The word for a small bell, it describes one of many to form ghungroos, a musical anklet tied just above the feet of classical Indian dancers to accentuate and accompany complex footwork. In Hindi: घुँघरू and Urdu: گھنگرو), alternative spellings include ghunghroo, ghunghru, ghungur or ghungura (Assamese, Bengali and Odia) or Chilanka or Salangai or Gejje (variously in Malayalam, Tamil and Kannada respectively). The bells are usually bronze or brass and can come in clusters of 25 for children to 200, depending on the ages and experience of the performer, and are performed in traditional dance forms from Bharatnatyam, Kathak, Kuchipudi, Mohiniyattam, Lavani, and Odissi.
Ghunghroo vadan is a music style evolved by V. Anuradha Singh, an Indian classical kathak exponent. She developed bells as a main musical instrument. Here are some examples:
In Nepal, the same collection of ankle bells are called the chap (चाँप) usually comprising 9 to 27 small “curling” bronze bells.
Ghungroo, meanwhile, is a famous big hit Indian Hindi-language song, composed by the duo of Vishal-Shekhar (Vishal Dadlani and Shekhar Ravjiani), with lyrics written by Kumaar and recorded by Arijit Singh and Shilpa Rao for the soundtrack album of the 2019 Indian film War. It’s more of a commercial pop song that doesn’t really feature ankle bells.
So then, anything else share in relation to ghungroo, in music or wider culture? Feel free to suggest examples, or even from film, art, or other contexts in comments below.
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