A name for various chordophones of South Asia. It is a variant of the term kingrā.
In Rajasthan kendra denotes a bamboo stick zither with resonators. The body is made from a 60 cm length of bamboo, below which are attached two spherical gourd resonators. It is fitted with two metal strings, raised by a vertical bridge and tensioned by two lateral pegs, which the player plucks with a plectrum. The instrument provides a drone accompaniment to the ballads and epic songs of the Jogi, a caste of itinerant professional singers of the region of Banswara and Dungarpur in the hills of the South-West.
In East-Central India kendrā denotes the plucked or bowed chordophones of Ādivāsī groups, particularly in the states of Bihar and Orissa. It appears often in traditional song texts of the Mundā people of southern Bihar, where it is usually paired with the tuila (single-string plucked stick zither). The exact nature of the kendrā, however, appears to be unclear or unknown to most of the Mundā people, and it is possible that for them it is a generic term for all plucked chordophones. Since at least the early decades of the 20th century the term has been applied to a wide variety of string instruments, many of them similar in form to the chordophones of non-Ādivāsī traditional musicians in North India.
The instrument known as kendrā among some Mundāri Christian converts in southern Bihar, and also among some non-converts, is a single-string plucked lute with a gourd soundbox resembling the ektārā of the area’s non-Ādivāsī musicians (see Ektār). The gourd tends to have a deeper, more rounded back than that of the ektārā, and the area of its skin belly tends to be smaller in relation to the diameter of the gourd. The lute-type kendrā is played by men as a drone to accompany solo or small-group singing or while they dance in the village dancing-ground.
A two-string fretted and plucked stick zither with two gourd resonators called kendrā appears to have been played by the Mundā people in southern Bihar early in the 20th century in areas in which they had close contact with Hindus. It is now extremely rare, perhaps even non-existent, in Mundāri villages. This kendrā appears to resemble the kullutan rājanof the relatively isolated Sora (Savara, Saora) people of Orissa, apart from having two gourd resonators instead of one. It also appears to be related in general form to both the South Indian kinnarī vīnā and the present-day bīn of North India.
In Orissa the word kendrā refers to a fretless fiddle with a tortoiseshell soundbox and skin belly. It may also be applied to several varieties of fiddle, with a membrane belly, of both Orissa and Bihar (in southern Bihar they would most commonly be called banam).
The jogi kendrā is a fiddle about 42 cm long, with a bamboo-tube fingerboard and a coconut-shell soundbox covered with laced ‘parchment’. A single-‘hair’ playing string is hooked on the lower end of the soundbox by a cotton loop. On the upper end of the fingerboard the string is either tied to a peg or fixed directly to the fingerboard by wrapped cotton cord. Small bells may be attached to the small triangular-shaped bow. Thumb pressure adjusts the tension of the bow hair.
The majhi kendrā is a fiddle popular in Ādivāsī areas of the Mayurbhanj district of Orissa. This kendrā is like the jogi kendrā in form and material, but it is larger, about 64 cm long. The hollow soundbox may be of coconut shell, horn or wood and is covered with a nailed ‘parchment’ belly. The single-hair playing string is hooked at the lower end by cotton cord, passes over a wooden bridge and is tied directly to the instrument’s body at the upper end. String tension is regulated by a movable piece of wrapped cotton cord on the fingerboard.
For the gopīyantra kendrā see Variable tension chordophone.
J. Hoffmann and A. van Emelen: Encyclopaedia mundarica, v/1–13 (Patna, 1938–50), 2286–7
K.S. Kothari: Indian Folk Musical Instruments (New Delhi, 1968), 69
O. Prasad: Munda: Music and Dance (diss., Ranchi U., 1971), 68
K. Kothari: Folk Musical Instruments of Rajasthan (Borunda, 1977)
B.C. Deva: Musical Instruments of India: their History and Development (Calcutta, 1978), 159, 169
GENEVIÈVE DOURNON/R (1), CAROL M. BABIRACKI/R (2)