The term dohori means "back and forth," referring to the lyrical exchange between competing singers. It is a collaborative musical performance which means besides the main singers other multiple participants can also join in and maintain the fun. Just like all Nepali folk songs, dohori originated from the rural areas but it has now become popular over whole Nepal.
Dohori is performed repeating the main phrase from a well-known folk song. The teams can be male versus male (bhale dohori), female versus female (pothi dohori), or mixed-gender (rally dohori). Its themes cover a wide range of topics, including love, tragedy, society, politics, and development. The most common one is male vs female (rally dohori) where one team teases the other and the other team replies back with witty lyrics, they both engage in a fun, respectful battle where the topic is mostly love. The goal is to continue improvising clever responses until one team can no longer come up with a witty reply and then the other side is crowned as the winner.
In the recent times, Dohori has been commercialized and now can be heard nearly everywhere, It is nearly impossible to not have heard atleast one dohori song if you’re from Nepal! People are very fond of this genre and they love singing their hearts out and dance with absolute joy whenever a dohori song comes on.
If you haven’t heard any Dohori songs up until now then this is your sign!
Photo Credit-Kalika HD,ideastream.org.
