Jagar

Jagar is the ritual music of the hills, sung through the night to wake a local deity and call it into the body of a chosen medium. It is worship, drama and folk memory at once, and it is one of the oldest living traditions in Uttarakhand.

The word jagar comes from jaga, to keep awake, because the ceremony runs from dusk until the small hours. A bard called the jagariya sings the story and deeds of a deity, keeping time on a hurka drum or the dhol and a struck brass thali, while the community sits around a fire and listens.

As the songs build, the deity is believed to descend into a dangariya, a person who becomes the god's medium, begins to tremble and dance, and then answers the villagers' questions about illness, disputes and misfortune. The gods invoked are the hill's own: Golu Devta the god of justice, Bhumiya the guardian of the land, Nanda, Gwel and the Panch Nam Devta.

Jagar is not staged for an audience; it is called when a household or village needs it. In modern times singers such as Pritam Bhartwan have brought the jagar's melodies to a wider stage without losing the ritual at its root.