beautiful expression in folk songs.Thousands of years ago, our ancestors – tribal cave men and women – had learned that songs make collective life and collective labor more enjoyable and productive. Music thus became an essential part of man’s daily life. History says that the music of the olden days was not merely a leisurely pursuit of the privileged few; it was an integral part of man’s daily labor too. In Uttar Pradesh, a state which is known for folk songs, women sing as they harvest wheat in the field. Can the music on your device ever give you the kind of joy that women who are sowing rice in the field and singing together experience; the joy that a boatman rowing his boat and singing full-throated songs experiences, or that a group of women going to fetch water from river experience as they sing together. In fact, there is nothing even today that can compare with the sweetness, simple earthliness, and charm of this folk music. The state of Uttar Pradesh needs to be specially mentioned in this regard. There are 16 ceremonies in Hindus related to the human life cycle and each ceremony has its distinct category of folk music.

The sheer range of folk songs is breathtaking: apart from the popular Bhajans that accompany Puja, there are seasonal songs like Holi or Phag and Chaiti (to celebrate the season of spring), Barahmasa or Chaumasa (songs to depict the cycle of 12 months), Kajari, Sawan, and Purvi (songs to celebrate the monsoon), and also songs for Jhonjhi-Tesu festival; apart from that, there is Chakki (stone mill) geet, Belavariya, Lachak, Lachari, Lavani, Sakhi, and Hahu to celebrate various events, rituals, and relationships. Another very popular folk song that originated in Uttar Pradesh is Birha, a song that laments the separation of the newly married woman from her husband who has gone to some distant land to earn a living. Similarly, Rasiya is also about love, the theme of this folk song, which is immensely popular in the Braj region, is the immortal love of Radha and Krishna for each other. Apart from these folk songs, Gazals and Thumaris (a form of semi-classical music, which was once confined to royal courts) have been quite popular in the Awadh region and so have been Qawwalis (a form of Sufi poetry, which developed from Bhajans) and Marsiyas. Both of them reflect a strong influence of the folk music of Uttar Pradesh.

Some folk songs like Kajari and Bidesiya, have interesting folklores and stories behind them. Many folk songs have found beautiful and poignant expression in Hindi cinema too like the unforgettable composition, “Kahe ko Byahe Bides” (song writer, Amir Khusro) from the film Umrao Jaan and “Jiyara jarat rahat din rain, ho Rama” from the film Godan.  We hope that the younger generation will carry forward this rich legacy of folk music in Uttar Pradesh.