What a Sangeet Is, and What It Used to Be

Sangeet is Sanskrit for sung together. For most of the time the word has been attached to weddings, the singing was done by women, in a room, with nobody watching who was not also singing.

What it was

The sangeet started as a female-only event. The women of the bride's family and the groom's family organised it between them, a few days ahead of the wedding itself, and the point of it was the bride. They sang folk songs about the union and they danced giddha.

It also goes by dholki in Punjabi families, and the two names cover the same evening.

Giddha, and what the songs were about

Giddha is a Punjabi women's folk dance descended from older ring dances, and it needs no dhol. The women stand in a circle and clap the rhythm themselves.

One woman recites a boli, the lyric, and the circle repeats the refrain back. It runs as call and response, which is what lets a group with no rehearsal work through a long song together: you only have to know the line coming back, not the whole thing.

The bolis themselves tell stories of women's lives, and that includes sexuality. This is the part that tends to fall out of the short descriptions. A room with no men in it was singing frankly about things that were not said elsewhere, and the closed door was the reason it worked.

Giddha spread from Punjab across India and has been formalised since the 1960s through competitions there and in the diaspora. It gets filed as the women's counterpart to bhangra, though that pairing flattens two traditions that are not really mirror images.

What it is now

The modern sangeet takes in both families, men included, in a hired venue, set to film songs, with routines worked out in advance.

That is a fair trade for most families, and the evening is genuinely fun. It is worth being clear about what moved, though. An event with no audience became an event with one. A form where the lead was whoever knew the next boli became a form where the lead is whoever rehearsed. The singing that gave the thing its name is now mostly playback.

Where it falls in the week

In the Punjabi running order the sangeet or dholki comes after kurmai, the engagement, and before the mehendi. Jaggo follows, an evening of decorated vessels carrying lamps, and then mayian on the last night, which folds vatna, choora, jaggo, sangeet and the turmeric together into one.

So the sangeet turns up twice. Once as its own night early in the week, and again inside mayian at the end of it.

If you have been invited to one

You are being invited to the informal half of the wedding. There is no ceremony inside a sangeet, nothing is being solemnised, and the couple are not married at any point during it. Turning up expecting rites is the common mistake.

The dancing is the event, and guests are usually expected to take part rather than watch.