For centuries the singing scroll painters or the Patuas of Bengal have walked from village to village singing moral and mythological stories, using as an illustrative aid, painted scrolls known as Patachitras.  Their art was storytelling, painting and singing all rolled into one. Composing the lyrics and tunes themselves, these wandering bards sought alms from their rural audience, while playing the dual role of mobile entertainer and social reformer.  The songs that the Patuas sing are referred to as Pater Gaan (the song of the Pata) or Patua Gaan.

The patua songs of yore were simple monotonous refrains and the song was always sung by a single individual effort. On the odd occasion however, when a group of patuas got together, perhaps at a village fair, they would sometimes sing together, in a chorus. This group singing in the traditional style, they called Poyar (not to be confused with the 14 beat metre of the same name). In recent times, Poyar singing has become a new trend.

The story told in a Jodano Pata or painted scroll would be depicted in a series of painted panels or frames. During a performance, the Patua would sing his story while slowly unrolling his scroll, one frame at a time, pointing to the illustrations painted in each panel of the story. Before creating a Jodano Pat, the artist selected a subject for which there was already an existing song, probably created by a village poet or patua of bygone days or he would compose a song on it. Before actually starting the painting, it was and continues to be customary for the Patua to sing an invocation to the gods, before embarking on the actual song illustrating the painting.

The themes of the Jodano Pata prior to Aryanisation have been lost to time. Traditional themes available to us were based on popular episodes from Indian mythology like the Ramayan, Mahabharat, Puranas or the lives of folk goddesses from the Mangal Kavya narrative poems of rural Bengal. Also popular were the stories on the lives of Vaishnav and Muslim saints like Sri Chaitanya,  Gazi (Gaji) Pir, Satya (Shotto) Pir and the folk deity of the Sundarban region in the delta of the river Ganga,  Bonobibi. Alongside these were songs about the ghastly torture meted out in hell to wrong doers by Lord Yama (Jomraj), the God of Death – the intent of the grisly torture scenes in hell being to warn off sinners.

Often, the words of the song for the same theme vary leading to multiple versions of the same theme. This could be because the Patua has improvised, adding some of his own words or decided to alter the length to amplify or shorten the theme.Thus the meaning of the pata can only be deciphered from the storytelling context in which the pata would have been displayed. Also,different districts had different versions of the same theme and certain themes were region specific. However, despite the variations, the essential folk idiom remains.

With regard to the tunes, as modernity and market demands crept in, the same theme, with perhaps the same lyrics are sung to different tunes. Over time however, the Patuas realized that their performances would become more attractive if they were to incorporate melodic styles popular in their region. Thus the patuas incorporated Baul or Jhumur or Kirtan tunes, depending on what form prevailed in their localities. The patuas remaining in Birbhum still sing their songs to Baul tunes. The traditional melodic style which typified a pater Gaan thus lost its identity over time. Contemporary pata themes are usually set to popular Bengali folk tunes adapted to jatra (traditional popular theatre) and film music. Their popularity probably lies in their emotional appeal.

Songs on the mangal kavyas are usually folk tunes that are very old but stress rhythm and scale rather than emotion. Both song compositions, however,conform to an older type with a repeatable refrain made up of a sequence of rhyming couplets. In fact, Pater Gaan for a specific theme can be sung as a solo rendition or in chorus, which contain the repeatable refrains. The tunes are totally different, with the solo rendition sung to any tune of the painter’s choice while the Poyaar is the more traditional tune. The Patua’s song also has a bhonita or colophon, an innovation, which is becoming increasingly popular among the Naya patuas. Thus:


Traditional themes rarely performed these days include Dashabatar, Sabitri-Satyaban (Shabitri-Shottoban) and Chash Bash that was typical of Birbhum, Gourango o Jagannath, Monohar Phansurey, Raja Harishchandro, Raja Jojati and Daataa Karno specific to Medinipur and the Shakti pot.


Patachitra