Lebang Boomani dance (also Lebang Bumani) is a harvest dance performed by the

Tripuri people The Tripuri (also known as Tripura, Tipra, Tiprasa, Twipra) are an ethnic group originating in the Indian state of Tripura. They are the inhabitants of the Twipra/Tripura Kingdom in North-East India and Bangladesh. The Tripuri people through t ...

Tripura Tripura (, Bengali: ) is a state in Northeast India. The third-smallest state in the country, it covers ; and the seventh-least populous state with a population of 36.71 lakh ( 3.67 million). It is bordered by Assam and Mizoram to the ea ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. It is one of two dances associated with the Tripuris, the other being the Garia dance that is performed at the time of sowing crops.

Tripuri dances

Tripuris comprise half the tribal population of Tripura. They live in the hills of Tripura and are jhum cultivators. Their dances and festivals revolve around the agricultural seasons.

Garia dance

The Tripuris practice jhum or

shifting cultivation Shifting cultivation is an agricultural system in which plots of land are cultivated temporarily, then abandoned while post-disturbance fallow vegetation is allowed to freely grow while the cultivator moves on to another plot. The period of cu ...

and the Garia festival marks the commencement of their sowing season. Garia is commemorated through the Garia dance that accompanies the prayers and pujas for a bountiful harvest and is held in April.

Lebangs

Following Garia, there is a lull in agricultural activity as the Tripuris await the

monsoon A monsoon () is traditionally a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation but is now used to describe seasonal changes in atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with annual latitudinal osci ...

. During this time hordes of colorful insects called ''lebangs'' descend on the hill slopes in search of the sown seeds. The dancers depict how bamboo clappers are used to catch them. The Tripuris believe that the number of lebangs caught indicate how good the harvest will be.

Lebang Boomani

Both men and women participate in the Lebang Boomani dance. The men use

bamboo Bamboos are a diverse group of evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. The origin of the word "bamboo" is uncertain, ...

clappers called ''tokkas'' to set a beat while the women join them waving colorful scarves to catch the lebang. The rhythmic play of the clappers is thought to attract the lebang out of their hiding places allowing the women to catch them. The dance is accompanied by musical instruments like the flute, khamb, the

percussion instrument A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Ex ...

''pung'' and the sarinda. Women adorn themselves with silver chains and bangles and ear and nose rings made of bronze.

External links

Lebang Boomani dance on YouTube

References

{{Reflist Dances of Tripura