The form is, thus, connected with dance, dramatic gestures, mild eroticism, evocative love poetry and folk songs, especially from Uttar Pradesh, though there are regional variations.
A common feature of these and other such raga-s is the free movement they allow the artist, since they do not depend for their identity on rigidly formulated tonal sequences, irrespective of the compositions involved.
The Thumri style of singing primarily developed from festival and seasonal folk songs such as Holi, Chaiti, Sawan, Kajri, and Dadra, originating from eastern Uttar Pradesh.
This was the bandish ki thumri or bol-baant and it found great patronage and evolved mostly in Lucknow in the court of nawab Wajid Ali Shah.
Unlike the khayal, which pays meticulous attention to unfolding a raga, thumri restricts itself to expressing the countless hues of shringar by combining melody and words.
A thumri singer goes straight to the emotional core of a composition and evokes each yarn of amorous feeling, each strand of sensuous sentiment, with great discretion.
The bol banao style has a slow tempo and is concluded by a laggi, a faster phase where the tabla player has some freedom of improvisation.
For a member of the royal family to take such a step in those days meant fighting countless social stigmas that had enough power to totally alienate someone from the society, but she had the support of her husband.