Balladeer of the Kadu Gollas

N Mohan Kumar is reviving and teaching the evocative folk songs of central Karnataka's cowherd community

It took N Mohan Kumar some time to find his calling – reviving and singing the folk songs of the Kadu Golla community. About 6.75 lakh people of the nomadic community live in Karnataka, mostly in Chitradurga and Tumakuru districts. Its rich lore and music, he realised, were in danger of being forgotten. Thanks to his efforts, several hundred young people across Karnataka are singing Kadu Golla songs today. He is encouraging them to collect and sing folk songs from their regions as well.

One of the main attractions in the Kannada feature film Vedha is a song in praise of the community’s patron deity Junjappa, sung by 33-year-old Mohan. The song, which Mohan learned from his elders, is given a cinematic orchestral arrangement by Arjun Janya. The choreography showcases energetic dancing by the matinee idol Shivarajkumar and a huge group of dancers. In another collaboration, Mohan worked with the Vasu Dixit Collective for a music video.

As a toddler, Mohan was frail and unwell, and his mother Doddamma was told his chances of survival were slim. “That was when I heard about a herb. I mixed it with milk and fed him, and he gradually regained his health,” she says.

N Mohan Kumar

In school, Mohan began to win prizes for singing and acting. After high school, he joined a polytechnic in Channapatna for a diploma in automobile engineering. But his heart was elsewhere. When he visited Janapadaloka in Ramanagara, he got to know about a certificate course that the folklore studies centre was offering. He signed up for it in 2008, and was mentored by experts such as T Govindaraju and Kuruva Basavaraj. That is when he began his fieldwork to collect the songs of his community. He did a diploma in folklore studies from the same centre the following year. In 2010, his interest in acting took him to the theatre school in Sanehalli, where he did a year-long course.

Mohan’s passion for folklore took him places.  He started out as an office attendant at the Karnataka Folklore University in Haveri in late 2010, and resigned in 2017. He was nominated as a Syndicate member in 2024. “I began by dusting tables and cleaning toilets,” he recalls. “As my folklore work caught the attention of renowned writers, it brought me official recognition.” Mohan has written two books and a series of articles, and reckons he has collected enough verses to fill 10 volumes of 250 pages each.

Over the course of a decade, Mohan visited about 1,000 homes, mostly in and around Sira, and recorded Kadu Golla women singing traditional songs. He began with his hamlet, P Gollahalli Hatti, where he got his mother Doddamma to sing, and then went to his grandmother Kengamma. She was delighted, and dipped into her treasure of songs, stories and riddles. Initially, he recorded the songs on a cassette player. He later used a Transcend digital voice recorder. In recent years, he has been using his mobile phone for his documentation.

His college mates were not enthusiastic about his work, and many wondered why he was reviving what sounded old-fashioned. But as his work began to garner scholarly attention across Karnataka, and he began posting songs on social media, people his age developed an appreciation. “The interest has grown before my own eyes,” he says, proudly.

N Mohan Kumar

In 2017, Mohan recorded an album called Kadu Gollara Devara Padagalu, with 12 tracks. His YouTube channel, where he posts songs, has 32,400 followers. The songs talk about rituals, weddings, and sibling relationships. “I first write down the songs, and as I sing them repeatedly, I commit them to memory,” he says. That is an impressive feat in itself – many songs narrate epic stories, and go on for hours.

The three quintessential aspects of their culture are the pada (songs), gane (bamboo flute), and kolaata (a dance similar to dandiya).

Mohan discovered a world of delicate emotions in the songs of his community. One of the festivals among the Kadu Gollas is called the Beladingala Habba (moonlight festival). It involves a ritual called ‘chandramanna huyyodu’ (pouring out the moon). Women use ragi flour to draw traditional rangoli patterns, and children are roped in for make-believe weddings. Songs are sung in front of a temple, celebrating the bounty of nature, and imparting lessons about human relationships.

Kadu Golla songs cover a gamut of emotions. Sobane padagalu, or wedding songs, are full of charm and beauty. “They also describe the pain of mothers as they see their daughters off,” he says, illustrating it with a song beseeching the wild wind to stop a moment for the ritual, and comparing the mother’s tears to rain pouring down from the skies. The songs are classified into about a dozen categories, covering weddings, festivals, rituals, sibling relationships and dances. Some are ballads in praise of heroes who fought to protect the community’s grazing fields. The maleraya songs are sung when the rains fail – a group goes around in a procession praying to the rain gods.

In 2017, with a grant from the Bengaluru-based India Foundation for the Arts, Mohan began teaching more extensively. He has also contributed to the revival of folk games, now played during folklore festivals hosted by the Karnataka government. His fieldwork has gone into the making of a dictionary of folk words and idioms. He has bagged prizes at national folk song competitions, and performed at Kannada events in France and Germany.

N Mohan Kumar

Mohan hopes his efforts contribute to the larger efforts of the Kadu Gollas to find a political identity. As things stand, they are clubbed with several other communities, and find it hard to get their fair share of reservation benefits. A campaign is underway to highlight the economic and social realities of the Kadu Gollas, and seek better representation.

“Kadu Gollas suffered from an inferiority complex. Many in the community took the north Indian ‘Yadav’ as a surname. Mohan is bringing them back to their roots,” says Umesh R Kadugolla, a former journalist, now working on consolidating the community as a political force.

Changes are sweeping the community, and livelihoods have become way more difficult than before, as the forests and meadows are shrinking. 

Umesh believes Mohan is empowering the community by bringing its culture to the forefront. “He sings at events, and has collected thousands of songs. The community is now proud of its identity,” he says. 

 Traditionally cattle grazers, the Kadu Gollas have, in recent decades, taken up sheep rearing. The deities worshipped by the Kadu Gollas include heroes like Junjappa and Kariyappa, who are revered for their battles to protect their grazing lands. 

“My biggest satisfaction is that the Kadu Gollas are celebrating their heroes again,” says Mohan.

(With inputs from Pranati A S)