Grannie doesn't skip a bhangra beat

UNESCO Courier, July, 2000 by Sudhanva Deshpande

Sudhanva Deshpande [*]

A lighthearted look at how elite youth "dig" their roots through expatriate relations

The hi-fl is playing Bruce Springsteen, who is belting out his "Born in the USA" number. Someone has turned the bass way up, so that the room seems like a giant pulsing heart. Couples are dancing, swaying. "It's paaaartieeee time!" screeches a slightly inebriated young woman to no one in particular. And no one in particular pays any attention. I am in the midst of students who are celebrating. Maybe the end of term. Or is it someone's birthday? Who cares--it's paaaartieeee time.

The scene is a fairly well-to-do neighbourhood in south Delhi, the time approaching midnight, and the party is picking up. So far only English numbers have been played--Madonna, Michael Jackson, even Pink Floyd, and a host of other stuff I neither recognise nor am keen to. Then, someone decides it's time to party in earnest. The music stops. A fresh cassette is inserted and when the first strains of the new number are heard, the room explodes in a collective roar. It's Daler Mehndi, the dancing Sikh, the undisputed king of bhangra pop. Finally, the adrenalin is flowing and there's not a soul who's not on the dance floor. For a few hours, it's a long list of Indipop singers, mostly bhangra.

This is new. Through the 1980s, and even in the early 90s, it was infra-dig [beneath your dignity] to admit in public that one listened to even Hindi stuff, let alone Punjabi. Gurdas Mann, the original bhangra star of the 80s, who is currently enjoying a minor revival, was only heard by Punjabi kids at the working-class Khalsa College, bored shopkeepers and truck drivers. If you went to the elite St. Stephens College, you played the likes of Michael Jackson.

No more. The 13-to-23 generation, which the music companies spend millions on wooing, has turned patriotic. "I am proud of this music," declares an avid bhangra fan, "it makes me feel so Indian." This world-weary, been-there-done-that 23-year-old of today was 13 when the Indian state embarked upon the drive to liberalise the economy. In the decade since, five governments, basically accounting for the full range of Indian political opinion, have ruled. With the exception of the relatively weak left component, they have all displayed an amazing level of unanimity on globalisation. Big business, backed by large sections of the liberal intelligentsia, has pushed the liberalisation agenda relentlessly ahead. As a result, the landscape of urban India has been transformed beyond belief. Large tracts of rural India also show signs of change, especially in the agriculture-rich Punjab.

Ravaged by the partition of India in 1947, Punjab saw the greatest mass migration in history. Millions of Hindus and Sikhs crossed over to the Indian side, and millions of Muslims to Pakistan. For a generation or more, the Punjabis have worked industriously, and many have moved up the economic ladder, thanks to the green revolution. In addition to a massive migration notably to the UK after partition, a huge number of young Punjabis are continuing to migrate to the Commonwealth and other distant lands. Some of the money being earned abroad is repatriated back to India. Cities are full of fast cars, hi-fl home entertainment systems, McDonald's and ubiquitous satellite antennae in rich as well as poor neighbourhoods. Even villages now have ATMs (cash distributers), and everyone seems to be wearing Nike shoes, Ray-Ban sunglasses or Benetton shirts--there are more fakes going around than the genuine stuff, but who cares? All of this has also been accompanied by heightened polarisation between the rich and the po or within the county, but, again, who cares? Its paaaartieeee time.

So there you have it, the paradox of bhangra: its emergence as an Indian form in precisely the decade when its listeners have become more integrated into the world market and its patterns of consumption. Talk to the 13to-23 high-consuming set and the refrain heard most is: "It's our music." The pride that accompanies stories of Indian musical success in Whitemansland, UK--Apache Indian, Bally Sagoo, etc.--is real. "We are no longer only consumers of other people's cultures--now we produce the music that the world wants to listen to." But wasn't the bhangra boom born in the West, and hasn't it too been imported to India? "Yes, but it's Indian, don't you understand? It's our guys there who are making the music.

But why bhangra, Task. "Bhangra's got the beat. It's very danceable," I am informed. Isn't all folk music, I ask. "I guess." Silence. "Remember dandiya?" asks an older listener, referring to the form of folk music and dance from the western Indian state of Gujarat which was all the rage in the 80s. "That was danceable." So why has it been deposed by bhangra, I ask him. "Simple," he says. "Earlier, the Gujjus [Gujaratis] were the single largest expat[riate] population. Now, the Punjus [Punjabis] have taken over. And so has their music." Yeah, that is simple. Too simple, maybe? But why don't we hear gidda? It's from Punjab and as danceable as bhangra. "Simple," I am told again. "Gidda is women's song. How can men sing or dance to it?" But isn't bhangra too masculine? It's sung by men. "Yeah," he says. "That's the point. Bhangra is men song. So everybody can dance to it." Yeah, simple again, I guess.