Mising Bagrumba (Mishing Bagrumba)

Understand

Where Mising Bagrumba (Mishing Bagrumba) comes from

The Mising Bagrumba (also called Mirijing Bagrumba or the Bodo-Mishing Bagrumba) is a women's dance tradition shared between the Bodo and Mishing communities of the Brahmaputra valley and the foothills of the North Cachar Hills. The dance has the same character as the Bagurumba of the Bodoland region — slow, gentle, butterfly-arm movements of young women in colourful traditional dress — but with the Mishing community's own musical idiom and the indigenous instruments of the Mishing and Sonowal-Kachari peoples. Mising Bagrumba is performed at the Mishing festivals and at the wedding cycles of the community. The dance is a defining marker of Mishing women's cultural identity and is staged at cultural programmes of Assam.

How it's practiced

Mising Bagrumba is performed by young Mising women standing in lines or in a loose circle, moving with slow gentle steps and arm-sweeping motions resembling the flight of butterflies. The dance is unaccompanied by percussion in its purest form (with the singer leading the song and the women clapping in accompaniment) but can also be accompanied by the Mishing ensemble — the cymbal, the flute and the small drum. Costume is the colourful Mising dress — the women's ega or pihu-sadak (the Mishing women's traditional wrap) and the men in the dhoti and the gamucha. Performances are held at the village festival grounds and at the cultural pageants of the Mising community.