Phaag in the Andamans

The oldest continuously transmitted settler tradition documented in the islands — it predates most of the present population and arrived with the penal colony itself.

Phaag songs came to the islands before 1900, carried by convicts and indentured labourers from mainland north and east India, and were kept as a link to places the singers could not return to.

Groups of singers, traditionally young men with drums and cymbals, sing narrative songs drawn from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and Krishna Leela episodes. In the older village practice the group moved house to house through the forty days.

Forty days of narrative song from Vasant Panchami to Holi, sung house to house with drums and cymbals.

The songs carry episodes of the Ramayana and Mahabharata; singing them keeps a connection to the mainland the singers were removed from.

Brought by convicts and indentured labourers transported to the Andamans before 1900, and sustained in settler villages ever since.