MARIAMMEN PUGAL MAALAI
PERFORMANCE OF THE SACRED TRADITIONS AND THE MUSIC,
DANCE- DRAMAS OF THE MADRASI PEOPLE OF GUYANA
APRIL 28 & 29, 2006
Presented by The Rajkumari Cultural Center and The Shri Maha Devi Kali Mandir
Mariammen Pugal Maalai - A Garland of Songs for Mother
Mariammen Pugal Maalai is a wonderful experience of the most ecstatic and gracious Hindu drumming, singing, and dancing styles of Guyana, rarely encountered outside the temple and gatherings of the custodians of Tamil folk traditions. Rajkumari Center collaborates with Shri Maha Kali Devi Mandir to bring this precious Garland of Songs to the public. Inspired by devotion to Mai and Ammen, the Great Mother Goddess, and preserved by the Madrasi people of South Indian ancestry for over 165 years, Mariammen Pugal Maalai, will be the grandest theater performance of her sacred arts in the United States, to date.
This Garland of Songs for Mother celebrates the rich heritage of vocal and instrumental music, dance, and drama offered by devotees to Devi Shakti, the Great Hindu Mother Goddess. Mari and Kali are two of her countless forms and names. Ammen and Mai are two ways of saying Mother. Mariammen Pugal Maalai highlighs the sacred ritual, ceremonial and festive traditions brought to the Americas and Caribbean from Tamil Nadu in south India in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Tamil-speaking indentured laborers on Guyana’s sugar plantations revived the ancient temple culture of their mother goddess, Mariammen. Musical dance-dramas telling epic stories of the Mahabharata and Ramayana, and ritual arts for festivals, birth, marriage, and death were also preserved and passed on to younger generations 12,000 miles away from the land of their ancestors. In the early 20th century, Kali Mai, Mother Kali, became the popular name of Mother Mari in Guyana. Hindi-speaking laborers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in north India associated the Tamil Ammen with their more familiar Mai.
Then once again, since the 1990s, the Shri Maha Kali Devi Mandir began another phase of preserving and practicing Kalimai Puja, invocation and worship, this time for devotees who migrated to New York. Timeless indigenous sacred arts and healing ways are being passed to young generations living in the U.S. It is this work that we share with you in Mariammen Pugal Maalai.
The Custodians, Tradition-Bearers, Teaching Artists and Performers:
Mariammen Pugal Maalai is an ambitious Tamil language production guided by Elder Pujari Basdeo Mangal of the Shri Maha Kali Devi Mandir in Brooklyn, and Dramatist Pritha Singh, Artistic Director of the Rajkumari Center.
The young, gifted Pujari Anil Mangal weaves the garland with virtuoso performances and heart- wrenching chanting of totram invocation, ceremonial thappu drumming, passionate singing of verses to Mother from the songbook, Mariammen Thallatu. Visionary dancing led by Romanee Kalicharran, Ramona Singh and Denyse Baboolal, invokes the physical presence and mystical attributes of each unique deity. Garland then turns to heroic stories of the Mahabharadam and the Ramayanam told in tarkam and nargam, music, dance-drama. These master artists perform alongside a wonderful cast of young Mariemmen tradition-bearers: Nevindra Budhu, Tejkumar Bhulai, Randy Heeralall, Ambica Jagrup, Jeremy Narain, Jonathan Narain, Randy Persaud, Pooran Rambaran, Suerajh Singh and Devika Tajeshwar.
The young, gifted Pujari Anil Mangal weaves the garland with virtuoso performances and heart- wrenching chanting of totram invocation, ceremonial thappu drumming, passionate singing of verses to Mother from the songbook, Mariammen Thallatu. Visionary dancing led by Romanee Kalicharran, Ramona Singh and Denyse Baboolal, invokes the physical presence and mystical attributes of each unique deity. Garland then turns to heroic stories of the Mahabharadam and the Ramayanam told in tarkam and nargam, music, dance-drama. These master artists perform alongside a wonderful cast of young Mariemmen tradition-bearers: Nevindra Budhu, Tejkumar Bhulai, Randy Heeralall, Ambica Jagrup, Jeremy Narain, Jonathan Narain, Randy Persaud, Pooran Rambaran, Suerajh Singh and Devika Tajeshwar.
