Bhangra Moves: From Ludhiana to London and Beyond 2010920890, 9780754658238

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Bhangra Moves

Bhangra Moves

From Ludhiana to London and Beyond

anjaLi gera roy Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India

First published 2010 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2010 anjali gera roy anjali gera roy has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data roy, anjali gera. Bhangra moves: from Ludhiana to London and beyond. – (Ashgate popular and folk music series) 1. Bhangra (Music) – History and criticism. 2. Popular music – India – Punjab – History and criticism. 3. south asians – Foreign countries – Music. 4. Popular music – indic influences. i. Title ii. series 781.6'291421-dc22 Library of Congress Control Number: 2010920890

ISBN 9780754658238 (hbk)

Contents List of Figures and Tables General Editor’s Preface Acknowledgements

vii ix xi

1

Flows across the Chenab

2

no Mixing Please! We are indian

29

3

Mann Panjab De: Fabricating authenticity

49

4

Naqqal, Mimicry and the Signifying Monkey

79

5

global Bazaar, Local Peddlers

103

6

Desi Networks

129

7

Cool guys, Desi Boyz and Panjabi Munde Dance the Bhangra

153

8

Performing the Panjabi Body

175

9

Bhangra nation

199

10

Who Speaks for the Jat?:vernacular Cosmopolitanisms

223

Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Appendix 3 Appendix 4 Bibliography Index

Music Survey Conducted Between 2000 and 2006 Excerpt from Marketing Study on Panjabi Music Conducted by Darshpreet Mann Glossary Incorrect and Correct Transcriptions of “Mundian To Bach Ke” Lyrics

1

239 243 253 257 261 283

List of Figures and Tables Figures 1.1 1.2

Panjabi male dancers. reproduced by permission of Manjit singh Panjabi female dancers. reproduced by permission of Manjit singh

3.1a

3.3 3.4

Mann Panjab De – Pammi Bai. reproduced by permission of Pammi Bai Mann Panjab De – gurdas Mann. reproduced from www.gurdasmaan.com by permission of gurdas Mann Mann Panjab De – Malkit Singh. reproduced by permission of Malkit Singh gurdas Mann. reproduced from www.gurdasmaan.com by permission of gurdas Mann Malkit Singh. Reproduced by permission of Malkit Singh Pammi Bai. reproduced by permission of Pammi Bai

4.1

Daler Mehndi. reproduced by permission of Daler Mehndi

5.1

Cycle of music production. reproduced from Mann 2000, with permission Perceptual map of the Indian music market. Reproduced from jain 2000, with permission

121

8.1 8.2

Lohri fire. Reproduced by permission of Manjit Singh The Panjabi clap. reproduced by permission of Manjit singh

191 192

9.1

The new generation – h-Dhami. reproduced by permission of rishi rich Productions

217

3.1b 3.1c 3.2

5.2

20 20 51 51 52 62 69 73 88 113

Tables 5.1 9.1

Mass music and future scope. reproduced from jain 2000, with permission Bhangra singers. reproduced from www.punjabonline.com (“Bhangra Artists” 2004)

117 216

general editor’s Preface The upheaval that occurred in musicology during the last two decades of the twentieth century has created a new urgency for the study of popular music alongside the development of new critical and theoretical models. a relativistic outlook has replaced the universal perspective of modernism (the international ambitions of the 12-note style); the grand narrative of the evolution and dissolution of tonality has been challenged, and emphasis has shifted to cultural context, reception and subject position. Together, these have conspired to eat away at the status of canonical composers and categories of high and low in music. a need has arisen, also, to recognize and address the emergence of crossovers, mixed and new genres, to engage in debates concerning the vexed problem of what constitutes authenticity in music and to offer a critique of musical practice as the product of free, individual expression. Popular musicology is now a vital and exciting area of scholarship, and the Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series presents some of the best research in the field. authors are concerned with locating musical practices, values and meanings in cultural context, and draw upon methodologies and theories developed in cultural studies, semiotics, poststructuralism, psychology and sociology. The series focuses on popular musics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is designed to embrace the world’s popular musics from acid jazz to Zydeco, whether high tech or low tech, commercial or non-commercial, contemporary or traditional. Professor Derek B. Scott Professor of Critical Musicology University of Leeds

Acknowledgements Bhangra has been a part of my life for a long time. But I had to make a long journey – into African folklore and Indian narrative and performing arts – before returning to my Panjabi roots. Like the Panjabi harvest rite that has transmuted into a global dance music through its travels, this book would have remained, at best, a ‘desi’ production but for my visit to the humanities research Centre at the australian national University Canberra in 2004 on a senior research Fellowship. I would like to thank Debjani Ganguly for bringing the fellowship to my notice, for guiding me through libraries, banks, cultural fests and for making me feel at home, along with Rana Ganguly, in cold Canberra! I would also like to thank the Humanities Research Centre, in particular, Caroline Turner, former Deputy Director of the humanities research Centre, for giving me an opportunity to feast on the rich intellectual life at the Centre. My conversations with fellows at Canberra, however brief, made me look at Panjabi harvest dance from other eyes while formal presentations in Canberra, hobart, sydney and Melbourne provided valuable feedback. Devleena Ghosh and John Merrick offered me warmth and hospitality in sydney and introduced me to the city’s vibrant south asian group, and Serge Liebermann and Anna kept an open house for me in Melbourne. Detailed comments by Tony Mitchell, Patrick Wolfe and John Hutnyk gave me the confidence to trespass into an entirely new territory but I still needed the final nod from Derek Scott to bring this project to completion. a visit to Canada on a shastri indo-Canadian senior research Fellowship a couple of years later introduced me to the Canadian Bhangra scene. Conversations, short and long, with abrahim Khan, ato Quayson, Linda hutcheon, Chelva Kanaganayakam, Joseph O ‘Connell and James Kippen in the University of Toronto assured me that I was indeed on the right track. I would not forget those late evening chats with nandi Bhatia, Teresa hubel, Prabhjot Parmar over endless cups of chai that reconstructed warm Chandigarh in chilly Toronto. raoul juneja and omme-salma rehmatullah led me through the party scene in greater Toronto, and ashraf and rachna at the Centre for ethics fed me inside stories. I would like to thank Melissa S. Williams, for making a spacious office at the Centre for Ethics available to me, Derrick de Kerckhove, the former Director of the Marshall McLuhan Centre, for welcoming me as an honorary Fellow and Lynne alexandrova for introducing me to other McLuhan Fellows. Finally, in the home of British Bhangra, i was coopted into the Little Panjab in Coventry and the Punjab Research Group through Eleanor Nesbitt’s gentle intervention. Back home in India, my meeting with Patrick Froelicher helped me gatecrash, through the ethnomusicological route, into the haunts of Bhangra ‘stars’ and into Panjabi sonic networks in Delhi, Chandigarh and Patiala.

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Thanks are also due to Bill Ashcroft and A.K. Sharma for their comments on some early thoughts on Bhangra, to Eckhard Breitinger for creating a space for Bhangra in Bayreuth, to andrew hassam for doing the same in Melbourne, Derrick de Kerckhove in Toronto, the salzburg seminar in salzburg and the national institute of advanced studies in Bangalore. The Bhangra bradri – Laura Leante, Patrick Froelicher, Gibb Schreffler, Nahar Singh – for sharing their research and members of the Punjab research group – satwinder Bains, shinder Thandi, Doris Jakobsh, Pippa Virdee, Nicola Mooney, Ian Talbot, Ishtiaq Ahmed, rajinder Dudrah, Michael nijhawan and a probashi bangali Dipesh Chakrabarty for believing that there is more to Bhangra than others would have us believe. i appreciate the support i have received from Bhangra practitioners from all across the world ever since I took up this project. While Pammi Bai educated me on the difference between Bhangra dance and music in pure Panjabi, rabbi Shergill enlightened me on the finer nuances of majholi and Bally sagoo made me understand the complex art of being a Dj. i was absolutely charmed by hard Kaur with her delicious habit of slipping into Panjabi and by the comely veronica with the beautiful smile and voice, humbled by the immensely talented Talveen singh, moved by RDB, Kailash Kher and Shankar Sawhney’s humility, bowled over by h Dhami’s josh spirit and Rishi Rich’s quiet confidence, impressed by Devinder singh Dharia and rup Magon’s commitment to Panjabi in sydney and Montreal respectively and absolutely delighted by BilZ’s greeting me in Bengali. i cannot get over the promptness with which Apache Indian, Panjabi MC, Malkit Singh, gurdas Mann, Daler Mehndi, Pammi Bai responded to my requests for permitting me to include lyrics from their albums in my book, and Yudhvir Manak finally conveyed the Panjabi folk legend Kuldip Manak’s verbal consent telephonically. I appreciate Taranpreet’s bringing some little known facts about Daler Mehndi to my attention. i loved gatecrashing into the best Bhangra parties in global cities in the company of the best known Asian DJs. DJ Rekha, Eddie Stats and Basement Bhangra in New York City. DJ Amita of Besharam Nights Fame and DJ Ra and omme salma rehmatullah in Toronto. Dj richi Madan and amar in Melbourne. DJ Sammy and Shreya in Kolkata. I must thank music director Atul Sharma for guiding me through the intricacies of gana bajana over a delicious Brahmin khana. And all those who let me take a peep into Bhangra performances in dance studios and clubs, private parties and public functions, wedding celebrations and community events. ranvir rai of Bhangra nation Toronto, rawail singh of Punjabi Akademi Delhi, ETC Punjabi, Anamika of The Park Kolkata, Sherif of Zero g Bangalore, sunny singapore, The Punjabi society iiT Kharagpur. There is a special place in my book for my students at IIT Kharagpur in particular for the chota sardar jaspreet narang alias jassi for putting his vast Panjabi music collection and rare family Bhangra videos at my disposal. Divjyot Chauhan for her scintillating performance of hulle hullare at my first Bhangra presentation in KgP and for giving me an impartial F grade in Panjabi language and Bhangra dancing. sheetal, Mansi and Parul for their balle balle attitude. Darshpreet Mann, sanju nair and avinish jain for sharing their reports prepared for saregama hMv.

ACKNowLEDGEMENTS

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sharmistha De for accompanying me to Bhangra events and sanchita Chowdhury for singing the difference between one raga and another in her divine voice. To all members of my family for bearing with my Bhangra obsession for years, in particular to Sayan who was most embarrassed by his mother’s ‘unkool’ musical tastes and hanging out in ‘kool’ hangouts. My brothers Arun and Bharat for their amused observations on my ‘unliterary’ passion and my parents santosh and om Prakash Gera for their bewilderment at why men and women past their prime have gotten into their heads to dance like mad. I acknowledge the following journals for permitting me to republish earlier drafts of chapters in this book: “Bhangra Moves”. JSL (Journal of the School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies), ed. G.J.V. Prasad, Autumn 2006, 33–45. “rooting for Bhangrapop: Cultural resistance in the electronic era”.Globalization: Language, Culture and Media. Proceedings of Seminar, ed. B.N. Patnaik and S. imtiaz hasnain, indian institute of advanced study, shimla, 2006, 250–73. “Teri chunni de sitare: no mixing please we are indian!”. South Asian review: A Journal of South Asian Literary and Cultural Studies. special issue, empire and racial hybridity, volume 27, number 1, 2006. “Digital Bhangra”. Diversity Journal. The International Journal of Diversity in organisations, Communities and Nations, volume 7, issue 2, 2007, 143–152.

“Who is Dancing the Bhangra”? Phalanx: A Quarterly review for Continuing Debate, no. 1, 2007. “Bhangranation”. South Asian review. special Topic issue on Theorizing religion in a Postmodern Context, volume 30, number 1, 2009, 115–41. I acknowledge the following artists for giving me permission to reprint lyrics: apache indian, for ‘arranged Marriage’ and ‘independent girl’ Malkit Singh, for ‘jind mahi’, ‘maa’ and ‘Independent Girl’ gurdas Mann, for ‘apna punjab hove’ and ‘pind diyan’ Kuldip Manak, for ‘Yaraan da truck’ Pammi Bai, for ’Mann Panjab de’ Daler Mehndi, for ‘bolo tara rara’ and ‘tunak tunak’ Panjabi MC, for ‘Mundian ton Bach ke’

Chapter 1

Flows across the Chenab Bhangrascapes Some love it; others consider it a sonic assault. Some like it pure; others display a preference for remixes. Many don’t know what it is called or might know it by some other name. But most are likely to have sampled it as a remix. Bhangra, the loudest asian sound in global pop, is in so many places today that it cannot be ignored. its high decibel sound can be heard from Ludhiana to vancouver across Delhi, Mumbai, Lahore, Dubai, Nairobi, London, Birmingham, New York, California, sydney, Melbourne and Toronto. The new Bhangra map covers almost every part of the world. Bhangra greats today include not only Panjabi paajis (brothers) Gurdas Mann, Malkit Singh and Daler Mehndi but also desi bhaiyyas (brothers) Aadesh Srivastava and Sonu Nigam, vilayeti or British asian cousins apache indian, Bally sagoo and Panjabi MC, kale or black soul brothers Maxi Priest and MC solar, and goris or white girls Britney spears and Tata young.1 Bhangra labels include transnational giants like Sony and Columbia but also independent outfits like Bally Sagoo’s Ishqrecords, do-it-yourself organizations like Independent Records and desi companies like Saregama HMV and T-Series. What is this strange music anyway? Who produces it and who consumes it? Where does it come from and where does it go? Bhangra is now understood as the hybrid music produced by second generation British asian youth by mixing Panjabi melodies with Western and black beats. But it is derived from the Panjabi folk genre of the same name, which has spawned other Bhangra mutants such as Bhangrapop or Panjabipop. With the number of Bhangra mutants, both pure and hybrid, being produced, circulated and consumed across different Panjabi sites, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell what Bhangra is. With gore, kale, and other indian linguistic groups jumping into the multi-hued Bhangra space, Bhangra consumers, if not producers, cannot be exclusively Panjabi. Bhangra comes from everywhere – Lahore, Ludhiana, London, La – and goes everywhere today and may be found in the most unlikely places. irrespective of where it comes from and goes to, all Bhangra mutants, diasporic and homeland, intersect in their returning to the memory of a somewhere, Panjab, 1 Gurdas Mann, Malkit Singh and Daler Mehndi are the three best known Bhangra singers in india. aadesh srivastava and sonu nigam have sung several Bhangra songs for Bollywood films. Maxi Priest has collaborated with Apache Indian on a Bhangra album. Britney spears danced the Bhangra in one of her stage shows and Tata young sang a Bhangra number for the Bollywood blockbuster Dhoom (2004).

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a region split between India and Pakistan. Its roots in the doabe, or deltas, of Panjab’s five rivers connect Bhangra’s history and geography to the cultural geography of Panjab, the historic site of the subcontinent’s multiple land invasions and to the history of Panjabi migration and partition. With so many comings and goings, forced settlements and outward journeys, Panjab’s history offers more instances of the mixing of languages, cultures, religions than any other region on the subcontinent. even the etymology of the name Panjab, from the Persian panj, five, and aab, waters, suggests a Perso-Arabic influence cutting the region off from the Hindu Sanskritic mainstream.2 How did Bhangra flow from the doaba of the five rivers to different parts of the globe? The answer to this question must be found as much in the older history of Panjabi migration as in the contemporary globalizing wave. The romance of rivers, invasions, travels and the borderland location fits in perfectly with the text of flows, networks, webs deployed to describe the movement of people and goods in the new global order. Though contemporary Bhangra is only as old as the indian nation state, it evolved from Panjabi dance genres whose history is embedded in the geography of ancient rivers and the bars or jungle regions between them, older than nations, which recognize no barriers or boundaries (Singh 1988). Cyril Radcliffe’s overwriting of their natural topography in the 1947 partition of india through the imaginary lines that divided the new nation states could neither divide the memory of the rivers nor stem the cultural flows that leaked across the borders.3 The imagery of networks, flows, webs, neighbourhoods and sites is apt in delineating Bhangra’s circulation across the globe. Moreover, the moves of the Panjabi harvest rite to the global city can tell us a great deal about the cultures of globalization, the relationship between the local and the global, the systems of control in the new world order and resistance. This book traces Bhangra’s moves from Ludhiana to London and beyond to investigate the meaning of globalization from the non-West, the indian subcontinent and, in particular, the Panjab. Bhangra has been examined in British sociology, anthropology and culture studies to celebrate cultural difference in the production of hybrid youth subcultures and ethnic identities in multicultural Britain. among these studies, we may include Sanjay Sharma, John Hutnyk and Ashwani Sharma’s groundbreaking rejoinder to ethnographic othering, Dis-orienting rhythms, andy Bennett’s correction of 2 For Panjabi cultural intersection with Perso-arabic see Farina Mir’s essay on religious and cultural syncretism (Mir 2006). 3 Lucy Chester (2002) has called attention to the “problematic procedure and format of the body responsible for delineating that boundary through the province of Punjab, the radcliffe Boundary Commission” headed by Cyril radcliffe. virinder s. Kalra and navtej K. Purewal’s essay on the Waggah border dividing amritsar from Lahore critiques the formation of boundaries by asking the important question “for whom is border crossing an act of transgression” and “for whom an act of transition”. They show how the construction of borders between India and Pakistan after 1947 destroyed the bordercrossing boundaries of the past (1999: 56).

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subcultural theory, John Hutnyk’s Marxist take on the misuses of hybridity and the selling of asian music as exotica in The Critique of Exotica, rehan hyder’s examination of musicians and producers in Brimful of Asia and sunaina Maira’s coverage of Bhangra in the desi party circle in the US (Sharma, Hutnyk and Sharma 1996; Bennett 2000; Hutnyk 2000; Hyder 2004; Maira 2002). These books have been extremely useful not only in making Asian popular culture the subject of formal, serious inquiry but also in establishing its social and political uses. Lately, ethnomusicologists have turned to an intensive analysis of music and lyrics (Leante 2004; Schreffler 2004b). But they have all studied Bhangra in a diasporized domain ignoring that Bhangra now flows in multiple directions, which calls for a transnational framework. Timothy Taylor’s Global Pop and george Lipsitz’s Dangerous Crossroads may be cited as two examples of the advantages of investigating contemporary musical flows in a global framework (Taylor 1997; Lipsitz 1994). Both books deal with non-Western appropriations of Anglo-American popular music in different localities and include Bhangra as an example of sonic experimentation. Tony Mitchell’s Global Noise, the first book to focus solely on the hip-hop Bhangra connection, turns the cultural imperialism argument around by reclaiming localities in the construction of imaginary local identities (2001). In this book, I hope to adopt such an approach by combining a global frame with local and grounded perspectives to examine the various Bhangra mutants that have emerged on the Indian popular musical scene in the wake of globalization. Yet I also seek to complement and supplement existing work on Bhangra as global music for there seems to be a lacuna in existing scholarship on the issue of globalization itself. First, Bhangra’s flows are invariably cited to express concerns about the othering and consumption of non-Western musics in the metropolitan centres of europe and america. however, not much has been said about Bhangra’s return to india where it is caught up in quite different cultural battles involving not only the West and the rest but also the centre and the region. Bhangra’s mixing with other musics has invited the wrath of cultural purists who regard them as alien cultural invasions. This, in turn, throws open the question of what is indian and what is not in which Bhangra, as the first regional non-film music to have crossed over into the Indian popular music market, plays a crucial role. To what extent does Bhangra’s global visibility enable it to participate in the cultural politics of the nation? Does the voice gained by regional and ethnic minorities help redefine the meaning of culture, identity, hegemony and resistance? i hope to bring together such reinventions of Bhangra in india and its intervention in the politics of indian popular music and regional identity to ground the globalization debate in india. secondly, Bhangra is usually cited as an example of conscious resistance and appropriation. In this book, I show that not all Bhangra mutants are inspired by the openly political agendas of groups and bands like Fun^da^mental or Asian Dub Foundation but might resist within the market, like Bally Sagoo does, or without any desire to resist, like Daler Mehndi and other Bhangrapop practitioners in India do. This would divert the “orientalizing” gaze from the “duped” to the “wily” native and how (s)he manipulates global networks. The questions it will address

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are: how does Bhangra’s hybridity face the purity fetish and fear of contamination on the subcontinent? How do Bhangra’s transnational flows and crossovers from Ludhiana to La relate to boundaries, myths of origin and authenticity cults? What impact do travel technologies, electronic media, digital networks have on Bhangra’s global circulation, for instance the movement of Bhangra artists and cassettes between various Bhangra sites, or the global airplay of Bhangra albums on transnational satellite television, and exchange of albums by fans on the internet? How is Bhangra “vulgarized” in its marketing by the music industry and how does it turn the sacred Panjabi ritual into a spectacle for global consumption? Can the collaborations and exchanges between disenfranchised Bhangra producers, urban working-class youth and rustic cultivator castes bring globalization from below and challenge national structures of domination? how do indian families perform traditional values and youth indian modernity by dancing the Bhangra? how is Bhangra brought back into the Panjabi ritual setting? This book aims to answer some of these questions to examine hegemony and resistance in relation to new Bhangra mutants. The central argument of the book is that though global media, markets and networks have initiated Bhangra’s transnational flows and brought local artists international visibility, they have removed them from the lifeworld of Panjabis in which it was used to perform important rites of passage. The critical importance of this book lies in addressing the impact of the intersection of local and global on the understanding of culture in the present phase of globalization. it compares Bhangra’s contemporary hybridization with earlier ones to show how indian cultures have constantly reinvented themselves by absorbing the other while maintaining boundaries. By looking into the breaking of boundaries of nations, castes, gender, location, religion, language and race through Bhangra’s flows to and from India, it hopes to revise the relation between culture, space and identity and problematize boundaries. it weighs both the uses and costs of visibility provided by global networks to marginalized groups in diverse localities and inquires if the collaborations between Bhangra practitioners give ordinary people any control over the circulation of culture in the global village. Finally, it asks if cultural practices can alter hierarchies and power structures in the real world. Cultural Imperialism or Cultural Invasion? globalization refers to the political, economic, technological transformations of the last decade of the twentieth century, which have turned the world into a single place. Whether one grasps it as an economic phenomenon created through “the ceaseless accumulation of capital” (Wallerstein 1993: 293) or views it as a “communicational concept” (Jameson 1998: 55) predicated on “long-distance connectedness” (Hannerz 1996: 17) and “complex connectivity”, it cannot be denied that the “time-space compression” (Harvey 1990: 240) of the last two decades has brought a degree of interdependence and interpenetration not previously imagined.

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Walter Mignolo, therefore, defines globalization as “the geopolitical imaginary that lays claim to the homogeneity of the planet from above economically, politically and culturally” (2000). Sheldon Pollock agrees that despite their being several previous attempts to homogenize the planet, “the homogenization of culture today, of which language loss is one aspect, seems without precedent in human history” (2000). The present global process, like all previous ones, legitimizes itself through a utopian vision of a world predicated on interdependence and interconnectedness. however, Zygmunt Baumann, in Globalization: The human Consequences points out that while globalization might be “an irreversible process” affecting all of us, the difference in “the social causes and outcomes” of “time/space compression” would reveal that “the globalizing processes lack the commonly assumed unity of effects” (1998: 4). Not only is the discourse of globalization defined in Euro-American idioms but concerns about the autonomy of local non-Western cultures are also voiced in the same languages in what has come to be known as the cultural imperialism thesis. John Tomlinson defines cultural imperialism as “a critical discourse which operates by representing the cultures whose autonomy it defends in its own (dominant) Western cultural terms” (1991: 2). The gap between the dream of one world and asymmetries of the global village, however, leads post-colonial nations to regard globalization as neo-imperialism and spawns resistant nationalisms. in india, as in other post-colonial nations, nationalist resistance to globalization has converged on the issue of locality in the new global formation. In this book, I wish to explore if it is possible to speak about globalization in an idiom other than the dominant euro-american and to investigate what globalization has meant to the rest through examining the transnational flows of Bhangra, a Panjabi harvest rite, that has travelled from Panjab to different parts of the world. Tomlinson calls attention to the Western provenance of cultural imperialism as the concern in the West about the imposition of Western cultures on the rest borrowing Turnstall’s definition to illustrate the underlying premises of the theory, The cultural imperialism thesis claims that authentic, traditional and local culture in many parts of the world is being battered out of existence by the indiscriminate dumping of large quantities of such commercial and media products, mainly from the United States. (1991: 4)

Tomlinson’s critique of cultural imperialism identifies a number of flaws in “the global debate about cultural imperialism” (1991: 14). The main problem that Tomlinson sees with the cultural imperialism theory is the assumption that there is a unified discourse defined by a global community of intellectuals with shared concerns. But he also touches upon other issues such as its nationcentric thrust, the impositional myth, the question of representation and the denial of agency to receiving cultures. Defined as “use of political and economic power to exalt and spread the values and habits of a foreign culture at the expense of a native culture” (Tomlinson 1991: 3), the cultural imperialism argument privileges the category of

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the nation in formulating domination and resistance. globalization’s effects are attributed to the hegemonic design of a supernation, which is intent on erasing local national cultures. The thesis not only visualizes global asymmetries as those between nation states but also displays a confusion in defining the local, which is defined alternatively as the nation, the region or the continent. Tomlinson’s question “who speaks” is equally valid in the context of the domination of the discourse of cultural imperialism by Euro-American voices (1991: 11). at the popular level, cultural imperialism has indeed been translated in its most naïve articulation, that is – to repeat the formula given in the previous paragraph – “the use of political and economic power to exalt and spread the values and habits of a foreign culture at the expense of a native culture” (Tomlinson 1991: 3). Even after hardt and negri revealed the new systems of control in the empire, the cultural imperialism thesis continues to be invoked on the subcontinent in oft repeated protests against “Americanization” and “alien cultural invasion” (2000). The indian debate on the effects of globalization borrows the contested parameters of the cultural imperialism discourse developed in the West and displays a confusion between the four ways Tomlinson said one could look at cultural imperialism.4 indeed, a new cultural nationalist rhetoric that reverberates with cries of “alien cultural invasion” has appeared in India in the wake of globalization that reveals an amnesia toward the long history of invasion through which indian cultures have reinvented themselves in the past.5 While sharing cultural nationalism’s concerns about the erosion of indigenous cultures and identities through globalization, this book will explore ways of resisting the homogenizing thrust of globalization through a different imagining of locality, location, subjectivity and community.6 it argues that, in view of the long history of cultural invasion on the indian subcontinent, the older narrative of “cultural invasion” can offer an alternative idiom to the discourse of cultural imperialism for examining the interpenetration of cultures in the present era of globalization. The “cultural invasion” idiom, which connects the new empire with the empires of yore, is a reminder that this is not the first time that “Indian” cultures have been faced with an external threat. It recalls

4 Tomlinson suggests four ways one can talk about cultural imperialism: as “media imperialism”, as a discourse of nationality, as a critique of global capitalism, and as the critique of modernity. 5 K. satchidanandan, for instance, maintains “globalization reasserts colonial imaginaries through discourse of domination” and “anthropologizes culture while promoting cultural amnesia in its victims” (2000: III). 6 Though cultural nationalism has a specific history, I have employed it as oppositional to the understanding of globalization of cultural imperialism clubbing all master narratives predicated on the production of nation as a locality. While this might overlap with certain aspects of cultural nationalism as originating in the freedom struggle, the contested nature of the nation today has revived the pre-independence discourse of cultural nationalism in the wake of globalization in the electronic public sphere.

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those moments in indian history when local populations incorporated invading idioms into their own. Sheldon Pollock deploys the term vernacular in opposition to cosmopolitanism, not as a regional counternarrative to the national as conventionally understood. he objects to the national’s arrogation of vernacularity in the discourse of globalization to claim primordial organs by concealing its produced nature (2000). Similarly, Arjun Appadurai, like many others, speaks of the need to understand locality not as given but as produced. he points out that the national culture itself might be a produced rather than a given entity (1996). Categories like “alien”, “indigenous”, “national”, and even “culture”, prove to be extremely problematic in the context of an inherent eclecticism visible in indian cultural history and tradition. if the indigenous is defined as autochthonous, none of the Indian cultures, except the small tribal cultures coopted in the grand narrative of Bharatvarsha, alone would qualify as indigenous.7 While a civilizational reading of india demands the recognition of the primacy of Indo-Aryan Sanskritic traditions over Dravidian, a majoritarian interpretation requires that hindu cultural elements be privileged over others that go into making the Indian nation.8 Despite the critiques of essentialist definitions of Indian culture that have emerged in the recent past, the indian cultural tradition continues to be represented as homogeneous through the privileging of a particular cultural strand in india’s multi-layered history in nationalist discourse. On the other hand, if one were to look at this culture as being constituted through a succession of invasions and assimilations, one would be able to see invasions as catalyzing host cultures to reinvent themselves. indian history and culture demonstrate continuous revisions of the self through contacts with others. it would be more fruitful to investigate how invading cultures have continuously challenged local cultures to reinvent themselves not only in relation to a wave of invaders but also to each other and to deconstruct the category of culture. Cultural imperialism overlooks another important aspect of imperialism. All empires evince, though it might not be acknowledged, reciprocity between the dominating and dominated cultures in spite of their unequal relations. The history of invasion in india demonstrates a disjuncture between political conquest and cultural domination. Political conquest did not necessarily translate into cultural imposition but also enabled cultural exchange between the invaders and the invaded Bharatvarsha may be interpreted as a synonym for india but in ancient indian texts such as the vishnupurana it is understood to refer to the entire subcontinent, that is, the region between the himalayas in the north to the indian ocean in the south. india’s many names themselves are indicators of the successive production of the narratives of indigeneity and belonging. 8 if one accepts the contested aryan invasion theory, indo-aryans were invaders who subjugated indigenous Dravidians and other tribal groups. similarly, the narrative of the modern Indian nation is scaffolded on a hoary Hindu past overlooking the centuries of Muslim rule. 7

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partly because invasions of the subcontinent, unlike European imperialism, were not propped on a civilizational rhetoric. Cultural exchanges between the conqueror and the conquered occurred because of the presumed equality, and in some cases even barbarity, of the invaders. The series of invaders penetrating india, while imposing their domination in the political sphere, granted not only cultural autonomy but also state patronage to indigenous arts. invaders, other than the British who invented the civilizational mission to insist on native inferiority, were dismissed by indigenes as barbarians. While the Indo-Aryan Greek encounter was marked with an unusual degree of mutual respect, all subsequent invaders, such as huns, arabs, afghans and Mongols, were dubbed by the host culture as barbarians and bringers of primitive cultures. yet contact between the cultures of the Sanskritic Great Tradition and Perso-Arabic Great Tradition displays a mutual fascination as does cultural contact during the early period of British rule. on the other hand, the subsequent arrogation of cultural superiority by colonial rulers appears to have inhibited the mutuality of exchanges through which cultures reinvented themselves throughout indian history. Benedict anderson, in Imagined Communities, contrasts the sacral communities of the past with nations, which he defines as limited. He observes that unlike national borders, boundaries of the past were porous and fluid (1992). While the discourse of cultural invasion is predicated on the presence of boundaries, it seems fairly obvious that the boundaries between the region the arabs referred to as al-hind and the Islamic kingdoms of Persia and the Arab world were permeable, permitting flows of people, goods and culture. A recent study, The Making of the Indo-Islamic world, shows that the frontiers of al-hind, adjacent to the Persian province of Khurasan, reveal an intermingling of cultures as they were ruled by a succession of Persian, Indian, Central Asian and Chinese rulers (Wink 2004). The political importance of the region lies not only in its being the mouth of the land invasions of india but also because it was part of the main caravan routes. Trade and conquest created interpenetrating zones in the past through which culture flowed unobstructed by artificial boundaries. The Khyber Pass, a wide and low passage, through which Central asian nomads crossed into india, offers the perfect metaphor for border-crossings. The Pass’s geographical location makes its function as the historical borderland of contact and cross-fertilizations between successions of invading cultures and local tribal constituencies in a very different way from “the third space”. The analogy for the interconnected space and porous boundaries of the past is the darrah, the local name for the Khyber, which is Persian for “pass” and the facilitators of the flows were the khanabadosh, the peripatetic communities who not only transported goods but also diffused culture across the darrah.9 The darrah, the historic entry point connecting india to the world by land, features prominently in the history of invasion. But the pass has also served as the entry point for flows of 9 People in the region used the local name for the Pass, darrah (Personal communication from a migrant from Dera Ismail Khan).

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goods, culture and people10 in a parallel history of contact establishing the contact zones of the past revealed by Annie Coombes (Brah and Coombes 2000). It is this history of contact among the ordinary folks of the past that has been erased in the discontinuous space of modern nation states. The premise of discontinuity continues to govern the policing of physical boundaries even in the era of globalization. The policing of the darrah signifies the closure of the penetrable boundaries that Anderson had identified in the sacral communities of the past. jan nederveen Pieterse states that “the imperial frontiers are not only geographical frontiers, where the ‘civilized’ and the ‘barbarians’ confront and contact one another; they are also frontiers of status and ethnicity which run through imperialized societies, as in the form of the colonial ‘colour bar’” (2001). however, the north Western Frontier Province, the frontier of the British empire in India, was not such an imperial frontier, with its shocking segregation and mixing of colour-coded difference in the person of the mulatto. recent studies have investigated religious, economic and cultural flows through this region from Central Asia facilitated by trade networks, pilgrimage and travel in addition to those by invasion (Markovits 2000; Rao and Casimir 2003). In particular, Joseph Berland’s fascinating study of the khanabadosh or the peripatetic communities of the North Western Frontier of undivided Panjab testifies to the incessant flow of culture across the darrah through “the other nomads” (2003: 104).11 Berland identifies mobility as the essence of the peripatetic niche and maintains that mobility, flexibility and resourcefulness and “a willingness to engage with the Other” that Ulf Hannerz views as the essence of genuine cosmopolitanism marks “the other nomads” (Berland 2003: 114; Hannerz 1990: 239). Berland points out that the pukiwas’ preference for “a multitude of resources” that is in accord with the peripatetic imperatives of flexibility, freedom and resourcefulness displays not only an orientation towards “the others” but also a competence to find one’s way into other cultures through accumulation and intergenerational transmission of detailed levels of ecocultural knowledge about “the others” (2003: 124). The discovery of “the other nomads” helps us put together an older history of mobility 10 “Today’s roma people of europe (popularly called the ‘gypsies’, a term that they regard as a pejorative) are of Indian origin and have lived as wanderers in Europe for nearly a thousand years. it is believed that they originated in northwest india, in a region including gandhara, Panjab, and rajasthan. in europe, they survived by being musicians and performers, because european society did not assimilate them even after a thousand years. They have accepted their plight as street people without a ‘home’ as such. Their history in Europe is filled with attempts to eradicate them in various ways” (Malhotra 2006). gypsies, who refer to themselves by a generic name “rom” are believed to have descended from rajputs, or jats from india who had migrated from old Panjab, haryana, Delhi and Himachal Pradesh to foreign lands (Shashi 1990: 9). Suresh Kumar Pillai’s documentary Purano Manush captures the plight of roma in Kosovo. 11 Khanabadosh is a Persian term meaning “house-on-shoulder” used by sedentary populations to lump all nomads who view themselves as belonging to specific groups or refer to themselves as pukiwas (Berland 2003: 108).

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and cosmopolitanism, which involved ordinary folks who moved in the past in the service of others (2003: 104). Geographers of space such as David Harvey, Doreen Massey, Akhil Gupta and james Ferguson have highlighted infography’s role in respatialization and reinscription of modern geographies and cartographies.12 arguing that our societies are constructed around flows or “the purposeful, repetitive, programmable sequences of exchange and interaction between physically disjointed positions held by social actors”, Manuel Castells, in The rise of the Network Society, proposed that there was a “new spatial form characteristic of social practices that dominate and shape the network society: the space of flows” (2000: 412). He defined the space of flows as “the material organization of time-sharing social practices that work through flows” (2000: 412). Arjun Appadurai, in Modernity at Large: The Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, has extended Castells’ notion of the space of flows in formulating his concept of “scape” to examine the new cultural landscape (1996: 27–47). Appadurai proposes the notion of “scape”, which when combined with appropriate prefixes – ethno-, media-, techno-, finance- and ideo- – offers a framework for examining the “new global cultural economy” as “a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order that cannot any longer be understood in terms of existing center-periphery models” (1996: 32). These various “scapes” suggest an alternative spatial rendering of the present, one that is not “fixed” as a typical landscape might be, but one of various “scapes” of disjunctive sizes, amorphous, and flowing. The reconfiguration of spaces as interlinked in the imagery of flows reinscribes the discontinuous and fragmented spaces of modernity to challenge the constructedness of political boundaries and contest the representation of the statecentric division of space as natural. as a result, places are released in telemetric space not only from the condition of contiguity but also from political boundaries though they might reveal themselves to be bounded in altogether different ways. even though geographers have challenged the discontinuity of space on the basis of global flows enabled through improved communication technologies, the binaries of core and periphery, centre and margin, local and global, continue to dominate current debates in globalization. globalization is still visualized as a relation between places, which are seen as discrete and disconnected. The cultural imperialism debate remains anchored in the anachronistic model of discrete, disconnected spaces imagined as nations and related to one another in a hierarchy. Following Castells use of the term, the imagery of flows, networks and crossings has become normalized in the description of the movement of people, goods, ideas and capital in the discourse of globalization. Flows have been visualized in the 12 Doreen Massey drew upon David harvey’s idea of “time-space compression” brought about by new technologies to put forward her view of places as multiple processes that are porous (Harvey 1990; Massey 1993). Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson compared the discontinuous space of modernity with the contiguous space of postmodernity and delinked space from place and identity (Gupta and Ferguson 1997).

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new global configuration as unidirectional with a distinction between those who “initiate the flows” and those who “receive” them. Doreen Massey, for instance, uses the term “the power-geometry of time-space compression” to explain that “different social groups, and different individuals are placed in very different ways in relation to these flows and interconnections” (1993: 235). But while the digital divide is very real, as pointed out by theorists of globalization, global flows have proved to be direction insensitive. There are as many instances of flows to the West as from the West. This happens in two ways. The technologies used to disseminate Western cultures are appropriated by small groups within the nonWestern world to communicate with one another and with the world. Conversely, transnational media themselves divert the flows in the direction of the West in a multicultural celebration of difference. Their multidirectionality has led to a degree of interpenetration such that a binary division of the world is no longer possible. As a systemic structure, the space of flows controls people’s lives in less simplistic ways than those envisaged in the cultural imperialism thesis. if the global has penetrated the most remote parts of the world, the global itself has been constructed through its incorporation of local difference. in the globalized world, old imperial centres have been displaced by new centres, which are not located in the euro-american world alone. in the face of the dissolution of boundaries and binaries, how is one to understand the oppositionality of the local and the global? even if one approaches this binary in its economic dimension, that is, as the movement of global capital, the opposition becomes difficult to sustain due to glocalization. globalization, understood as a relation between places, would have to be reconceptualized. The imagery of networks, nodes, webs and links perfectly describes the contemporary flows of Bhangra, the Panjabi harvest dance, in real and virtual spaces. Bhangra is a Panjabi performance tradition, originating in harvest rituals, which is now associated with all birth-related ceremonies. Though the origins of Bhangra go back to 400 BCE, the present forms have evolved in the last five hundred years or so with the latest being only as old as the new nation state. a more recent development in Bhangra is a new genre of music produced by British asian youth through the hybridization of traditional dhol or drum beats with Western instruments and rhythms that circulates freely between Panjab and the various sites of Panjabi migration and has become a part of global youth culture. Bhangra’s global flows “abandon conceptual systems founded upon ideas of center, margin, hierarchy, and linearity” and replace them with “ones of multilinearity, nodes, links, and networks” (Landow 1997: 99). This book will trace Bhangra’s global flows that have been facilitated by digital networks and relocate Bhangra in a global economy of circulation to introduce a disjuncture in the cultural imperialism thesis. arguing that technologies and media often produce effects radically different from those intended by their producers, the book shows that Bhangra’s flows subvert global hegemonies by altering the relations between diasporas and homelands, the global and the local music industry, cosmopolitans

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and locals, and producers and consumers to produce new virtual communities in which marginalized rusticity is valorized. The book foregrounds the flows of Bhangra in “the space of flows” in which texts circulate like decontextualized commodities in multiple directions interrogating the attachment of identity and culture to bounded spaces such as the nation. as opposed to the discontinuous space of modernity represented through boundaries and frontiers, it aims to foreground Bhangra flows against the older imagining of the continuity of space that has returned in the interconnected space of postmodernity. While the location of Bhangra in the space of flows provides a better understanding of the abstract structures that govern the material condition of world power and order the empire, the return to an older imagining of space embeds it in an earlier and different history of globalization to show that invasion need not always lead to cultural glottophobia but can be a catalyst to cultural reinvention. Not only are Bhangra’s flows multidirectional, they are also regulated by a logic that can be reduced neither to a national nor to a transnational hegemony. Bhangra’s flows across its various sites and neighbourhoods are channelled through informational systems that elude national or transnational legislation. The analogy that best describes the supranational authority that regulates global flows is that of the machine “that imposes procedures of continual contractualization that lead to systematic equilibria – a machine that creates a continuous call for authority” (Hardt and Negri 2000: 14). The notion of a disinterested machine seems to predetermine the exercise of authority and action across the entire social space. The movement of Bhangra in this social space is “fixed” and “can seek its designated place within the system itself, in the hierarchical relationships attached to it” (Hardt and Negri 2000: 14). The multidirectionality of these flows, which began with Bhangra’s “return” to india from Britain in the 1990s, gives a lie to the myth of origins in which the diasporas have been positioned in relation to the homelands. Though the flows of music and artists across Bhangra’s sites and neighbourhoods emanate from ethnic, caste, class and sectarian margins, their digital visibility enables them to intervene in the cultural politics of nations. Bhangra’s sonic map, crossing national borders, reinscribes national boundaries returning, on one hand, to the memory of Undivided Panjab and expanding, on the other, to global Panjab. Whether this space without borders is really a space without orientation or not, Bhangra traffic on information superhighways flows with scant disregard for political boundaries. A visit to digitally controlled Bhangra flows reveals their imperviousness to boundaries of nations and states. satellite television and the internet objectify the space without borders/orientation in which Bhangra is made to circulate today in all directions. sonic bordercrossing, frequent in the pre-digital era through pirated or legal recordings of Pakistani ghazal maestros such as ghulam ali or Mehndi

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Hasan, becomes normative post-globalization in Bhangra’s bordercrossing flows.13 it is important to differentiate Bhangra’s transnational production, distribution and consumption enabled through digital technologies from the crossborder flows of the past based on the model of cultural exchange. Bhangra today is produced, disseminated and consumed in a transnational economy as a decontextualized commodity that might be viewed both as intensified connectivity and as a lack of orientation. Bhangra’s multilinear flows undoubtedly destabilize the meaning of centre, margin, hierarchy and linearity understood as a relation between places. The determination of places with culture in culturalist approaches to music in which fidelity to culture is interpreted as a validating criterion for musical authenticity is challenged by the decoupling of musical genres with places. The myth of origins in which the diaspora is positioned in a relation of subordination to the sending areas as centres of the production of cultural authenticity is challenged through Bhangra’s reverse flows. The originary myth cannot hold in the context of transnationalized production for diverse Bhangra genres are produced simultaneously at all Bhangra sites today. The transnationalization of production in Bhangra does not follow the logic of optimization through the splitting of marketing and manufacturing because Bhangra music is recorded and produced by diverse players in varied locations on the Bhangra map. Bhangra artists conduct live tours and record music at different locations on the globe for corporations and labels controlled by diverse capital. The travels of Bhangra and its producers across various Bhangra production centres question the way locality and cosmopolitanism have been conventionally defined. The apprehensions about an american cultural invasion have been put to rest by indigenous music channels’ continuing domination of the popular music sphere. instead, the prime instrument of “americanization”, MTv, as “both symbol and carrier of an all-pervasive global pop culture dominated by anglo-american products and tastes”, has inadvertently become an agent for the revaluation of traditional Indian cultures (Philo 2004: n.p.). The arrival of MTV and the Star package caused regional and national indigenous channels to reinvent themselves and revamp their programming. Most of these channels appropriated star and MTv’s american format for indian audiences and conditions in indian languages. MTv also appears to be showcasing local, previously obscure, artists, which brings them mass popularity and helps the domestic music industry flourish. It not only brings local music out of obscurity locally, but also brings it global visibility and recognition through events such as the MTv asia awards. Kenny santana’s “MTV Goes to Asia” article begins with the teaser “MTV is American? Think again”, and concludes, “it’s a global brand that has turned local and is helping local music turn global” (2003: n.p.).

13 ghulam ali and Mehndi hasan, ghazal singers from Pakistan, have a huge following in india.

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The prospect of a global music conglomerate driving local competition out of business is reversed by the emergence of a local music industry cashing in on Bhangra’s popularity. The model of a single producer imposing national cultural agendas on many gullible consumers is complicated by the presence of a strong local music industry controlling and dominating the Indian music market. Like MTV, transnational music giants like Sony control a very small proportion of the huge Indian music market. The Bhangra music market today is dominated by a virtual newcomer in the Indian music industry called T-Series, which broke into the monopolistic Indian music market by creating and exploiting a niche for regional music and musical genres neglected by the music industry leader saregama hMv. Though T-series is often accused of indulging in unethical practices, its growth path charts a musical success story, which challenged other national and global monopolistic structures. While saregama hMv concentrated on the traditional Hindi film music segment, T-Series India diversified into new popular music segments led by Bhangra. Before saregama hMv could say “shava shava”, T-Series had created and cornered a huge regional music market.14 T-series’ strategy for taking on the national behemoth was large volumes and low pricing as a step toward sonic democraticization. T-series’ low priced cassettes, which brought recordings (copied or printed) of global as well as Indian artists within the reach of the average indian consumer, percolated as “americanized” regional music to the working classes. Few Indians could afford to buy Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan under the World Music label. But they could listen to his rerecorded mixes as well as those of other World Music artists in a single music cassette for a fraction of the cost. Thus, the diffusion of American cultural values in India took place through a little known Delhi based music company owned by a former fruit juice stall owner. The cultural imperialism thesis is also premised on a globalized market’s appropriation of local voices and control of local industry through its vast resources. But “the duped native” theory appears too simplistic in the present situation. The myth of the native artist exploited by global musical giants is refuted by the artist’s manipulation of the global popular cultural space to corner a larger share of the market than the artist’s regional location would allow. The signing of Bhangra stars by international music giants, which converted them into global brand names, was contingent on artistic and musical compromise in the interest of marketability. The classic example of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan illustrates how third world artists managed to retain artistic integrity within the constraints imposed by a mega music mart. But artists also found an alternative to their reification and anthropologization by launching their own labels. Bally sagoo, often accused of complying with international music trends and markets, markets not only his own music under his label ishqrecords but also showcases new ethnic talent in a move to sidestep music market’s hegemonic structures. on the face of it, diasporic artists might appear to be collaborating with a global music industry in cannibalizing folk art for self-promotion or anthropologizing it 14

Shava shava is a common Bhangra loop.

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for Western consumption. But sonic collaborations between diasporic metropolitan and Panjabi folk artists reveal a mutual cooption that demystifies “the duped native” myth. Folk artists willingly consent to the hybridization of their music by diaspora artists in the hope of gaining global visibility. if diasporic artists or global music industry appropriates folk voices as exotic or authentic, native artists seem only too happy to play along and be party to their self-exoticization as a strategic career move. Bhangrascape is a space of mutual cooption and cannibalization refuting the victim and victimizer fallacy. it would be more accurate to say that Bhangra practitioners resist within and in spite of their participation in global sonic commerce. however, the global culture industry dupes native artists in a more insidious manner than the way it is conceptualized in the debate on transnational imperialism. Though the transnational music industry has made room for native voices, the native is allowed to speak only as the other. A new ethnography is at work, often replicating the ethnographer native collaborator nexus, in anthropologizing and archaizing the native. The native is once more subjected to the ethnographic gaze, and is thus rendered speechless by the appropriation or mediation of his voice. The Bhangra artist is “the native-as-image” defamiliarized by being dropped into a foreign setting (Chow 1994: 51). The camera juxtaposes him against alien images and decontextualizes the native artist to accentuate his foreignness. The turban, the beard and the Bhangra costume are obvious ethnic signifiers standing out against the metropolitan ambience of the setting. in the absence of these visible identity markers, skin colour and bodily structure are highlighted to signify ethnic difference. The subordination of lyrics to sound and beat in contemporary Bhangra texts, inserts Panjabi in an alien cultural context, which proclaims its foreignness. Bhangra legends locked in their frames and silhouetted against a modern EuroAmerican background appear to be denuded of dignity and interiority. Embedded in a discourse of otherness to pander to the West’s fantasies of the self, the native artist redefines the self within this space. He follows a smart strategy for resisting his objectification. By doing the unexpected, by refusing to remain “within the frame”, he inserts himself forcefully in the global cultural space. Though the folk artist might participate in the popular cultural game, he makes sure that the game is played on his terms, while making cosmetic alterations to adapt to global tastes, by remaining grounded in a specific indigenous musical heritage. The popular cultural format attempts to contain the native’s voice in the discourse of otherness. But this voice breaks through at several moments to insert itself powerfully in the spaces of the self as an otherness redefining the self. The popular cultural format might make him sound like an exotic curiosity speaking gibberish, but the native is certainly speaking to those who can understand his language. Bhangra beat includes but Bhangra’s Panjabi lyrics lock in a Panjabi space protected from the outsider’s profane gaze. Placing Panjabi difference in lyrical untranslatability, the Bhangra artist speaks to the Panjabi folk. The outsider eavesdrops on Panjabis “talking that talk” in which the outsider becomes the object of the native’s gaze. Despite the market’s attempt to recast Bhangra in a popular cultural vocabulary,

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Bhangra retains its folk and regional specificity in its Panjabi lyrics and ritualized movements and continues to speak to the folk. one needs to understand that cultural battles in india are not restricted to the high and low, classical and popular cultural binary of the West. Popular culture itself is a contested zone. The high–low dichotomy has been visualized in india as an interdependence of great and Little Traditions.15 The indian cultural masternarrative projects india’s multiple Little Traditions as feeding the great indian Tradition. But the great and Little Traditions’ interdependence is essentially hierarchical because the Little Traditions have always occupied the low end of the scale. indian popular cultural space reveals a similar asymmetry between the national and the regional. The film-dominated Indian popular cultural scene is defined almost completely by Hindi film music. Regional film music is popular in small linguistic pockets and non-film music has a very minute share of the music market. Popular culture space, inherently suspicious of modernity’s high– low opposition, has interrogated its privileging of high cultures by breaking the boundaries between high and low. Bhangra, a marginalized folk tradition, re-entering indian cultural space via this popular cultural space, is thereby able to challenge traditional hierarchies. its acquisition of global visibility, as it is circulated through this space, destabilizes the indian cultural master-narrative in which regional and folk cultural traditions are relegated to secondariness. The global space, therefore, has proved to be beneficial to local vernacular traditions, which had remained buried under the national master-narrative. in destabilizing traditional boundaries and hierarchies, it has redefined the Indian cultural sphere in which regional and folk cultures now play an increasingly important role. Therefore, the global visibility accorded to a regional folk culture in this global space has facilitated its nationalization. The willingness of non-Panjabi speakers in different parts of India, who were introduced to Bhangra through MTv, to sing along and dance to Bhangra tunes accords it a national character. Bhangra incorporates “american” inputs to reinvent itself as a national music destabilizing the indian cultural master-narrative in the process. Bhangra hybrids, integrating popular cultural elements have become a national music, which goes by the name Bhangrapop. Though a room might have been created for Bhangra by British asian Bhangra on the national cultural landscape, Bhangrapop has taken over the national popular consciousness. Bhangrapop circulates through the music videos of stars like Daler Mehndi but is also mainstreamed though its large presence in the popular Hindi film. Its popularity is reflected as much in the number of albums sold as in the impact it has had on other regional musics. Surfing through multiple regional language channels on Indian television, one is greeted with Tamil, Telugu, Bengali or Oriya imitations of Hindi film influenced 15

Challenging the divide posited between “high” Sanskrit and “low” cultural heritages, Venkat Rao argues that both domains are a part of a common mnemoculture (Rao 2005: 2). For a discussion on the distinction between Great (marga) and Little (desi) Traditions see Powell (1992: 12).

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Bhangra. Bhangra’s hybridization has deconstructed the hindi national hegemony by inserting a regional culture in the national popular space, thus opening a path for other marginalized regional cultures. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the field can serve as a guide for tracing Bhangra’s transmutation from Panjabi harvest ritual to global spectacle, its ejection into the profane and its reappropriation into the sacred. Bourdieu defines the field as the space of positions and position-takings. Contemporary Bhangra developments involve both “constructing the space of positions and the position-takings” (Bourdieu 1994: 50). It is embedded in a field of struggles in which positiontakings are inseparable from the amount of specific capital or recognition attached to artistic positions (1994: 51). As Bhangra takes new positions in relation to coexistent positions, it also brings about a corresponding shift in positions. since positions are always defined in relation to other positions, the specific capital that Bhangra is accorded in its traditional position as peasant dance is by virtue of its opposition to classical dance. in the social constitution of Bhangra in the indian aesthetic discourse in which academic and cultural institutions, university teachers, publishers, critics and other agents play a major part, Bhangra’s meanings are produced through distinctions made between classical and folk, national and regional. Though the field of cultural and artistic production is normally seen as the site of struggle over the definition of art and culture, what is really at stake is the power of dominant forces to impose dominant definitions of art and the artist on others. Due to the virtual monopoly of artistic legitimacy enjoyed by certain castes, classes and languages in the production of discourse about art and culture in India, folk traditions have, no doubt, been recognized but only in relation to and supplementary to the Great Indian Tradition. Bhangra, as Panjabi folk, carries the additional burden of “crassness” imposed by the classifiers to distinguish themselves as discerning. Bhangra’s position-takings are effected less through changes in the conditions of its production than a fundamental transformation in the production of its meaning through which Panjabi brashness and crassness is consecrated as rustic authenticity creating new Bhangra positions. The production of the global discourse in relation to Bhangra through its globalization appears to reconstruct the space of national positions. i perceive an elevation of Bhangra’s social position through the consecration of Panjabi folk with value by new social agents who have the power to impose their dominating principles on others. Bhangra’s marginalized folk position is now inscribed by the capital accorded “primitive” art in global consumerism. Bhangra’s gaining global visibility in “primitivist” returns in the West constructs for it new positions that enable new position-takings, which redefine the cultural field. In the global cultural field, it attempts to reposition itself from ethnic minority music to “new asian Kool”, displacing the classical Indian hippie Kool. Its global position-taking, in turn, enables it to challenge “national” cultural hierarchies by its taking of national positions, opening the way for similar appropriations by other regional musics. Bhangra’s national and global position-takings construct new positions for ethnic music globally and regional folk locally that disturb extant relations of power. But

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the reconstruction of the space of positions and position-takings occurs through the reinvestment of authority in new agents in the production of meaning. The concern for the erosion of local difference conceals a complex intermeshing with anxieties about loss of the power to legitimate social difference by making taste distinctions. The homology between cultural authority and social domination in the field of cultural production becomes only too visible as new positiontakings in the cultural field also affect social relations between classes, castes and ethnicities. The struggle in the Bhangra field for cultural validity and legitimacy is really the struggle between dominant (bourgeois, urban, intellectual) and nondominant (working-class, rustic, popular) classes to impose their definitions and meanings of culture on the rest. Whether non-dominant classes are empowered on the sociological plane or not, their new position-takings enabled by their global visibility permit them to intervene in the arbitration of cultural capital. But this occurs through a radical transformation in the conditions of artistic production undermining artistic autonomy and the authority of cultural arbiters privileging the autonomous principle. The investment of cultural products with specific capital in the field of Bhangra production occurs through a complex play between what Bourdieu names heteronomous and autonomous principles of hierarchization.16 independence from economics in products animated by autonomous considerations loses its value as cultural capital with the meeting of the dominant position with the heteronomous principle. Through the intersection of the “the space of flows” with the old continuous spaces, Bhangra becomes positioned both as a transnational and as a global culture. The intensification of ethnic networks through improved communication and travel technologies produces transnational cultures such as Bhangra. Bhangra plays an important role in connecting Panjabi diasporas with one another and with the homeland and in consolidating a transnational Panjabi identity. as a transnational Panjabi cultural form, Bhangra belongs to jihad rather than McWorld.17 Bhangra has been appropriated in the construction of a Panjabi nationalism, which can be very exclusive and very concerned with boundary maintenance. The connection of Bhangra to Sikh sites, Bhangra artists’ commitment to the Sikh cause and vituperative internet discussions centred on Bhangra reveal a very exclusive universe in which even hindu or Muslim Panjabis might not be welcome. at other times, Bhangra might embrace Panjabi speakers of all creeds and castes to contest 16

Bourdieu views the artistic field as the site of a double hierarchy. He calls the first the heteronomous principle of hierarchization, by which he means success, and the second, the autonomous principle, which refers to “degree specific consecration (literary or cultural prestige)” (Bourdieu 1994: 58). 17 In his book Jihad vs. Mcworld, Benjamin Barber (1995) employs the metaphors to point out that the homogenizing wave of globalization, which some have equated to the rise of transnational capitalism or McDonaldization, is set off by increasing fragmentation through the intensification of religious, sectarian, ethnic, gender and class boundaries that he calls jihad.

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national sovereignty through the imagining of a transnational Panjabi community. yet Bhangra is simultaneously a culture of globalization. either way it integrates Panjab in the world system to an extent that happenings in Panjab are influenced by what happens elsewhere. Demystifying Bhangra as a culture of globalization, Bhangra has moved a long way from its origins in Panjab evolving into multiple mutants reflected in its multiple definitions, which weave phonetic difference into the semantic. Bhangra (pung`raa) is the Panjabi dance that “originated as an expression of the celebratory mood of the harvest festival called Baisakhi and later graduated to being performed on almost every Panjabi social occasion, such as a wedding etc.”18 (see Figures 1.1 and 1.2). Bhangra (`bhaang ra) is the Bhangra tributary that has emerged as “national Indian music”. Bhangra (baeng`raa) is a made-in-Britain musical genre that hybridizes Panjabi folk rhythms with Western melodies and the beats of reggae, hip-hop and rap. i have named the three Bhangra streams panjabibhangra, desibhangra and vilayetibhangra respectively, though they may be found to intersect with one another. Although talk of origins is not quite in keeping with postmodern fashions, Bhangra definitions – even DJ Ritu’s introduction to contemporary developments in Bhangra in The rough Guide to world Music – tend to return to origin stories, Bhangra began life as a folk dance, celebrating the harvest and New Year mela (festival) in the fertile Panjab region of northwest India. It moved into the towns and cities around 200 years ago, and became established as the Panjab’s most popular dance – a position it still holds. It kept its rural past in the dance steps which mimic agricultural activities – sowing, reaping, and so on – and in its name, which came from the word bhang – hemp, which is grown across the Panjab. (DJ Ritu 1999: n.p.)

Unlike other classical musical or classical-derived folk traditions, Bhangra is not sanctified by the metaphysical myths of origin as those sacralizing the etymology

18 “The dance originated as an expression of the celebratory mood of the harvest festival called Baisakhi and later graduated to being performed on almost every Panjabi social occasion, such as a wedding etc. The exclusively male dancers dress in bright, colourful attire made up primarily of a white shirt, a cloth wrapped around the waist (called lungi) and a turban. a performance is normally accompanied by singing and, most significantly, the beat of the dhol drum and an instrument reminiscent of an enlarged pair of tongs called chimta. The accompanying songs are small couplets composed in the Panjabi language called Bolis. They relate to celebration, love, patriotism, or current social issues” (“Bhangra”. webster’s Dictionary. Online. 2004).

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Figure 1.1

Panjabi male dancers

Figure 1.2

Panjabi female dancers

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of sangeet or mausiqui.19 The sole reference to Bhangra’s metaphysical origins i found suggests bacchanalian revelry rather than mystic musical trance as in other music myths.20 Both the harvest dance and its stylistic descriptions reinforce its secular social basis in the pastoral or the martial. While the Panjabi dance scholar Nahar Singh and the folksinger Pammi Bai vouch for Bhangra’s pastoral origins, the music producer atul sharma locates it in the martial exercises of soldiers (Personal communication 2006). The peasant work-song, “which mimic(s) agricultural activities”, was gradually consecrated in rural and urban centres as sacred Panjabi rite and performed to mark festivals, marriages and birth-related ceremonies. But its everyday provenance made for easy appropriation by new ethnicities clustering around Bhangra. Dj ritu continues, Bhangra’s strong dance sensibility, led by the dhol – a loud and playful wooden barrel-drum – calling people to the harvest celebration dance, and its light, romantic and often humorous lyrics, lent itself to crossing over into a “street style” pop music. (DJ Ritu 1999: n.p.)

A return to the history of Bhangra’s Panjabi classification validates boundaries of region, gender, movement, mood and context defying the speech, tune or movement theories employed in Western musicology.21 similarly, its interweaving of dance, with instrumental music and vocal expression challenges the generic boundaries of culture studies. even if one were to give in to the myth of origins in a purist Sangeet, the Sanskrit term for music, has a metaphysical origin in Hindu myth just as the Urdu, mausiqui has in the Quranic tradition (Bohlman 1988). For the metaphysical origins of sangeet see Powell (1992). 20 i found an allusion tracing Bhangra’s origins to the worship of shiva in which shiva worshippers, inebriated by bhang (hemp), would break into a tumultuous tandava (Shiva’s dance of destruction), which might be cited to link Bhangra to Hindu dance traditions and myths. I thank Milind Malshe for pointing out that bhang (to break, broken) might be located in Sanskrit musical terminology. Another reference I found confirms its pastoral roots: “While Bhangra historians speculate the dance may have originated in the time of the wars with Alexander, no one is sure it existed until about five hundred years ago. around the 14th or 15th Century, Panjabi wheat farmers danced and sang songs about village life to help pass the time while working in the fields. With time, these became part of harvest celebrations at Bhaisakhi (April 13) festivals, as the sight of their crops growing invigorated the farmers. From here the dance quickly moved through all divisions of class and education, eventually becoming a part of weddings, new year parties, and other important occasions” (Punjab online 2005). Nahar Singh’s (1988) work on Panjabi dance genres provides us an idea of the originary forms, but, as Schreffler (2004b) argues, Bhangra and other Panjabi dance genres after 1947 were re-produced in the consolidation of post-colonial Panjabi identity. 21 The following classification, for instance, switches between region, style, social or religious location: 19

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vein, the search for origins proves to be extremely problematic for a folk tradition that has been traced back to the time of Alexander’s invasion of India in 326 BCE. Where does one return to hunt for the origins of contemporary Bhangra? Does one go back to concrete gender divisions between male Bhangra and female giddha genres or to movement, region, function, or context governed distinctions between jhummar, luddi, dhamal, julli that remain unaffected by concrete identities?22 or should one confine oneself to their post-partition amalgamation into the generic Bhangra through the collaboration of aristocratic and institutional interests? Considering that these genres glide smoothly from primitive to folk, what musical category should be adopted to describe Bhangra?23 Gibb Schreffler, an American ethnomusicologist, has uncovered the history of the appropriation of “bhangra”, a genre marginalized to the more popular jhummar, after the partition of Panjab in 1947 in the production of post-independence Panjabi cultural identity (Schreffler 2004b: n.p.). Bhangra was the generic name given to a performance tradition that homogenized a number of diverse region, gender, function and movement-based Panjabi genres after 1947. With this, Panjabi dance could no longer perform its traditional boundaries. Bhangra has amalgamated so many genres and movements by now that exclusionary classificatory distinctions based on movement, speech or tunes provide little guidance. Musical categories collapse in the interactions between primitive, folk and popular, oral and literate, commercial and non-commercial visible on the Bhangra circuit. Most Bhangra definitions, despite their disciplinary divergences, concur on its folk origins. But contemporary Bhangra mutants are impossible to contain within classificatory boundaries such as primitive, folk or popular and others, designed for music. • Sialkoti: Dance of Sialkot. Performed in counter-clockwise circle with one leg in the air similar to the dance posture of the hindu god nataraja that suggests the possibility of sacral origins. • Jhummar: jungle dance of the jhang-sial, which has a tribal sounding beat – 16 beats on the drum per cycle – believed to date back to the Aryan period. • Luddi: Victory dance of warriors; literary and historical records show that it existed as early as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. • Dhamal: Sufi dance that could be performed naked or almost naked by Sufis. • Pathania: Dance of the Pathans, an afghan tribal group, is performed with a rumaal or kerchief in a circle before each member heads or spins towards the inside of the circle to collapse it, move out and then back in. • Phummian: Dance of Jammu that involves swinging arms back and forth over one’s head. There are other dance forms, some of them female, such as sammi (dance dedicated to a fabled girl), gidha (female dance), malwai gidha, etc. 22 Schreffler argues that the distinction between male and female genres might have been produced after independence because of the existence of male versions of genres (malwai giddha) designated as female such as giddha (2005). 23 Primitive and folk are some of the categories identified by the Indian musicologist Ashok Ranade in his book Essays in Indian Ethnomusicology (1998).

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Similarly, the restriction of folk music to a distinct geographical or social location, based on considerations of community or place, underlying the originary focus of folklore studies, is asymptotic with Bhangra’s multidirectional flows, which were accelerated by Bhangra’s “return” to Panjab and India from the British-asian diaspora in the 1990s. Bhangra’s global dispersal by Panjabi migrations to different parts of the world could easily be explained through the “wandering melodies” thesis. But its return requires a deeper understanding of relations between space, place and nation in contemporary spatial formations. Bhangra’s revival in global Panjab disengages folk music from the political nation while restoring it to the ethnic nation. The Panjabi diaspora’s revival of Bhangra genres decouples Panjabi folk music from the region’s physical geography but it remains geographically oriented through its invocation of the memory of the eco-region.24 The privileging of Bhangra mutants participating in the production of a postmodern Panjabi technotopia to those dealing with lived rural or urban realities in Panjab, India or the diaspora in Bhangra’s global marketing disturbs the deterministic relation between places, cultures and music in homology theories. Displaying features of both the primitive and folk musical categories as defined by the Indian musicologist Ashok Ranade, traditional Bhangra presents a classificatory dilemma (1998: 2–14). Though the two categories might intersect in their collectivity, orality and cultural specificity, the primacy of rhythm in Bhangra and the integration of song and dance with music should favour its classification as primitive music. But the crucial feature that distinguishes Bhangra is its ancient roots, ritual character and attachment to life processes that ranade detects in primitive music. I would settle the problem by defining Bhangra as a Panjabi harvest ritual and privilege its non-musical contexts over producer or product oriented definitions. Turner’s definition of ritual as “a stereotyped sequence of activities involving gestures, words, and objects, performed in a sequestered place, and designed to influence preternatural entities or forces on behalf of the actors’ goals and interests” will do for my purpose (1977: 183). Bhangra is a seasonal rite, “hallowing a culturally defined moment of change in the climatic cycle or the inauguration of an activity such as planting, harvesting, or moving from winter to summer pasture” but also contingent, “held in response to an individual or collective” marking crisis to demarcate passage from one stage of life to another (1977: 183). 24

The romanticization of rusticity in the imagining of Panjab in the national and diasporic media, which is appropriated in diasporic self constitution, is best illustrated in the rap resurrection of gurdas Mann’s ode to Panjab “apna Punjab hove”:

i wish i were in our own Panjab apna Panjab hove swigging homemade liquor ghar di sharaab hove while reclining regally baan da manjaa hove on a string cot manje te baitha jat like a princeling banya nawaab hove (Gurdas Mann. “Apna Punjab Hove”)

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This definition, however, requires an introduction to the play of the profane in the sacred in Bhangra through which it comes to perform the Panjabi sacred despite its profane secular origins. Durkheim defines the sacred and the profane through their relationality rather than any fixed property. Bhangra, too, defines them with respect to spatial and temporal dimensions and performance contexts rather than intrinsic differences. But it challenges the Durkheimian condition of absolute heterogeneity through the permission given in ritual performance to the profane to engage within the sacred. The prohibitions underlying the notions of contagion and contact continue to be attached to the sacred here despite the “the promiscuous mingling” of the two through the elaborate rules governing permissible and forbidden contact and profaning transgressions. spatial and temporal relations, collectivity and individuality, body and bodily movements, gaze and proxemics are made to regulate ritualized contact between the sacred and the profane. The notion of liminality and liminal phenomena can elucidate Bhangra’s incorporation of lowliness and sacredness, of homogeneity and comradeship to construct the social in an undifferentiated communitas or communion of equal individuals submitting to ritual authority. The Bakhtinian notion of the carnival as the “temporary suspension of all hierarchic distinctions and barriers among men … and of the prohibitions of usual life” might explain the play of the low within the sacred in Bhangra performance (Bakhtin 1981: 15). The time-space governed by the “grotesque body”, the joyously eating, drinking, lusting and odour-emitting regions of corpora, sanctions the expression of carnal pleasures in the Bhangra carnivalesque. Bhangra themes, like those of the carnival, twist, mutate, and invert standard themes of societal makeup by mocking those in authority and parodying official ideas. But the prohibitions of usual life in Bhangra performance are related to the carnival’s particular time-space that legitimates the incursion of the profane into the sacred through the “extravagant juxtapositions” of high and low, upper-class and lower-class, spiritual and material, young and old, male and female. even the most puritanical would concede that the rules for speaking in Bhangra bolis, determined by “festive pleasure” and bringing “life down to earth”, temporarily enable the sublimation of repressed desires. Bolian listening relations openly encourage public declaration, bolian pana, of affection and even fetishization of the female body, in the carnivalesque spirit of unbridled lustiness. in Critique of Exotica, John Hutnyk offered an extremely trenchant critique of the culture industry that exoticizes third world music in the name of multiculturalism and visibility (2000). I extend Hutnyk’s argument from the post-colonial perspective to show that Bhangra’s commoditization in global capitalism twice fetishizes the fetishized female body of Panjabi patriarchy, but the exotic semiotics of the neo-imperial gaze equally fetishize the Panjabi male body complicating Bhangra’s looking relations. Borrowing the template of visual anthropology and travel photography, transnational capitalism packages Panjabi rites for global consumerist pleasures. simultaneously framed as the observer and the observed, the Panjabi male/artist is as disempowered as the female object of his adoration

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through the multiple gazes that may be discerned at play in Bhangra. The object of the imperial gaze, the Panjabi male is differently positioned by different gazes in relation to power. if the female is doubly disempowered as the object of the male and imperial gaze, the male is emasculated by the exoticizing imperial gaze. In the redefinition of Bhangra’s looking relations in the global culture industry that distributes the global voyeuristic gaze between Panjabi male and female bodies, the male artist/protagonist who is looked at as he looks at his beloved loses the power that comes from looking. I see the imperialized and exoticizing gaze as positioning the Bhangra male body with respect to the white male gaze in a gendered looking relation in which the male Bhangra body, too, becomes an object for white consumption. The power to look now shifts to the global voyeur peeping into exotic Panjabi fields and homesteads to view Panjabi males looking at Panjabi females in a complex mix of scopophilia and voyeurism. Purist fixation on textual obscenity, therefore, has diverted attention from the obscene gestures of pornographic visual technologies and rapacious commodity markets scanning the world’s hidden spaces for exotic delights. The visibility given Panjabi folk through the global music industry deterritorializes it as a spectacle that Debord defines as “a world vision that has become objectified” and a language that “consists of signs of the dominant system of production” (1983: 5). Bhangra’s specularization that occurs through its dislocation from its participative context facilitates its objectification. Rather than content, the gaze and the looking relations can demarcate the sacred from the profane because the meaning of the Bhangra album alters depending on the context in which it is placed. The image of Panjabis in ceremonial settings acquires different meanings depending on whether it is viewed through the respectful gaze in Panjabi family settings or the exoticizing gaze darting about in search of new pleasures in nightclubs. Understanding spectacle as a social relation among people and as a world vision mediated by images, i view the switch from participatory performance to musical or dance text as the transitory moment in Bhangra history and use it to distinguish between the ritual and the spectacle. Grotowski defines ritual as “performance, an accomplished action, an act” and calls “degenerated ritual as a spectacle” (qtd. in Schechner 1993: 204). The feature that I isolate in the spectacle to distinguish it from ritual is separation. as the universal language of separation and alienation that pretends to reunite, i oppose it to the performance of collectivity and participation through ritual to distinguish the sacred from the profane in Bhangra performance. While Bhangra studies have engaged with its centrality to identity formation, they have not examined the relationship between “cultural performance”, identity and sociality, particularly between the notion of “play” and communitas or resistance (Banerji and Baumann 1990; Sharma, Hutnyk and Sharma 1996; Bennett 1997; Dudrah 2002a; Ballantyne 2006). Similarly, Bhangra’s participation in the cultural politics of Britain has been addressed at a direct political level by being situated in the oppositionality of black cultural politics, or in youth subcultural resistance. But this privileging of forms of overt political resistance

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does not engage sufficiently with Bhangra’s generic capacity to destabilize traditional structures. Bhangra’s mobilization in a number of cultural discourses through what “many bodies accomplish through movement” requires sensitivity to the finer nuances of performance. Bhangra studies need to integrate the experientiality of performance with cultural analysis to show how expressive forms such as dance and music may produce meaning. The specific question that needs to be addressed is how cultural practices like music or dance may be used by individuals and groups to include, exclude, mobilize and resist. in addressing this question, one not only needs to focus attention on the politics of dance and music but also engage with the way bodily signifiers are mobilized in the performance of resistance or community. Roger Abraham’s definition of performance as something that persuades through providing pleasure can serve as a good starting point to understand the linkage between nachna-tapna (dancing and jumping) and cultural identity (qtd. in Carlson 1996: 14). This approach may lead us out of the politics of individual producers, consumers, states and markets to an understanding of the relation of embodied practice and to experience the affirmative as well as subversive potential of the “anti-structure” of performance. In this book, I wish to examine Bhangra as an embodied practice in which sounds and movements become pivotal to the performance and contestation of ethnocultural identity. i shall illustrate the simultaneous performance of tradition and its contestation through analyses of Bhangra performances in Panjabi and non-Panjabi contexts. in each, i shall highlight the physiological effect produced through bodily semiotics to emphasize Bhangra’s nature as embodied practice. Bhangra, as performance, merits a sophisticated deconstruction of the mobilization of sound and body in the production of affect. Music, as much as dance, involves the mobilization of the body through the production of sound effects that, in turn, produce certain vibrations in the bodies of listeners. it must be remembered that both music and dance depend on corporeal manipulation – of sound in music and of movement in dance – to produce their effect. Secondly, music, like dance, produces its effect as a pre-expressive form. it is important that Bhangra not be isolated as dance or music in its consideration as an embodied practice. While folklore studies have placed an emphasis on the semiotics of the body in their analysis of Bhangra genres and texts, musicology either seizes on linguistic analysis or historicizes musical genres in specific cultural contexts (Leante 2004; Schreffler 2004b). Though dance studies examine Bhangra as an expressive form, they also suffer from their privileging of linguistic/verbal meaning production and from their indulgence in a mimetic reductionism in which Bhangra movements are articulated to pastoral or martial rhythms (Singh 1988). An analysis of Bhangra’s intervention in the cultural and political field ideally requires an interdisciplinary approach that marries the tools of ethnomusicology, sociology and cultural anthropology to performance theory and folklore. It is imperative that Bhangra’s cultural and political capital not be interpreted in exclusionary readings that privilege one aspect over the other. instead, Bhangra needs to be conceptualized as an integrated performance that

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employs various permutations and combinations of sounds, words, movement in varied contexts and produces varied effects on different spectators and performers, which are invariably mediated by circuits of capital and technology. Considering that Bhangra albums are produced with the music video in mind, the music video may be considered as the normative Bhangra text. Though the music video has been the prime instrument of Bhangra’s desacralization, it has a distinct advantage over the audio album in presenting Bhangra as an integrated performance. Finally, this study of Bhangra displays a strong gender bias in viewing Bhangra as an essentially male genre and in the conspicuous absence of female practitioners. My reasons for excluding female Bhangra practitioners have to do as much with Bhangra’s generic masculinity as the invisibility of female Bhangra practitioners in the Bhangra revival of the 1990s in sharp contrast to the lead role they played in the revival of Panjabi folksong in the 1940s.25

25 in contrast to the gramophone and radio where female Panjabi singers such as surinder Kaur and seema enjoyed unprecedented popularity in Panjab, the 1990s revival is dominated by male practitioners despite the presence of several talented female practitioners such as Jaspinder Narula, Rajeswari Sachdev, Anamika, Satwinder Bitti and Rani Balbir, hinting at a male domination of the field that marginalizes female performers.

Chapter 2

no Mixing Please! We are indian

i am a purdah-nashin. i never appear in public, not even before the servants. i was, however, called down from my house. i went with a purdah (veil). I was peremptorily ordered to take off my purdah. i was frightened and removed the purdah. I was then asked who assaulted Miss Sahib [Sherwood]. They threatened me that unless i named the assailant, i would be given over to the soldiers. i said, I did not know and could not name any body falsely. (Testimony of a woman in Kucha Kaurianwala or the “crawling lane” after general Dyer’s “crawling order”, in Lal 1993: n.p.)

Lower your gaze for now nimya tu kuch der pa ke rakh le hide your face behind a veil pale vitch mukhra luiska ke rai aave kari na kise de naal pyar Don’t you fall in love with anyone mundiya to bach ke rahi Beware of the Boys (Panjabi MC. “Mundian To Bach Ke”)

“What do you think of the new Bhangra mutants?” My perfunctory icebreaker to a group of Panjabi folklorists at a meeting of folklorists in Amritsar to mark the new millennium made them squirm uncomfortably. While the senior folklorists refrained from commenting, the youngest among them ventured an opinion after a quick exchange of glances, “It is not Bhangra at all”.1 “But why not?”, my persistence led to further discomfiture. The gendered norms of Panjabi modesty that prohibit mention of nudity or sexuality in female presence made the young Sikh trail off in mid sentence, eyes carefully averted, leaving me to fill in the rest, “oh kudiaan ji …” (“Those girls, you know …”). The “girls” in question were the female dancers, clad in “revealing” outfits, routinely employed in professional Bhangra performances today. Making visible not only the exposed female body on which the puritan gaze appears to be fixated but also the intimate 1

To some extent, my folklorist friend’s summary dismissal, “It is not Bhangra at all” carries some weight as contemporary Bhangra glides between at least 12 old Panjabi dance genres in making its crossovers. Bhangra’s crossovers between and across its many folk genres have occurred so frequently since the partition of Panjab in 1947 that the present objection echoes almost verbatim the response that the Khalsa College jallandar Bhangra team visiting Lyallpur (now Faisalabad in Pakistan) after partition is reported to have received from the Pakistani audience, “It is not Bhangra at all”.

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space conventionally concealed from the stranger’s profaning gaze is the subtext connecting disparate objections to Bhangra’s transmutation from Panjabi harvest rite to new asian dance music in the last decade of the twentieth century. The vernacular categories of safsuthra (Panjabi clean, healthy, pure) and ganda (Panjabi sullied, contaminated, mixed and also pornographic), deployed in distinguishing wholesome cultural practices from corruptive, provide a local framework against which the contest between purity and hybridity is played out on the indian subcontinent. By classifying Bhangra and other hybrids as ganda, cultural pundits “sample” the age-old brahminical miscegenation taboo on sonic hybridizations in the era of globalization. indian high priests’ disapproving rejoinder to the marrying metaphor invariably invoked in the popular media’s Bhangra coverage, almost a take-off on Apache Indian’s “Arranged Marriage”, is the ancient inter-caste marriage prohibition. The privileged politics of hybridity, which goes to the extent of claiming that “in black popular culture, strictly speaking, ethnographically speaking, there are no pure forms at all” (Hall 1996c: 471) is made to face the purist stance in “it is not Bhangra at all” in the cultural politics of india, which are complicated by the prevalence of traditional forms. old Bhangra genres, transformed by the cooption of several invading cultures, defy easy classification along the folk popular, pure hybrid binary. In the contemporary Bhangra universe, where popular is as likely to intrude into the folk space as folk is into the popular, generic purity can hardly offer a reliable guideline for making a distinction between folk and popular. Whether hybrid Bhangra is Bhangra at all will have to be determined by new disciplinary, cultural and theoretical constructions that interrogate any privileged position in the adjudication of authenticity. The respective claims of purity and hybridity to authenticity will depend to a large extent on whether Bhangra is defined against a theory of change or of origins. hybridity’s dependence on purity is clearly visible in the deep-rooted purity fetish underlying denigrations of Bhangra hybrids by Panjabi culture’s official and self-appointed gatekeepers. The case of local difference against the homogenization of the globe is argued in the polarized idiom of tradition and modernity, indigenous and non-indigenous, purity and contamination. in the battle waged against hybridity in the name of purity, hybridity is called by names reminiscent of negative miscegenation theories of mixing. Terms like degradation, contamination, violation, used to describe mixing, evoke memories of the old pollution taboos conventionally revived to protect the self against the stranger’s defiling contact.2 against the history of systematic hybridization between the invader and the invaded, the settler and the indigene, the hybridity phobia can be explained only through the persistence of the boundary fetish. The boundary, a problematic category by itself, problematizes other essentialist categories that 2

Zygmunt Bauman’s (2001) notion of old strangers being replaced by new ones suggests a settler hybridity model that might be borrowed to describe the process of Panjabi ethnocultural production.

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it helps to construct such as nation, culture, ethnicity, class, caste, clan, tribe, gender, language, religion and so on. as culture is the category deployed most commonly to define boundaries in our times, the cultural invasion debate is about the politics of boundaries, their role in defining us and others, and the struggle about the meaning of ours and theirs. The cultural invasion theory’s convergence on a performance tradition that emerged at the historical site of cultural invasion re-opens the contentious issues of indigenous and settler, majority and minority, white and black contestations over the meaning of culture and tradition determined by the notions of the indigene and the migrant, the autochthonous and the alien, the pure and the mixed. since hybridity has always been dependent on purity, an analysis of hybridization against the purity fetish can provide a different angle on the hybridity debate, particularly, its utility in destabilizing essentialisms and hegemonies other than Western. Avtar Brah and Anne Coombes underline the need to look beyond hybridity as “a condition of relations between the colonized or diasporic communities and aspects of the western culture or the culture of the colonized” to “internal dynamics of identity across and within social, political and economic entities and not exclusively in relation to the West” (2000: 12). My inquiry into hybridity begins with the purist response to Bhangra’s hybridization as an alien cultural invasion articulated through the opposition between sanskriti (culture) and apasanskriti (other culture), recalling Vedic taboos about mixing with the stranger. i wish to historicize hybridity by embedding it in a multi-layered history of homegrown hybridity to show that hybridity means different things to different people at different times. i will juxtapose Panjabi borderland hybridity against the brahminical pollution complex as well as “the world music model of hybridity” framing Bhangra debates in the diaspora.3 By comparing the metropolitan and peripheral models of hybridity, i wish to tease out a demotic notion of hybridity in the local practices of everyday life. agreeing with jan nederveen Pieterse that the boundary fetish, not hybridity, is problematic, i shall discuss the politics of hybridity to problematize boundaries and their relation to the self and the other (2001). I shall show that the local (demotic) cultures of pastoral Panjab in which I situate Bhangra were constituted in opposition to the Persian rather than the Sanskritic Great Tradition that has been reified as bharatiya sanskriti (Indian culture). These little traditions should make us aware of other Indian little traditions that are not interdependent with the Great Sanskritic Tradition but might follow a different trajectory in india’s multiple cultural pasts. The history of hindustani as opposed to bharatvarshiya presents a more accurate description of the syncretic culture that emerged in the valley of the indus. My purpose in doing so is to problematize boundaries to deconstruct culture and nation as concepts.

In his book Critique of Exotica (2000), John Hutnyk questioned the meaning of cultural hybridity and argued that it was white popular singers like Madonna or Kula Shaker who benefited from hybridity. 3

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irrefutable evidence of contact zones between cultures at all times can be juxtaposed against arguments based on cultural insularity and purity that underscore purist denigrations of Bhangra’s mixing. Despite their being strictly regulated by formalized religious, social or political gatekeepers, cultures have always leaked into each other through the permeable boundaries in the everyday practices of Panjabi villages. These mixings have prevented their reification, which essentialized categories such as panjabiyat or indianness imply. not only travel, exploration and colonialism, Panjab’s “invasion” geography has made it the historic contact zone inserting the other into the space of the self, which is then forced to modify itself in relation with the other. The genealogy of Panjabi cultures mixing with others and appropriating select features to reinvent themselves in a fashion that the other becomes part of the self without ceasing to be the other is forgotten in the imagining of hybridity as a contemporary phenomenon originating in colonial history. avtar Brah offers a tripod of the apna, ghair and the ajnabi that cannot be circumscribed in the self–other opposition of Western thought. Brah maintains that while the ajnabi (strangers) can be made into the apna (our own), the ghair (others) is the estranged, who might be part of the self (2000: 272–90). against the dichotomy of sanskriti (culture) and apasanskriti (alien culture) invoked by purists in denigrating Bhangra mutants, I borrow Brah’s triad of apna, ajnabi and ghair to decouple the hybridity debate from the notion of cultural purity attached to a reified Indian culture. I turn to two metaphors, one geographical and the other sartorial, the Khyber and the chunni, to articulate the tension between mixing and preserving boundaries in Panjabi culture. Khyber (“Across the river” or “divide”), an outer rim at which difference is blurred because it spills over into other ranges, is the appropriate category of the boundary of meaning production.4 The odhs, the pukiwas, the khanabadosh and other gypsy tribes moved eternally in and out of this rim underlining the futility of boundaries (Aslam 2005: 5).5 since the cultures in this contact zone are produced 4

Khyber means “across the river” or “divide” and is derived from “habar” in Aramaic, which also translates to the word “Hebrew” (“Khyber” 2005). A Panjabi woman, who hails from district Mianwaali in present day Pakistan, recalls villagers frequently crossing the Khyber pass, which they called darrah (pass). 5 The gypsy is “a member of a wandering race (by themselves called romany), of Hindu origin, which first appeared in England about the beginning of the 16th c. and was then believed to have come from egypt” (“gypsy”. oED 2006: n.p.). Based on linguistic and anthropological evidence, there is now a consensus that the roma of the Middle east, Europe, Asia and America originated in North Western India. W.R. Rishi (1976) traces the history of Roma, the term gypsies use to describe themselves, to Sanskrit “Rama”. While warning against confusing the gypsies with the gypsy tribes of india, who share the nomadic lifestyles of gypsies, he holds that roma are descendants of the warrior castes – kshatriyas, rajputs, jats – of Panjab and that they should not be confused with Doms, a lower caste. However, the first gypsy migration of 12,000 musicians (called Zott, Arabicized from Jatt – ancestors of the modern Persian Luris or Lulis) to the court of Persian monarch, Behram Gour, from an Indian king establishes their link with music and dance. Joseph Berland

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through the cross-fertilization of local tribal with Sanskritic, Hellenic and Islamic influences, purity fails to serve as a differentiating category for separating the indigenous from the non-indigenous. genetic patterns may not help to determine purity in this region because neither religious, caste, nor linguistic boundaries have been biologized.6 While invasion, conquest and empire as well as geographical liminality that permits the flow of difference through floating populations might have made hybridity an empirical reality, boundaries might yet have been designed to control hybridity. However, given the intensity of the traffic between boundaries they are difficult to sustain and become as porous and permeable as to enable mixing at everyday levels despite the presence of formal compartmentalizing categories. With an enormous amount of comings and goings, boundaries are not constant but need to be continually redefined. The chunni is a rectangular two-and-a-half-yard piece of fabric used by Panjabi women to cover the head and the upper body. The semiotics of the chunni differs from the clearly demarcated spaces of the islamic purdahnasheen discourse. Unwritten rules about covering, gaze, touch, space and behaviour construct an elaborate code of veiling and unveiling to inscribe notions of purity and pollution, and sharam in its twin meanings of modesty and humiliation. Apart from its symbolic significance in Panjabi rituals of worship, wedding, friendship and courtship to inscribe cultural values, the chunni has been constructed to demarcate gender, religious and caste boundaries.7 The idiom of veiling and unveiling inscribes community honour and shame on the female body, which must be shielded against the ghair mard or the male stranger’s profane gaze and contact. vinay Lal’s examination of the politics of veiling and unveiling in the drawing and defending of racial boundaries animated by the notion “Woman is sacred” reveals parallels between the literal and figurative unveiling of Indian women in British imperialism and global consumerism respectively. Making a connection between cultural formations and “the types of apparel that men and women wear”, he reads the unveiling of Indian women by British officers after General Dyer’s believes the khanabadosh are comparable to English nomads or gypsies (Berland 2003). The odhs, the gypsies of Lahore, are like the Meo Rajputs, Muslims who trace their ancestry to Rajputs, particularly to Dullah Bhatti who fought against the Mughal emperor Akbar. ‘From Punjab to the inner sindh, from the depths of the Frontier and the vast plains of Balochistan, every gypsy man, woman and child speaks one language, the Odhki’ (Aslam 2005: n.p.). 6 “it is only here, as you wander through the bazaar, that you realize the great diversity of racial types that the different invasions have left behind them. The genes of one hundred different races meet here and intermingle” (Dalrymple 2006: n.p.). 7 Chunni chadaana is part of the Panjabi engagement ceremony when the bridegroom’s mother and sister cover the bride’s head with an ornate veil. Chunni badalna is a ritual act of affirming friendship or elective sisterhood. Women must never enter a gurdwara without covering the head with a chunni. a married woman is forbidden to appear before her husband’s father or elder brother without covering her head with a chunni. in courtship rituals, the beloved’s chunni functions as a talisman.

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“crawling order” as an attempt “to defrock and render naked an entire culture” (Lal 1993: n.p.). Recognizing the veil, the system of purdah, “as the site of a confrontation between the colonized and the colonizer”, he links bodily disclosure with cultural invasion and domination, “a concerted attempt to penetrate a culture to its roots and impregnate it with the seed of an alien authority” and screening of the body with “a determined effort to forge resistance to keep a culture clothed and impregnable” (Lal 1993: n.p.). The focus of the cultural invasion argument invoked in the wake of Bhangra’s return in the 1990s on “the semi-dressed” female body calls to attention a cultural antagonism expressed as sartorial difference. The exhibition of the brown woman’s anatomy in deference to the sartorial code of Western popular culture is seen as a gross violation of the semiotics of veiling and unveiling. since the trope of the unveiling of the oriental woman as a form of knowing the other sexually and ontologically is familiar through the colonial text, images of disrobing the female body are recognized as unpardonable violations of not only the physical but also the social body. The semiotics of unveiling and veiling have returned in the homology between bodily and cultural invasion and the taboos attached to contact with the male stranger are extended to sonic and cultural encounters. With the female body, music and culture enveloped in an essentialized purity, any contact with the ghair stranger is pronounced contaminating. These boundary-makings between the self and the other betray a primordialist phobia of racial mixing dating back to the Aryans despite the frequency of cultural contact and hybridization in the many indian pasts. The purity fetish and pollution complex in hinduism is believed to have been produced as a preventive measure to preserve caste boundaries, which were often synonymous with those of colour. “The colour (varna) of the Brahmans was white, that of the Kshtriyas red, that of the vaisyas yellow, and that of the shudras black” ([MBh.Santi.6930 ff.] Muir 1972: I.140). Unlike T.K. Oommen (2002) who views caste as race tracing it back to Hindu texts, Dipankar Gupta argues against seeing caste as a variant of race. The confusion of caste with race happens, according to him, due to a misreading of vedic texts inspired by early indologists who had predicated their theory of physical difference between in-migrating Aryans from those already living in the region on difference in skin colour (Gupta 2001: n.p.). Gupta feels that the way dark and fair skin have been read into the vedic texts is disputable because varnas need not refer to skin colour but can also refer to order, and what is used to denote fair skin could equally to be used to mean the light of knowledge (2001: n.p.). Though the varna scheme is vague and ambiguous, as oommen contends, it is essentially a scheme that “hierarchically ordered populations based on a colour scheme” (2002: 118). Gupta, too, is forced to concede the miscegenation taboo: “interestingly enough the various smritis, like the Yagnavalkyasmriti and the Manusmriti strongly disapprove of marrying outside one’s caste. out of such cases of miscegenation, the smritis argue … new and despicable castes are formed” (2001: n.p.).

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varna endogamy was prescribed to preserve the purity of castes in vedic texts but the possibility of varnasankara (confusion and/or mixture) through caste mobility as well as inter-varna marriages of anuloma (hypergamous) and pratiloma (hypogamous) has been noted. Gupta avers that “mixed marriages, in such cases” were not seen as resulting in hybridity or “mixed off-springs” but in “dangerous and impure outcastes” (2001: n.p.). Gupta also makes an important point about the difference in the politics of race and caste. Unlike racism that deemed blacks inferior, casteism, as Ommmen reveals, found darker or “inferior” people polluting.8 The denigration of Bhangra hybrids, ignoring the lived history of mixing in the Panjabi village, revives ancient miscegenation taboos against mixing with the foreigner designed to ensure caste purity in aryan society and culture. Though the term mleccha has been deconstructed as a linguistic, regional or behavioural qualifier, the meaning of the term shifted in later Vedic texts from “one who does not practice the vedic code of life” to mean the foreigner.9 as the mleccha was also dubbed unclean, severe taboos came to be attached with respect to mixing, dining and, in particular, to marrying with the mleccha, initially denoting the Muslim but later other invaders as well. Contemporary Bhangra that hybridizes Panjabi dhol beats with african derived sounds of reggae, rap and hip-hop transgresses brahminical pollution taboos rooted in the arya horror of miscegenation with the anarya, whether the indigene or the invader. strong evidence of mixing coexisting with the boundary fetish is presented in harjot oberoi’s compelling account of the construction of religious boundaries in Panjab. Oberoi perceives a sharp cleavage between formalized classifications and categories “that were supposed to govern social and religious behaviour on the one hand, and the way people actually practiced their everyday lives on the other” (1994: 1–2). He proceeds to demonstrate, through an examination of the concrete practices, the crossing of these categories to ask if these “taxonomies excluded people from their own history and prevented them from making statements they wished to make” (1994: 2). Oberoi’s investigations into the formal boundaries between the three grand religions of Panjab – Hindu, Muslim and Sikh – lead him into the frequency of boundary crossings. These transgressions extending from practices of everyday life, ritualistic and cultural performances to popular religious practices prove the fluidity and porosity of boundaries in Panjab, which were overwritten by the boundaries of religion, language and nation in different historical formations. 8 “The apastamba Dharamasutra warns, Pollution will occur if these people (read untouchables) are touched, conversed with, or even looked upon. If the Chandala was touched, you must bathe submerging the entire body, if conversed with, exchange words with a Brahmin; if looked upon, observe the lights (Sun, Moon, Stars)” (Oommen 2002: 124). 9 Mleccha (from Vedic Sanskrit mleccha, meaning “non-aryan, barbarian”) is a derogatory term for people who did not conform to conventional hindu beliefs and practices (“Mleccha” 2006).

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oberoi’s warning about the use of scriptural texts as the exclusive criterion to identify indian religious identities in indian shruti traditions in the absence of a definitive scriptural text is particularly relevant in elucidating the dichotomy between Panjabi scribal and speech communities and traditions. The gap between lived oral traditions and formal categorizations based on scriptural division that oberoi reveals goes a long way toward elucidating Panjab’s mixed speech communities. he brings out the violence in overwriting these shared, mixed local cultural practices with homogenizing, translocal categories to interrogate the boundary fetish that resulted in the fixing of fluid, shifting and mixed Panjabi identities and cultures. oberoi mentions the peasantry’s continued attachment to shared Panjabi practices despite the formalization of rigid boundaries that might also be seen as extending to the urban elite. if caste distinction, as Denzil ibbetson argues in Panjab Castes (qtd. in Lal 1993), was based on occupation, and the brahminical vision based on rank, and if purity and life-style were not characteristic of Panjab, how did various Panjabi communities construct boundaries against each other and against outsiders? Surinder Jodhka quotes from Tandon’s The Panjabi Century to underline the total insignificance of the Brahmin and the brahminical ideology or authority in Panjab (2001: 43). As Jodhka points out, the Brahmin, accorded neither spiritual nor pedagogic authority, was traditionally a menial figure.10 in the absence of brahminical authority, caste discrimination was exercised here through economic means rather than through notions of purity and pollution. Bhangra emerges from the shared pastoral past in which the occupational theory of caste implied a non-brahminical interpretation of the purity and pollution taboo. yet boundaries of caste, gender, religion, language and region continue to be fetishized in the Panjab region. veena Das has called attention to the use of women’s bodies as signs of communication between men to inscribe notions of purity, honour and shame. she reveals these semiotics at play in the state’s treatment of women abducted during partition when national honour came to be mapped on the abducted women with their families complying with the state in the state’s assumption of the role of parens patriae of displaced women (Das 1995). She identifies a variance between the norms of practical kinship as opposed to those of official kinship that governed the Indian state’s restoration of abducted women to their families. Das concludes that in doing so the state annihilated the remedies offered by practical kinship and the vision of flexible boundaries between Hindus and Muslims offered through the children conceived by partition violence (1995). The representation of Bhangra hybrids in india reverberates with the state reasserting its role as parens patriae with the woman’s body. similarly, “the illegitimate children” who posed a problem in essentializing hindu–Muslim boundaries post-partition can serve as a metaphor for the representation of Bhangra similarly, saberwal quotes Chanana, “in Punjabi the word pandat (pandit) denotes a brahmin and may connote some respect for the latter. But the word bahman (brahmin) almost always carries a little contempt” (1973: 10). 10

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mutants as bastardized forms. The images of violation and wrongful union return us to the miscegenation discourse and invasion mnemonics. Unlike in Western miscegenation discourses, where whitening aids the assimilative process, caste miscegenation discourses, despite the traces of pigmentation of the varna scheme, use colour hierarchies in combination with several others. The colour scheme in the arya/dasyu or arya/Dravidian stratification is invisible in the arya/anarya dichotomy, which is constructed through ritual practice. invasion, not colour, is the basis of the extension of the taboos and prohibitions against the Muslim, and later, the British conqueror. Though vedic texts frequently refer to mixed races of Pahlvas, Sakas, Yavanas and Kambojas of the North West and of Mlecchas and Barbaras, mixing is viewed as producing an impure category and entailing a loss of status. The construction of the sacred and the profane and the banishment of the invader from the sacred space have always functioned as effective resistance against the invasion of the intimate space of the vanquished in which the female body functions as the primordial signifier, in addition to the family, the home and the places of worship. several narratives of hybridity, the genetic miscegenation discourses, the agricultural meaning of hybridity as grafting to improve productivity and the in-between diasporic hybridity perspectives are all juxtaposed in the perception of Bhangra hybrids, all of which hinge on the meaning of mixing. Bhangra’s denigration reverberates with both aspects, colour and invasion, of the miscegenation theory. But purist anxieties about mixing appear to arise from Bhangra’s whitening or Westernization rather than blackening. While the perceived violation of the indigenous space has elements of the mleccha pollution, it also has distinct connotations of the arya–dasyu alliances. in Manusmriti, the dasyu is defined as: “All those tribes in this world, which are excluded from (the community of) those born from the mouth, the arms, the thighs, and the feet (of Brahman), are called Dasyus, whether they speak the language of the Mlekkhas (barbarians) or that of the Aryans” (Manusmriti 2004: 10:45). Manu’s rules about arya/anarya marriage are similarly unambiguous: If (a doubt) should arise, with whom the preeminence (is, whether) with him whom an Aryan by chance begot on a non-Aryan female, or (with the son) of a Brahmana woman by a non-aryan … The decision is as follows: “he who was begotten by an Aryan on a non-Aryan female, may become (like to) an Aryan by his virtues; he whom an Aryan (mother) bore to a non-Aryan father (is and remains) unlike to an Aryan.” (Manusmriti 2004: 10:66)

The tension between brahminical views on mixing and the agricultural use of the term in the Panjabi context sets off a dialogue between the positive and negative theories of miscegenation, which are similar in their being dominant views of hybridity. The agricultural variety of hybridity, the hybrids introduced during Panjab’s green revolution, leading to increased productivity and prosperity, may be placed in relation to the interpretation of hybridity in caste myths. The practice

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of hybridity, on the other hand, points to spontaneous flows across the divide, the Khyber, that occur in spite of and at the boundaries of languages, ethnicities, religions and nations. The multiple discourses on hybridity must be examined in relation to the new Bhangra mutants to deconstruct the meaning of the purity myth and its deployment in the construction of national cultures to oppose cultural homogenization in globalization. a transnational as well as cross-cultural perspective can disembed the hybridity discussion from both the multicultural and world music models of hybridity. Bhangra’s contemporary hybridization needs to be embedded in the widespread practice of hybridity at the popular level in the villages across the dangerous crossroads of the Khyber where the frequency of unlawful border crossings confounds legally defined boundaries. Despite the self’s resistance of the other’s incursion, the permeability of boundaries causes cultures to leak into one another so that history becomes a tale of continuous redefinition of the apna, that might include selective induction of the ajnabi. Until the small place dialect communities of apne became homogenized as Panjabis or made ghair as hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, the ajnabi could potentially become apna. Panjabi history testifies to the unmaking and subsequent making of strangers through the making of Greek, Scythian, Hun, Arab, Turk and Afghan ajnabis part of the self. The medieval clash of hinduism and islam, also characterized by the rhetoric of invasion, conquest and domination, did not prevent mutual cultural appropriation. The interpellation of the islamic invader as a barbarian prevented the manufacture of hegemonic consent, as in the colonial civilizational mission, thereby disengaging political from cultural domination. Cultural hybridizations occurred through the contact with islam in a spirit of mutual exchange at formal levels and the casual absorption of mutual characteristics at the practical. For this reason, the demonization of the Muslim invader does not automatically result in the denunciation of Persian or Arabic influences as alien. Another line of reasoning can pick out the cultural commonality between oriental cultures because of centuries of diffusion. Particularly in Muslim dominated provinces, apna had come to be defined as the syncretic culture formed through the revitalization of hindu tradition with the Muslim. it would be more accurate to say, along with harjot oberoi, that in the absence of formalized categories, cultural mixing occurred with little regard for boundaries. This cultural syncretism is best illustrated by the boundary-crossing communities constructed in the autotelic space of hindustani musical cultures that reproduce traditional kinship networks. The musical gharana, family, constructs a secular model of cultural syncretism in the manner of the sacred, in which prior identifications and boundaries become subservient to new kinships. Along with the village field, the shrine and the crossroad where oberoi spies cultures mixing before the formation of boundaries, the concept of gharana offers the possibility of their disruption even when they are firmly in place. The musical gharana offers the best illustration of the dissolution of given boundaries in a process of self-constitution structured by the kinship

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relations of the family. Malkit Singh, the India-born Birmingham-based Bhangra artist, considers the Pakistani sufi legend Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to be his main inspiration: “I met him in 1991 and when he died, I was by his bedside. He was like God for me and I can never forget him or his music” (qtd. in Kannan 2000: n.p.). Daler Mehndi speaks in a similar fashion about his bonding with his teacher Raahat ali Khan of the Patiala gharana. The hindu shagird (disciple), bound in a father– son relationship with the ustad (teacher) takes on the ustad’s name as the family name and vice versa. The entire musical tradition is constructed through a chain of kinship patterns. Musical gharanas exhibit an unproblematic accommodation of the other into the self. The foreignness of the pashtun ditty “Tootak Tootak Tootiyan” by the folksinger Malkit Singh did not pose a barrier to its appropriation in the celebration of apna Panjabi sangeet. similarly, the Pathan, rahim shah, was consecrated as part of the self by being given the best Bhangra award at the second indus Music awards in Karachi, “isn’t it amazing that being a Pathan, i’ve been honoured with the best bhangra award?”, Shah quipped (Borka 2005). Similarities between Bhangra and khattak, the Pathan war or victory dance, with respect to movements, instruments, sounds, pattern, beat, attire have also been pointed out that might lead to Bhangra’s Pathan sources. Does this border-crossing have to do with the porosity of musical boundaries as heard in the religiously repeated cliché “suraan noon bandhya nahin ja sakda” (“melodies cannot be bound”) or does it confirm the continuity of porous Panjabi boundaries? as oberoi shows, the violence of the hindu–Mughal wars did not affect the village based bradris of Panjabis. The kinship vocabulary of bradri can partially help us to understand how the ajnabi or even the ghair can be made apna. Unlike caste membership governed by strictly codified laws, bradri, despite being based on blood or kinship lineage, reserves temporary or selective right to admission based on filial piety. The demarcation of private and public space through the superimposition of governmentality in colonial modernity cannot adequately describe the region-based bradri ethic. The practices of different ajnabis – religious, cultural, economic – have been so deeply internalized by the old Panjab bradris that the ghair ceases to be ghair. if the sacred space of classical music could be expanded to make room for alien incursion and the folk enabled mutual interpenetration, why was Bhangra’s alien contact in the popular space deemed profaning? Whether new ajnabis can be inducted into the modern Panjabi bradri will provide the answer to the meaning of apna Panjabi culture in the present. since Bhangra includes both dimensions of miscegenation, lightening and darkening, what filial acts of loyalty will gain gore (whites), and kale (blacks) right to admission in the new bradri? Symbolic acts like tying a rakhi (tying a protective thread around a “brother’s” wrist) seal relations of affection, loyalty and protection, signifying honorary membership of the bradri. not only the practical necessity of everyday living, but the shared experience of victimhood and oppression might induce “diasporic intimacy” and admission into the bradri. as the origins of bradris recall the kinship lineage of Black brotherhood, and as kala or black becomes the dominant colour of the new Panjabi mix, Bhangra’s mixing with black sounds and Panjabi

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relations with the black soul brother, manbhai, can provide a glimpse into the present practice of hybridity. Brahminical miscegenation taboos, as discussed earlier, were indiscriminate in considering the union of the arya with both the dark skinned dasyu and the light skinned mleccha equally polluting and immoral. other criteria applied in defining the anarya – as one who eats forbidden food, or one who does not observe Vedic rites – were used to banish the invading Arab, Turk or Afghan from the sanctum sanctorum. These brahminical taboos against the contaminating contact with the stranger were inducted in colonial india to bar the new invader from the self’s hidden spaces, which were signified by the feminized space of the kitchen, and the inner courtyard and the temple. The invention of Western promiscuity and immorality as another ground for keeping the Western stranger out from the intimate space helped to create the image of the “bad West”. The good and the bad West, which posited the tradition/modernity opposition as a contestation between the indigenous and the alien, were constructed in response to the colonial construction of the orient. This imbrication of modernity as Western and alien is the chief reason for reading the contemporary phenomenon of Bhangra’s hybridization as a problem of modernity. in the objection to Bhangra’s Western mix, the purity fetish is complicated through the perception of hybridity as modernity and its representation as immoral and promiscuous. Bhangra’s new features are ascribed to an alien, transgressing modernity that might drive out indigenous traditions. in contrast to the matching temporalities of the arya and anarya, colonial and colonized contact is framed by alternate temporalities and the imposition of Western modernity on indian tradition is interpreted as an epistemic violence. The affront appears to have been caused by the incursion of secular Western modernity into sacred indigenous space. The hybridization issue is problematized through the extension of the issue of mixing and not mixing to the particular form of hybridization preferred in the constitution of alternative temporalities and modernities. The West, represented as bad, immoral, depraved and materialistic, in a reversal of orientalist representations of the east, offers an alternative secular route to modernity that is inimical to a pure spiritual, moral, ascetic indian tradition. The semiotics of veiling and unveiling presupposed a shared cultural code predicated on the concepts of honour, community, belief, values and morality-controlled contact. Though transgression admittedly occurred, the categories used to define transgressions were largely shared. Contemporary transgressions are resented because they involve more than a clash and mixing of dissimilar cultures. They are perceived as temporal shocks to all indigenous traditions, the illicit encounter of sharam (shame or modesty) with besharam (shameless or immodest) in the meeting of the secular Western with the sacred indigenous. The opposition of veiling and unveiling has to be supplemented here by the modern practice of censorship, albeit a self-imposed censorship because the censorship laws are discordant with acceptable levels of nudity in culture. The subsuming of veiling canons, about what must be exposed and what best hidden, by new exhibitionist fashions, leave one no choice but to shut one’s eyes at the

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abomination of the nangi (unclothed) body. The image of “the material girl’s” bold-faced nangi body appears before the eyes of hindu priests when they declare Madonna’s recitation of the ashtadhyayi as a profaning transgression of hindu sacred values. The undressed girls in the Bhangra videos, too, appear as replicas of the besharam gori, oblivious to the laws of sharam which prohibit unwed virgins to dance, clothed or unclothed, in full view of ghair mards or strangers. echoing reactions to the unveiling of indian women after the “crawling order”, the parading of young indian women in front of the global voyeur is viewed as a profaning act that violates the norms of veiling and unveiling in indian cultures. once again, the semiotics of the female body, in states of dress and undress, is employed to draw boundaries between the self and the other in the construction of apna culture. K.N. Panniker observes that “contemporary advocates of cultural nationalism and the movements they lead are engaged in creating a nation in which the Hindu religious identity coincides with the cultural” (2004). He also sees the move to appropriate the cultural past as hindu and that “to expropriate the ‘other’ as anti-national” (2004). Though Bhangra’s “immoral” trafficking with Western fads invites Hindu outrage, other purist voices, Islamic and Sikh, may also be heard joining in as guardians of Indian culture, confirming its centrality to contemporary indian contestation over the meaning of tradition and modernity, apna and ghair. a basic confusion prevails here over the category of the other. While the contaminating other in cultural nationalism is the white other, the gora, the primary source of Bhangra’s contamination is black. Denigration, a pun coined by Kimberley Benston (1993) to allude to “making black” of white theory, may be borrowed to play on the ambivalence in Bhangra’s “blackening”. Two aspects are important in Bhangra’s denigration, the first being a suspicion of mixing per se and the other the components of the mix. Purists’ denigration of Bhangra’s hybridization is grounded as much in their purity fetish as in their perception of certain cultural traditions as corruptive. violation charges against Bhangra mutants are triggered by its “whitening” in which brahminical taboos meet later constructions of the “promiscuous” West, but its “blackening” receives little attention due to ignorance of the black base of Western popular music. The silence on Bhangra’s blackening, despite the history of contact with black populations in africa, the West indies and so on, brings to the foreground the repressed memories of another wrongful sexual union. Brown meeting with black inevitably occurs against the background of a varna theory of brahminical racism. It recalls the shock of the light-skinned Aryan’s first encounter with the darkskinned Dravidian, which has set the tone for all future conversations between black and brown in the Indian cultural space.11 Derogatory references to “the black skin” or “krishnam vacham” ([Rg. V. IX. 41.1, Sam. V. I. 49.1, II. 242] Hunter 1987: 114) such as those about dasyus (hosts) springing “from a black womb” 11

Though the aryan invasion theory has been challenged as another orientalist construct to fissure Indian society, linguistic difference between Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages strongly suggests Aryan–Dravidian difference (Naidu 2005).

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([Rg. V. II. 20.6] Muir 1972: I.174), “the slave bands of black descent” or “the vile Dasyan colour” ([Rg. V. II. 20.7 and II. 12.4] Hunter 1987: 115), and “the impious varNa” ([Rg. V. II. 12.4] Muir 1972: I.43, II.284, 323) abound in the rigveda. Phrases such as “the ancient singer praises the god who ‘destroyed the Dasyans and protected the Aryan colour’” ([Rg. V. III. 34.9] Hunter 1987: 114) confirm brahminism’s obsession with colour coding and horror of miscegenation ([Rg. V. IX. 41.1, Sam. V. I. 49.1, II. 242] Hunter 1987: 114). Pollution related taboos effectively policed the invading arya’s ambivalent fascination for the indigene. The desire for the dark-skinned indigene was sublimated in the eroticization of the dusky dasyu woman. indian literature and folklore frequently thematize the fatal attraction of the light-skinned arya male for the dark-skinned Dravidian or dasyu female.12 Panjabi desire for the darkcomplexioned woman looks back to the Persian Great Tradition of Majnoon’s consuming passion for the dark-complexioned Laila. The ambivalent relation between the aryan and the dasyu frames brown–black relations with the transference of the desire for the dark-skinned dasyu on the black outsider. Bhangra’s hybridization with black sounds also needs to be viewed in light of the internal colour boundaries constructed by the Panjabi self against the nonPanjabi other. Despite the long history of Sikh migrations to Africa and other regions inhabited by black groups, Panjabi texts are remarkably taciturn on the subject. But the Sikh internalization of the pollution complex is spoken for in Rudyard Kipling’s racialized narrative “A Sahib’s War” where Kipling speaks for the Sikh, reaffirming racial boundaries between the Sikh and the hubshi, whose shadow was deemed polluting (Kipling 1999). One does not need Khushwant singh’s authority to observe that Panjabis “regard themselves numero uno among Indians”, and make jokes about bhaiyyas (from U.P. and Bihar) and Bongos (Bengalis) and dismiss anyone “south of the Vindhyas” as “kali kalootis” (black as black can be) (Singh 2002). Blackness is also highly gendered in the opposition between the gori chitti milk-white female and kala male as in the traditional jugni boli: “Jugni ja vadi ambaale / ranaan chitiyan te gabru kale” (jugni set off for Ambala where the women are milky white and the men dark). The gori chitti being the idealized Panjabi sohni or beauty, I found no Panjabi song praising the darkcomplexioned woman. instead, the kali, dark, along with the moti (fat) and lambi (tall), is rejected as unsuitable in the song “Madhorama” before the groom’s party settles for the fair bride:13 12

This tradition appears to be carried over in the popular indian imagination represented by Bollywood. The north indian male and the south indian female lead have always enjoyed a mysterious chemistry in commercial hindi cinema beginning with the unbeatable raj Kapoor–vijayantimala screen pairing and continued by the Dharmendra– Hema Malini, Amitabh Bachchan–Rekha and Anil Kapoor–Sridevi hit screen couples. 13 For a memorable rendering of the song see Madan Bala sidhu’s performance in the women’s song sequence in Meera nair’s Monsoon wedding (2001) where women crossdress as men to initiate the bride in the mysteries of marriage.

No MIxING PLEASE! wE ArE INDIAN Shava ve hun kali kariye kali ran di ki salah ai jyon mori da kicchad kali chad chuvare sutti ashik mare chitter Shava ve hun gori kariye gori ran di ki salah ai jyon makkhan da peda gori chad chuvare sutti ashiq chautha fera Isko le challenge hum babu log hain

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Shava let’s check out the dark one now What do you think of the dark girl? She is like the slush in the drain! When the darkie lies on the balcony the lover kicks her away. Now let’s check out the fair one What do you think of the fair one? She is like a blob of butter When she lies on the balcony the lover returns four times We will take her Home We are genteel folk (“Madhorama” 2004)

Though kala, the contemporary Panjabi term for black ethnicities, is denigrated in Panjabi folksongs, this popular folksong is rare in valorizing the black male over the white. kala shah kala, kala shah kala mera kala hair dildar gorean no dafa karo mein aap sone di taar gorean no dafa karo

My Black Lord, My Black Lord My beloved is dark Let the fair ones go to hell I myself glow like spun gold Let the fair ones go to hell

But the colour inversion works through the use of colour to the theme of appearance and reality defined in the opposition of industry and idleness. British racism simultaneously confirmed and inverted traditional varna hierarchies through the introduction of new qualifying criteria that disengage colour from inferiority. service in the empire, particularly the army, interfered with traditional caste hierarchies through the process of kshatriyization. imperial contact transformed the categories of valorization through the introduction of capitalist labour: sas sarea tere panj puter do teen te do kanaster jeera mere haan dia oh gaye hoya ai dafter

Mother in law! You have sons five! Two are tins and two are cans The one who is mine He alone is at work in the office

Migration of skilled free workers to various parts of the empire similarly elevated low occupational castes: “The one who is mine”, continues the song, “is off to another country”, and therefore the most respected of the five sons. i will extend the metaphor of the inter-caste marriage to engage with the miscegenation taboos reactivated in the reception of Bhangra mutants as offsprings of wrongful union. I find an ally in Apache Indian’s trailblazing chart hit “Arranged

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Marriage” that inserts sonic hybridization within the same essentializing purity frames. Chorus The time has come mon fe apache Me wan gal from jullunder City Fe find one gal and to get marry But listen when me talk tell everybody Me wan gal say a soorni curi Me wan me arranged marriage Me wan gal mon to look after me from me mum and daddy Me wan gal that say she love me Me wan gal fe me Don rani Me wan gal from jullunder City Me wan gal dress up in a sari Me wan gal say a soorni curi Me wan gal say soorni logthi Me wan gal mon to look after me Me wan gal sweet like jelebee Me wan gal to mek me roti (Apache Indian. “Arranged Marriage”)

apache indian’s joyous sonic hybridization in the song destabilizes authenticity and purity myths by deconstructing the arranged marriage phenomenon, the last bastion of caste taboos, in which the sohni kudi (the beautiful Panjabi girl) emerges as the signifier of cultural purity that shifts between an essentialized Indianness and panjabiyat (Panjabiness). This cultural essence embodied as the sohni kudi, defined as gori chitti ucchi lambi (tall and fair), is contrasted with hybridityas-modernity in different embodiments of kudiaan shair diyan (city girls). The fetishization of purity as rural and hybridity as urban is similarly articulated in the opposition of pind di kudi, the village belle, with kudiaan shair diyan, the city sophisticates.14 Bhangra texts signify the opposition of purity and hybridity through the contrast between the pind di kudi and the shair di kudi. Though a trace of the Panjabi stereotype of the gori chitti sohni might still be visible in Bhangra lyrics, the opening of new meanings of sohni kudi in kudi Gujarat di or London di kudi signals the transformation of panjabiyat through Panjabi migrations to urban centres in india and abroad. The transformation of the Panjabi stereotype of beauty is particularly conspicuous in the music video, which fetishizes the lithe, dusky female body recalling the Laila stereotype of Urdu verse rather than the buxom gori chitti Panjabi ideal. one of the earliest Bhangra music videos, Bally sagoo’s remix of Malkit Singh’s “Gur Nalon Ishq Mitha”, may be cited to illustrate the changing beauty stereotype as well as the Panjabi male’s ambivalent desire for the other. The Laila fantasy is combined with the Panjabi’s mem (white woman) fetish in the dusky, Westernized character of the beloved played by the model Malaika Arora, whose biography (Hindu Panjabi father, Malayali Christian mother) attests both to intercultural attraction and hybridity. The code of veiling and unveiling is unambiguously articulated in the kinship vocabulary of the Panjabi sohni kudi as Daler Mehndi celebrated the city girl (kudiaan shair diyaan) in his song of the same name in the film Arjun Pandit (1999). A Panjabi film, an Indo-Pakistani collaboration titled Pind di Kudi (2004) was a big hit in both Panjabs. 14

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sister to be veiled against the stranger’s gaze and the Westernized shair di kudi unveiled as the object of the lustful Panjabi gaze. The antinomy of the daughters of the other who are to be ravished and the daughters of the home who must be protected from the stranger’s gaze is structured by the invasion ethic that governs Panjabi relations with other communities. The shair di kudi, cool, sophisticated, cosmopolitan and brazen, conforming to the mem (white woman) fantasy, sublimates the Panjabi desire for the gora other. she also holds the fascination for Western style modernity, dangerous, exciting, futuristic but also immoral and profane. The Bhangra narrative plays with the protagonist’s flirtation with Western style modernity symbolized by the mem or shair di kudi, his initiating her into Panjabi rustic values, and the symbolic return home. The music video replays the ancient indian strategy of selective hybridization without violating pollution taboos. The Bhangra music video performs pollution taboos visually. While the presence of gore (whites) and kale (blacks) might be cited as the Bhangra artist’s ultimate dream of Bhangra’s mainstreaming, it also recalls the pre-colonial fantasy of the sensual dark-skinned dasyu in the indian/ Panjabi male imaginary. Most Bhangra videos replay the Aryan desire for the darkskinned dasyu in the semi-clad black female dancers performing sinuous Bhangra movements. While the indian woman is apotheosized through the heavy drapes, the black woman is eroticized through the undraping of body parts. The black woman’s body becomes the site of Panjabi/indian desires in the Bhangra video.15 The Panjabi male gaze undresses it for the play of untrammelled sexual fantasies forbidden by Panjabi/indian puritanism. The Panjabi woman, on the other hand, is racialized by being draped in a traditional outfit and locked in a private space. This may be illustrated by the Kenya-born, Dubai-based artist Sukhbir’s hit track “Panjabi Munde”, hailed as a new style mixing Bhangra with ragga. The camera glides over indian musical exotica, the tabla and the tumbi (indian instruments) before picking out the panjabi munde (boys) accompanying Sukhbir. But the girls, kudiaan, caught in close up are a gori and a kaali who athletically join in the Bhangra in sports bra and shorts with the camera gazing at their bared midriffs.16 This is true even of Bhangra albums featuring female artists. The new version of Bally Sagoo’s new find Gunjan’s song “Naiyon Dil Lagda” features a halter-necked Gunjan floating in a sea of multihued bodies in a nightclub. As the

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The polarization of black/Indian in Bhangra albums not featuring black artists/ dancers is replicated in other polarities such as urban/rural, indian/Western, Panjabi/nonPanjabi through the semiotics of dress and appearance. The music video’s voyeuristic format unclads not only the black, kaali, or white, gori but also the brown urban/expatriate woman. Compare, for instance, two jazzy B songs, “soniye” and “naag”. 16 The pornographic music video format sexualizes the female body. When Sukhbir performed the same song live in Chandigarh, though the accompanying dancers sported Western outfits, their non-sexualized dance movements were in keeping with the setting (Sukhbir Live 2003).

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camera follows her faraway gaze to dissolve into the ethnic narrative of separation in the home space, the outsider is virtually shut out. Billie Melman uncovers a fascinating alternative feminine colonialist discourse in which the veil emerges as an empowering transcultural sign of likeness and purity rather than of alterity and sexuality as in orientalist writings. Melman traces the trope of the veiled oriental woman in orientalist discourses predating colonialism to show how she came to be figured as “an overdetermined psychosexual and political symbol of the ultimate other”, ethnic, religious and sexual, after the rise of modern colonialism (1996: 438). She calls attention to the comparison of the dupatta with the nun’s veil in the accounts of women travellers to reinterpret the understanding of the veil as religious exclusion instead of secularized sensuality. she argues that the oriental veiled women’s resistance to male intrusion enabled female autonomy through their control over sexuality denied to unveiled occidental women. i employ the metaphor of veiling and unveiling to examine the sacralization and desacralization of Bhangra performance. if unveiling has been employed to denote sexual and ontological knowledge of the other in colonialist discourse, as Melman shows, it becomes a tactic for exclusion in Bhangra performance. Bhangra performance space may be viewed as “a place unto itself”, a “sororitas: self-sufficient, autonomous and selfruling” that permits the inclusion of the non-Panjabi stranger while excluding him from the intimate Panjabi space (Melman 1996: 438). However, these exclusions are analysed in relation to patriarchy’s sacralized virginal or maternal body as well as to the autonomous, colonized feminine body. But violations of intimate Panjabi zones and resistance to intrusions through exclusionary acts in Bhangra performance must be foregrounded against the religious and secular origins of the veil and its signification of the sensual and sacred feminine body. The veiled or purdahnasheen body, inscribed as female, invoked in Panjabi MC’s chartbusting Bhangra track quoted at the outset of this chapter and several other Bhangra numbers is imagined as a sacred body given the number of prohibitions attached to it. it should be fairly obvious that traditional Panjabi culture sets up quite different constraints around the look than those imposed by modern Western or even the clearly demarcated islamic purdahnasheen discourses. But the veiled female body, virginal or maternal, whether sexualized or nurturing, has always been used as the site for marking the boundaries against the other. As the sacred body, it must be shielded not only from the stranger’s contaminating touch but also from his profaning gaze. In Bhangra, the veiled female body becomes the signifier of an essentialized panjabiyat or “Panjabiness” through which the Panjabi sacred is produced. it comes to be the metonym of those intimate Panjabi spaces that must not be exposed to the stranger’s profaning gaze. But its sacredness is established through the rules of veiling and unveiling constituting Panjabi folk’s “looking relations”, which have been violated by the Bhangra culture industry. a good place to begin for understanding how looking is conceptualized, what looking is possible and who is allowed or forbidden to look at and within what boundaries is ritual Bhangra performance.

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Purists’ horror at the dissolution of the boundaries of the sacred and profane by the folk’s ejection into the popular is quite justified. But the exact process through which the profanity is committed must be understood. Bhangra’s new visibility has interfered with the looking relations in folk performance by directing the gaze to penetrate zones forbidden even within the profane play of the carnival. The looking relations in Bhangra boli lyrics and dancing are strictly bound by the permissions and taboos that protect the sacred from the profane. Unambiguously gendered spaces and norms relating to the gaze, bodily exposure, expressions and contact regulate the incursion of the profane in the sacred in traditional performance. Panjabi patriarchal looking relations undergirding Bhangra texts are structured by elaborate rules encoding the forbidden and the respectful gaze in relation to spatial and temporal contexts. The public contexts of Bhangra bolis and dance prohibit direct looking and bodily contact and the participative nature of the performance ensures the gaze’s respectability. Ched chaad or sexual teasing is permitted in a collective gendered, public performance space where watchful, chaperoning eyes prevent the gaze from turning disrespectful. The most important taboo, however, attaches to sexualized bodily contact, which is strictly forbidden except between married couples. if the collective courtship context controls sexuality despite the explicit vocalization of intimate fantasies in traditional performance, generic constraints regulate its expression. The explicit articulation of desire, the fetishizing strains, and license to flirt given to youth in bolian pana or praise song tradition must be couched in depersonalizing formulaic phrases and stock courtship idiom and ritualized gestures and movements. not only the collective choral cover, but the veil or veiled spaces insulate the female body from the objectifying male gaze. Female expressions of uninhibited sexuality are permitted only in sequestered places. yet, the rustic bolian context of sparring competitions and repartee suggests a symmetry of the gaze that might have been made asymmetrical through later bourgeoisized developments of Panjabi patriarchy. Permission given to females within Bhangra’s traditional boundaries to return the look/talk reflects healthy inter-gender relations of looking/speaking. An old Bhangra boli captures the parity in looking relations, Boys’ song: asmaan wich sat taare asi kudi oh lainee jedi ghund wichon akh mare

Seven constellations in the skies I seek the gal Who winks at me through her veil

girls’ song: asmaan wich sat tare asi munda oh lainaa jeda ainak wichon akh maare

Seven constellations in the skies I seek the guy Who winks at me through his spectacles

The play on stereotyped signifiers of female and male gaze, ghund (veil) and ainak (spectacles) complicates inter-gender relations within patriarchal structures

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because while the female can look hidden behind the veil, the male gaze is impaired by prescriptive lenses. i discern in the abomination perceived in the exposure of the female body, constructed as sacred through prohibitions about unveiling and contact, a deeper anxiety about the display of the Panjabi community rite for global consumerist pleasures. Objections to Bhangra’s degradation reflect profound misgivings about the consequent dissolution of the boundaries between the sacred and the profane following the folk’s expulsion into the profane space of the popular. Bhangra certainly does not occupy the position of the sacred in the same way as Sikh spiritual music or gurbani. however, as harvest ritual, it allows room for the play of the profane within the sacred, which the music industry manipulates to sate new consumerist desires. The unveiled, bepurdah, female visage and body, now becomes the signifier of the public display of the most secret spaces of the self to the stranger’s profane gaze. The global music industry’s indecent exhibition of Panjabi intimate spaces to the exoticizing gaze of the global voyeur through Bhangra’s reification as popular music is the most inexcusable profanity. The disapproving purist gaze cast in the direction of the semi-clad female body directs the gaze at a really indecent exposure and a greater abomination caused by baring Panjabi intimate zones to the intrusive consumerist gaze.

Chapter 3

Mann Panjab De:1 Fabricating authenticity in Dangerous Crossroads, george Lipsitz claims a celebrity status for apache indian in india on the basis of the British asian star’s media-hyped meetings with the then President of india and the late Prime Minister rajiv gandhi’s wife sonia in 1993 (1994). Apache Indian’s name might ring a bell to a miniscule section of urban, Westernized youth in india today. But Bhangra, to the rest of india, signifies the three Ms – Malkit, Mann and Mehndi following in the line of the big M, Manaksaab or Kuldip Manak, the golden voice of All India Radio in the 1960s and ’70s. Malkit Singh (Figure 3.1c), whose name literally translates as “one who rules the world”, is one of the crowned kings of the Bhangra Nation, among whom we may include other royals like Gurdas Mann (Figure 3.1b), Pammi Bai (Figure 3.1a), Hans Raj Hans, Babbu Mann, Sukhbir and many more. The Bhangra Nation comprises several independent kingdoms with each king enjoying complete suzerainty. The three Ms of Bhangra – Mann, Malkit and Mehndi – are the mighty kings of Bhangra Nation who appear to coexist peacefully without trespassing into each other’s territory. While gurdas Mann is the undisputed Maharaja of the Panjabi Empire, Daler Mehndi is the Badshah of India and Malkit shifts his durbar from Birmingham to Jallandar in winter. The Bhangra kings-in-waiting are heirs to one of the three kingdoms – panjabi, desi and vilayeti controlled by the three Ms. The Mann brothers Harbhajan and Gursevak, Manmohan Waris and brother Kamal Heer, and Jassi are classified along with Mann as transmitters of Panjabi folk tradition. Daler Mehndi appears to have no successors but must share the desi Bhangra space with a number of Bollywood followers. Diasporic princes include the Dubai based Sukhbir and a number of heir apparents from the UK, the old favourite Sukhshinder Shinda, the youth icon Jazzy B and the new kid on the block Jassi Sidhu, to name a few. But the real king of Panjabi hearts is the folk practitioner Pammi Bai who few outside Panjab are likely to know. The Bhangra boys from the UK, from Bally sagoo to Panjabi MC and juggy D, might come to Panjab for their annual india tours, create a stir during the stopovers in the elite nightclubs of Delhi and Mumbai, and go. Panjab and Panjabis still swear by Manaksaab, Maansaab and Malkitpaji while India continues to dance to Daler’s Mann Panjab de, meaning the Pride of Panjab, is an honour bestowed on performers who conform to the Panjabi definition of panjabiyat. “Sanu Mann Panjabi hon da” (we are proud to be Panjabis) is the refrain in the song “Nachde Panjabi” by the folksinger Pammi Bai in the album of the same name. 1

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stirring Lydian tune in rang de Basanti (2006) proving that the third M is still a force to contend with. Philip Bohlman, in The Study of Folk Music in the Modern world, defines authenticity “as the consistent representation of the origins of a piece (or a style or a genre) in subsequent versions or later moments in the tradition’s chronology” and opposes it to change, stressing the point that while the focus of authenticity is on the past, change focuses on the present. The most important point that Bohlman makes in this book is that “authenticity need not be idealized and strictly construed, but it often is” (1988: 10). John Connell and Chris Gibson, in Sound Tracks: Popular Music, Identity and Place, opposing fixity to change, examine “how authenticity is constructed for particular styles, genres, artists and releases” and argue that such authenticity “is in part constructed by attempts to embed music in place” in a number of ways (2003: 19). Bhangra’s authenticity is deeply implicated in multiple politics of region/place, caste, sect and ethnicity, and predicated on the myth of a pre-capitalist, pre-industrial past and the nostalgic construction of the idyllic, uncorrupted pind or village, which conceals both feudal and neo-capitalistic relations of power through which the music is mediated. The production of this romanticized narrative of the idyllic village that is contrasted with the corruptions of the city/West consecrates certain performers with authenticity and gives them the right to represent Panjab.2 The meaning of asli or authentic and naqli or inauthentic in Bhangra cannot be disengaged from the production of the narrative of panjabiyat or Panjabiness. The authenticity question in music is really subservient to the production of Panjabi modernity in the present, which is, by nature, a narrative of fluidity rather than fixity. Essentialist narratives of Panjabi culture that view tradition as a fixed, unchanging essence overlook the changes by which Panjabi folk tradition has evolved over the centuries through acts of individual creativity that have met the acceptance of the community or have been rejected as inauthentic. These instances of individual creativity testify to Panjabi folk tradition’s ability to incorporate change. In this chapter I argue that though all Bhangra genres, even the “pure”, display different degrees of contamination, certain genres and practitioners are consecrated as mann Panjab de (the Pride of Panjab) (see Figures 3.1a, 3.1b and 3.1c). I will show that the consecration of particular Bhangra performers as the mann or “pride of Panjab” is imbricated with the production of diverse narratives of Panjabi modernity in the contemporary globalized context. The myth of authenticity dominates discussions of Bhangra in spite of glaring evidence of hybridizations in the present as well as in the past. Bhangra scholarship, 2 Kajri jain’s unpublished essay on the production of locality in Ludhiana, which compares the mediatized production of locality mapped on rusticity with the resistance of the actual practices of cable operators in Ludhiana, brings out the contrast between fabricated authenticity and lived practices. jain shows that the mapping of authenticity on the “folk” or rusticity not only foregrounds the “produced” nature of locality but also the politics of culture that reflects social relations of domination (2003: n.p.).

Mann PanjaB De: FABrICATING AuThENTICITY

Figure 3.1a

Mann Panjab De – Pammi Bai

Figure 3.1b

Mann Panjab De – gurdas Mann

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Figure 3.1c

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Mann Panjab De – Malkit Singh

which remains fixed in a “more innocent age of folk music scholarship”, persists in its search for origins (Bohlman 1988: 9). The conservative gaze of folklore studies through which Bhangra is examined is essentially retrospective, turning to an idealized past as the site for cultural and musical purity even though a hunt for origins might lead us to a category that never was.3 if authenticity is dependent on the myth of origins, the authenticity of a genre whose origins are steeped in antiquity becomes doubly difficult, if not impossible, to determine. Exhibiting a pastoral preference, folklore scholars view Bhangra as the ethnocultural signifier of pastoral life rhythms by emphasizing bodily movements mimicking sowing, planting, harvesting and so on. This conflicts with the martial theory of Bhangra’s origins in which Bhangra is believed to have originated as a victory dance when inebriated warriors would celebrate their victory over the enemy by feasting

3 Schreffler, who has been doing field work on the jhummar and sammi revival in Panjab, shows how bhangra was privileged over the more widespread jhummar in constructing the narrative of panjabiyat after partition (2005: n.p.). “Bhangra has developed as a combination of dances from different parts of the Punjab region. The term ‘Bhangra’ now refers to several kinds of dances and arts, including Jhumar, Luddi, Giddha, Julli, Daankara, Dhamal, Saami, Kikli, and Gatka” (“Bhangra”. oxford Sikhs: n.p.).

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and dancing.4 As folklorists can merely speculate about Bhangra’s remote past in the absence of visual documentation of its ancient, or even the medieval, stage, authentication through reference to an authoritative canon is impossible. in the absence of an originary ur-text, questions of purity and authenticity become difficult, if not impossible, to determine. Instead, a search for origins leads to a saga of cross-fertilization between and outside various Panjabi dance forms.5 Bohlman suggests “a broader context for origins” than the primordial search that has engaged folklore scholars, “one that concerns itself not so much with products but the process of coming into being” (1988: 2). He proposes that the folklorist investigate the questions of how a society creates new songs, when musical change arises and when and how new canons of folk music form (1988: 2). These questions can be extremely productive in resolving the authenticity–inauthenticity debate raging in Bhangra because authenticity always forms the minimal pair of change in folk music. The art historian Alka Pande speaks of how Panjabi folk “absorbed, imbibed and added to its repertoire” and “transformed itself to the prevailing influences of the times and emerged even more buoyant and diverse” (1998: n.p.). The reinvention of Bhangra in the 1990s, which has reactivated the asli–naqli debate, demands that earlier moments of transformation in Bhangra’s history be identified. While the transformations of Panjabi tradition during the colonial period have not been documented, the transformations that have occurred in the 60 years since independence still exist in public memory and illustrate “a reconstitution of performative scene” (Nijhawan 2006: 180). These transformations that occurred due to the formalization of shared Panjabi boundaries and identities, the demise of feudal patronage systems, and urbanization and technological development interrogate the Utopian myth of rustic authenticity through which asli Bhangra has been defined. While colonialism is acknowledged as a major upheaval in the history of indigenous cultures, partition’s role in rupturing shared cultural memories has not been paid sufficient attention.6 Lamenting the disappearance of performing castes in her recent study, Alka Pande shows how the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 contributed to the demise of a rich performance tradition (1998: n.p.). 4 While Panjabi scholar Nahar Singh and the folksinger Pammi Bai vouch for Bhangra’s pastoral origins, music producer atul sharma locates it in martial exercises. The peasant work-song, “which mimic(s) agricultural activities”, was gradually consecrated in rural and urban centres as sacred Panjabi rite and performed to mark festivals, marriages and other birth-related ceremonies (Personal communication 2006). 5 Professor r.L. Kapoor, Fellow at the national institute of advanced studies Bangalore, recalled local Bhangra groups’ incorporation of Ukrainian dance movements after the visit of a Ukrainian dance team in the 1950s (Personal communication after my talk “on a Bhangra high in Cyberspace”, NIAS wednesday Seminar Series, 12 May 2002). 6 Lately, partition scholars like Shail Mayaram and Nonica Dutta have investigated the implications of the closing of borders and formalization of identities for borderland dwellers and in-between identities (Mayaram 1996).

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Michael nijhawan’s study of the dhaadi tradition brings out partition’s contribution to “an altered understanding of the performative practice” (2006). Nijhawan attributes the decline of hereditary musicians, largely Muslims, in east Panjab due to partition and argues that their migration caused a gap in musical expertise on the Indian side. With their identity fixed as Muslim, most mirasis, a lower caste between hindu and Muslim, were forced to remain in or migrate to Pakistan but were unable to practice their arts because, as nijhawan maintains, “there has been a devaluation of cultural tradition expressed in idioms of regionalism” on the Pakistani side (2006). Pande adds that mirasis on the indian side of the border languished after independence due to the collapse of the royal and feudal patronage system (1998: n.p.). Forced to earn their livelihood by entertaining commoners on auspicious occasions or as street performers, mirasis lost their traditional role in cultural transmission.7 The demise of the mirasi tradition after independence transformed the character of the performer and performance, reconstituted the Panjabi performative space and altered Bhangra as a performative practice. While the state stepped in to replace feudal patronage after independence, its imposition of the methodologies of colonial disciplines on Panjabi cultural practices “othered” the mirasi through the ethnographic tropes of “discovery” or musealized them as curiosities.8 The colonial disciplinary discourses employed in preserving folk musical traditions have been found to impose Western taxonomies, generic 7

“a ‘Mirasi’ was supposed to be the custodian of ‘Miras’, that is, The heritage. They would orally recite long poems about the ancestral heritage of a particular family at the time of birth, marriage and death and indeed on all occasions of celebrations both locally and widespread. The cultural degeneration of indians, especially Panjabi heritage defamed the title ‘Mirasi’ and reduced its connotation to a beggar poet” (“The Rebabi Tradition” 2006). Aryan makes a mention of competitions organized by their royal patrons between groups of mirasis of singing khioore, songs based on the life of raja rasool (Aryan 1983). “The Mirasis of northwestern india were Muslims who traced their origin to hazrat Mohammad and called themselves Qureshis from the Arab world. When Guru Nanak arrived on the scene, things changed: most of those in Punjab now trace their lineage to Baba Mardana, the rabab-playing companion of Guru Nanak. In the durbars of the village chieftains they sang songs of war, victory and valour. And at the homes of their jajman (patron), they sang on all social occasions: in a full-throated way, they rendered folk and Sufi songs. Their wit was their wealth, and their musical talent a gift from god. They played a vital role in feudal Punjab, preserving family histories and the tradition of hindustani classical and Punjabi folk music” (Pushkarna, 2004: n.p.). “Mirasi (Mir ‘Alam) Group. ‘Mirasi’ is, in a general sense, an occupational label in reference to a Muslim hereditary professional. it is also used to specifically identify several performing ethnic groups. It is widely believed that at least the core of the Mirasi communities emerged from among the Dum people. A likely scenario is that they were converts to Islam from among the Hindu Dum who, upon conversion, kept their profession, but adopted a new identity” (Schreffler 2006: n.p.). 8 As Nijhawan (2006) points out, the destruction of the syncretic, fluid musical cultures after partition led to the removal of Muslim mirasis from Hindu and Sikh religious institutions and practices and their appropriation in the secular disciplinary structure of folklore.

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divisions and “structures of feeling” antithetical to indigenous texts.9 in replicating the disciplinary boundaries of folklore, music and dance, state institutions fragmented the integrated skills of mirasis, which altered the Panjabi performative practice in a significant manner. While traditional mirasis possessed multiple skills, the state classification systems limited them as either instrumentalists or dancers or singers through the imposition of the methodologies and structures of ethnomusicology, dance or folklore (Schreffler 2006: n.p.).10 While Bhangra was a specialized practice entrusted to the performing castes of mirasis because of the particular skills they possessed, the skills that were valorized centred on the performance of musical instruments rather than singing and dancing, which were widely distributed according to age and gender. Finally, the mirasi was not merely an entertainer but performed the important social function of preserving tradition by reciting the genealogies of individuals and places (Schreffler 2006: n.p.). The end of the mirasi tradition has decoupled specialization from a particular caste and distributed it across various castes as well as split skills with singing taken over by jats and instrumental skills remaining with mirasis. The dismissal of non-Panjabi hybridizations in the present seems to ignore the history of change through which Bhangra was produced, after Panjab’s 1947 partition, as a distinct genre that homogenized a number of diverse region-, gender-, function- and movement-based Panjabi genres. Gibb Schreffler’s research on the revival of jhummar, a Panjabi dance genre, as “real” Panjabi heritage looks back to an earlier invention of Panjabi tradition in which “bhangra”, a genre marginalized to the more popular jhummar, was mobilized in the production of post-colonial Panjabi identity through the collusion of old aristocratic with new institutional and commercial interests in which folk performers were equally complicit (2005: n.p.).11 Schreffler locates this moment in the performance of a folkloric 9

For example, the north Zone Cultural Centre “discovered” sharief idu, one of the surviving Panjabi “Sufi dhadhis”, as he was carrying goods on a horse cart to earn a living (Pande 1998: n.p.). Now he is a guru under a guru-shishya parampara (ancient teacherdisciple tradition) that the Cultural Centre has promoted to preserve vanishing traditions. 10 Schreffler (2006) points out that mirasis can play any instrument or perform any entertainment genre of song in addition to being praise singers and playing intermediaries (lagis) in the life-cycles of their patrons. 11 “Until a few years ago, the vigorous bhangra was looked down upon by the sophisticated. Today every Punjabi is proud of it” (Gargi 1959: 69). Dance Scholar Nahar Singh defines jhummar as “the folk dance of the Jaangli people of the baar-s [formerly uncultivated jungle regions between the rivers] of the Western Punjab” whose stronghold has been the region of the Raavi Baar and the Saandal Baar (Nahar Singh. trans. Schreffler 2003). “The Jhummar is a dance of graceful gait, based on specific Jhumar rhythm. Dancers circle around the drummer, and keep up a soft, sibilant chorus as they dance. It is a dance of ecstasy. it is a living testimony of the happiness of men. any time is jhummar time especially during Melas, weddings and other major functions and celebrations. Performed exclusively by men, it is a common feature to see three generations – father, son and grandson – dancing all together. There are three main types of jhummar, each of which

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dance by students of Mahindra College Patiala in the early 1950s who attracted the attention of Yadvinder Singh, the Maharaja of Patiala (2005: n.p.). Schreffler reports that “the dance troupe created a sort of dance medley, an amalgamation that, in one routine, displayed glimpses of various regional Punjabi dances” (2005: n.p.).12 Dubbed “bhangra” by the Patiala dance troupe, this medley performance was made to bear the burden of representing post-independence Panjabi identity in the first Republic Day Parade in 1954 (Dhillon 1998: 116).13 Citing Bhangra as a classic example of “reinvented tradition”, Schreffler argues that “subsequently this modern bhangra was institutionalized and, finally, standardized, first in mainstream Indian films and later in Punjabi colleges and universities through annual ‘culture competitions’ called ‘youth festivals’” (2005: n.p.). The staging of Panjabi identity in schools and college functions and other official celebrations through Bhangra performance might have decontextualized Bhangra from lived performance ritual. But the new official rituals of identity production, interpellated generations of students as Panjabis who have been appropriated in the function of cultural transmission. in this post-independence ritual of Bhangra competition between college and university teams, which has been carried over to the Panjabi diasporas in New York, California and British Columbia, may be located the birth of contemporary Bhangra. Schreffler’s findings uncover the process of the invention of panjabiyat or Panjabi identity in the new state of Panjab through the collusion of feudal with and new elite interests through the appropriation of mirasi individuals. Bohlman maintains that concepts of community and musicians need not be mutually exclusive and that the folk musician’s role of tradition bearer need not be conflictual with individual creativity. Panjabi folk tradition displays a fine balance between individual creativity and specialization. Traditional Bhangra, like other Panjabi folk genres, belongs to the tradition of collective ownership, which is entrusted to particular performing castes. individual creativity is controlled and regulated by ubiquitous musicality, communal composition and formulaic idiom. has a different mood, and is therefore suited to a different [occasion, depending on] its predominating mood” (“Jhummar” 2007). 12 Pande, in her obituary to Bhanna Ram Sunami, reports that he set up the first dance troupe, which was invited by the then Maharaja of Patiala, the late Bhupinder singh, to perform for the first time. The same team performed in the first cultural performance at the Republic Day celebrations in 1955, and was part of the cultural delegations taken by Pandit Nehru to China. Bhanna Ram was also the first Panjabi dholi to star in films (Pande 1999b). However, Pande, unlike Schreffler, appears to approve of state patronage for preserving languishing traditions. 13 Master harbhajan singh, who has the rare distinction of having trained every Bhangra team participating in the state republic Day celebrations in new Delhi or republic Day parades for 27 years, from 1960 to 1987 and could well be seen as the “official” voice that adjudicates on the “genuine” and the “fake”, states: “I am valued for the purity of my dance. My kind of bhangra is more rhythmic than vigorous. What you see today is a distorted version of bhangra. What I offer is the real, original form” (Tandon 22 December 2004).

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Bhangra exhibits examples of all forms of creativity ranging from regulated to discriminatory and rationalized creativity.14 however, in integrated creativity, that is, in the combination of the new with the old, the notion of deviance becomes extremely crucial. it must be noted that Bhangra was reinvented in india simultaneously but independent of its hybridization in the UK. an analysis of homegrown examples of individual creativity would disengage Bhangra’s creativity from the model of diasporic hybridity and relocate it within “at home” discourses of creativity, which might not necessarily be predicated on hybridity. While British Asian Bhangra was born through the hybridization of Panjabi folk music with British popular music (Nettl Model III), Bhangra in India was reinvented as Bhangra pop through the popularization of Panjabi folk largely through its incorporation of Indian popular cultural idioms (Nettl Model IV).15 Unlike British Asian Bhangra that is defined as a hybridization of Bhangra with black and Western sounds, Bhangrapop is a transformation within Panjabi folk tradition through new combinations of tradition catalyzed by other musical traditions. Pammi Bai, alias Paramjit Singh Siddhu, unofficially appointed by the Panjabi academia as the bearer of Panjabi tradition, is repeatedly invited to represent Panjabi culture at important public functions and forums. Therefore, Pammi Bai’s album, Nachde Panjabi, though produced commercially, can be regarded as a semi-official documentation of diverse Bhangra genres. in the title song of Nachde Panjabi, Pammi acts as the impresario commanding an impressive ensemble of Bhangra greats – the mann or pride of Panjab – including singers, dancers, instrumentalists and lyricists. Among the “manns” who walk through Pammi’s frame, one cannot miss the legendary dowager of Panjabi folksong Manjit Bawa, the reigning monarch Gurdas Mann, and the folk hero Sarbajeet Cheema, but is likely to miss

14 Eleanor Long’s identification of four typical responses of ballad singers to musical creativity may be borrowed to distinguish between different forms of Bhangra transformations. regulated creativity is a process, “which characterizes a ballad singer who insists upon faithful preservation of his text” (qtd in Bohlman 1988: 78). rationalized creativity relates to the folk musician’s ability to adapt traditional material to external values and contexts with the musician functioning as a mediator (Bohlman 1988: 79). In discriminatory creativity, the musician may perform in a faithful manner but make certain choices that limit repertory or aspects of performance. Integrated creativity “combines old and new materials in specific ways, so that repertories and styles are in effect altered, but in ways consistent with the expectations of diverse audiences” (Long qtd in Bohlman 1988: 79). When individual musicians function in ways that the bulk of society would never sanction for itself, the specialization of these musics manifests as deviance (Bohlman 1988: 83). 15 Bruno nettl has proposed four models through which individual pieces may be accommodated in folk tradition (Nettl 1982: 8–9 qtd in Bohlman 1988: 19). Among Bruno nettl’s four models, both the third and fourth models of change may be traced in Bhangra’s transmutation. nettl’s third model refers to internal changes (or eleanor Long’s notion of “integrative creativity”), that is, the combining of old and new materials in different ways consistent with the expectations of diverse audiences.

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the “invisible” dholis, dhaadis, tumbi and algoza players.16 it is to Pammi’s credit that he has provided space for the entire caste of invisible performers engaged in the production of a Bhangra performance rather than for just the visible singerdancer. However, Bhangra’s classification as music promotes the “golden voice”, a trend that began with the Panjabi radio artistes of the 1950s and 1960s, to the neglect of the body and its movements. its continuity with geet or song of the 1950s partially could potentially disengage Bhangra from the legacy left behind by legendary dancers like Manohar Deepak and Mangal Sunami, ustads or teachers like Bhanna Ram Sunami and so on. The privileging of the geet or song over the nritta or dance marginalizes Pammi Bai himself, who, defining Bhangra as dance, perceives himself as a performer first and singer later. sanjay srivastava, in a fascinating essay, has traced the relationship between the singing voice of the playback singer Lata Mangeshkar and the production of a particular narrative of Indian femininity after Independence (2006). Surinder Kaur, the late diva, was similarly appropriated in the consolidation of Panjabi identity after independence. Though Kaur is now represented as the voice of tradition, her singing voice and style are essentially different from the qawwali singers of the gramophone era. surinder Kaur’s singing voice, which differs from that of the old ghazal singers and new playback singers, was herself a product of the radio age who transformed Panjabi folksong in many ways.17 The subsumption of Kaur’s

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“The primary and most important instrument that defines Bhangra is the dhol. The dhol is a large, high-bass drum, played by beating it with two sticks. The width of a dhol skin is about fifteen inches in general, and the dhol player holds his instrument with a strap around his neck. The string instruments include the tumbi, sarangi, sapera, supp, and chimta. The dhad, dafli, dholki, and damru are the other drums. The tumbi, famously mastered by Amar Singh Chamkila, a famous Punjabi singer, is a high-tone, single-string instrument. Although it has only one string, mastering the tumbi takes many years. The sarangi is a multi-stringed instrument, somewhat similar to the violin. The sapera produces a beautiful, high-pitched stringy beat, while the supp and chimta add extra, light sound to Bhangra music. Finally, the dhad, dafli, dholki, and damru are instruments that produce more drum beats, but with much less bass than the dhol drum” (“Bhangra”. oxford Sikhs 2007: n.p.). 17 Though Surinder and her sister Prakash are labelled as folksingers, they were the first stars of All India Radio Lahore in the 1940s who were coopted by the Bombay film industry. Kaur gave her first live performance on Lahore Radio in August 1943 when she was 13 and recorded her first album with her sister for HMV in the following year. The singing sisters became household names across the sectarian divide with no Panjabi wedding deemed complete without their songs, which were played on hand-wound machines. Kaur moved with her parents to Delhi after partition in 1947 and then to Bombay where she did playback singing until 1952 before returning to Delhi and marrying an academic, Joginder Singh Sodhi (“Surinder Kaur” 2007).

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lyrical originality under her consecration as folk musician offers a unique example of individual creativity that becomes absorbed in the communal repertoire.18 While his mirasi origins entitle the Big M of Panjabi music, Kuldip Manak, to authenticity, Manak heralds the transformation of the mirasi heritage after independence through new forms of patronage.19 Born Latif Mohammed, Manak embodies the mixed boundaries of Panjabi village life and cultural traditions elucidated by joseph Berland and harjot oberoi. in an interview on eTC Punjabi in October 2007, Manak bore testimony to these overlapping boundaries by clarifying that the practice of dual identities, a Muslim and a Sikh, dates back to the tradition of mirasis singing at Sikh shrines at the time of Baba Mardana, Guru Nanak’s Muslim companion.20 Through tracing his lineage to his court musician grandfather and singer father Nikka Khan, Manak embedded himself in the preindependence royal patronage system. reminiscences of struggles with poverty in early childhood and youth that included painful confessions of walking to school and going to bed hungry serve to anoint Manak with suffering and strengthen his bonds to the languishing tribe of folk performers of Panjab displaced after independence. a reminder about his birthday by his young interviewer brought disavowals of Western calendar time as Manak confessed that the concept of birthdays was alien to where he came from. his mirasi lineage and kinship – with one of his siblings a renowned devotional singer and another a practicing tantrik – endows Manak with an inexplicable mystique and increases his commercial worth. even his disavowal of commercial interest in this interview conducted as part of the promotion strategy for his modified album Jogi demonstrates how this disavowal might actually increase the symbolic capital of his music. The familiar ethnomusicologist motif of Manak’s discovery by the Panjabi writer Hardev Dilgir at a live performance in 1968 similarly establishes the nexus between academic and commercial interests in fabricating authenticity. Manak’s career confirms the collaboration of state institutions and the music industry in the invention of a cultural purity for the mirasi artist though the performer’s music demonstrates more instances of individual creativity than fixity. In Manak’s song “G.T. Road Te”, the G.T. Road or the Grand Trunk Road constructed by the Afghan ruler Sher Shah Suri becomes a metaphor for Manak’s musical continuity with his peripatetic tribe:

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“Lathe Di Chadar”, “Kala Doria”, “ambersare De Papad”, “juti Kasuri” and “Sadke Sadke Jadeye Muteyare Ni” naturalized as Panjabi folksong were Surinder Kaur’s creations. A number of “folksongs” being mobilized in the reconstruction of Panjabi identity are individual compositions. 19 Kuldip Manak was born Latif Mohammed on 15 November 1951 in the village of Jalal in the Bhatinda district and began his career at the age of 17 with the song “Jija Akhian Na Maar Vemain Kal Di Kuri” (written by Babu Singh Maan Mararawale) which he sang with the then popular singer Seema. His first record features this song along with “Laung Karaa Mitran, Machli Paunge Maape” (written by Gurdev Singh Mann). 20 Quoted from memory.

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BhANGrA MovES GT road Te Brrrruahhhh Down the gT road Brrrruahhhh GT road Te Duhiyan Paavay roars down the gT road Girl, yours truly’s truck yaaran Da Truck Balliye leaving daily from Bombay to Pathankot nit Bombay-o Pathankot Javay yours truly’s truck yaaran Da Truck Balliye Down the gT road Brrrruahhhh GT road Te Brrrruahhhh road Te Duhiyan Paavay roars down the gT road yaaran Da Truck Balliye yours truly’s truck (Kuldip Manak. “G.T. Road Te”)

Like mirasi performers who travelled between parts of central asia and villages of Panjab across afghanistan at different times of the year, the modern Panjabi truckdriver speeds down the length and breadth of the Indian nation. However, unlike the mirasis who testify to the accommodation of the peripatetic niche in preIndependence Panjabi society, the itinerant truckdriver epitomizes the dilemma of homelessness in the modern world. But “G.T. Road Te” confirms Bohlman’s observations on folk tradition’s inherent accommodativeness and flexibility through which a Bollywood screen idol might be assimilated as easily into folk fantasy as new geographies of the nation connected by the national highway. I have stuck Hema Malini’s photograph hema Malni di photo shishay above the mirror naal lai nee and gaze at her whenever i miss you dekh laya uno jado teri yaad ayeee nee tenu tera ni driver This is how your driver bhullavay ni yaaran da truck balliye copes with your absence, girl (Kuldip Manak. “G.T. Road Te”)

While Manak’s retention of English words such as “road”, “truck” and “driver” testify to folk tradition’s unproblematic incorporation of modern influences, his celebration of the automobile as the signifier of Panjabi identity after Independence disengages panjabiyat from essentialist narratives of rusticity in the national imaginary.21 While the music industry and academia works hard to locate Manak in rustic antiquity, the music video of Manak’s new release “Ranjha Jogi Hoya” reconstructs a later history of Panjabi song in the gramophone era when folk music had already been contaminated by electronic mediation. The song has Manak singing and dancing on an improvised stage in a Panjabi village square exposing the rather primitive technology of gramophones and record plates tied to string cots employed in early recordings of Panjabi songs. The music video reproduces a fairly accurate image of the recording and listening contexts of the past with listeners spilling out of rooftops, minarets and trees to get a glimpse of the singer performing on an open make-shift stage. The narrative context of the album feeds on the nostalgia for the past but also 21 For a discussion on the g.T. road as a metaphor for pre-colonial boundaries see Kalra and Purewal (1999).

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invests Manak with a retro glamour to evoke familiarity in his fans while cashing on its curiosity value for a new generation of fans. in a Bhangra mediascape inundated with images of Bhangra musicians with glamorous young men and women, the video’s appeal to unembellished rusticity becomes an added source of authenticity. Manak’s disclaimers of artifice are belied by the carefully produced rustic ambience of the music video through which the ageing legend is invested with additional value. While Manak’s virtuosity or talent cannot be questioned, the mirasi singer cannot be romanticized through his disavowal of commerce because the withdrawal of royal or community patronage has made him as vulnerable to reification by the culture industry as any modern professional singer. With their implication in the new circuits of capital, the dichotomy between the non-commercial mirasi and commercialized urban bourgeoisie performer cannot be sustained. This makes room for the emergence of a modern category of professional performer predicated on talent rather than birth or lineage to which gurdas Mann (Figure 3.2) belongs. Gurdas Mann’s endogenous creativity has earned him the title of the mann or pride of Panjab and the “Punjabi star of the millennium globally” (Chhibber 2006: n.p.). At over 50 years of age, with 29 albums and more than 200 songs to his credit, gurdas Mann’s popularity has remained unchallenged in Panjab for more than a quarter of a century. While he might have been overshadowed in the rest of India by his flamboyant counterpart Daler Mehndi, he commands a supreme position in Panjab second only to celebrated mirasi “elders” like the Wadali brothers, Puran Shah Koti, Mohammed Siddique and Kuldip Manak.22 his cassettes are sold out within days of release; his stage shows cause stampedes; and his movies run to packed houses for weeks. Tall, well-built and youthful, gurdas Mann always had a strong telegenic presence even before he became a highly acclaimed Panjabi movie star. But starry presence alone could not have guaranteed Mann a place in the fastidious Panjabi listener’s heart because many other Panjabi singers have movie star like looks. Mann has remained at the top for close to 30 years because of his stupendous talent, his instinctive feel for the pulse of the market and his unique ability to reinvent himself in accordance with 22 Puranchand and Pyarelal Wadali, hailing from Guri ki Wadali, a village blessed by Guru Arjan Dev, are the finest non-literate, hereditary exponents of the mystical Sufiana kalam tradition who learnt music under the tutelage of Pt Durga Das and Ustad Bade ghulam Ali Khan Saheb of Patiala Gharana besides their own father Thakur Das. Since they were “discovered” by n.M. Bhatia of all india radio at the harballabh sangeet sammelan in Jallandar in 1971 and recorded their first song in 1975, they have been honoured by several national and regional awards including the Sangeet Natak Academy award for 1991, the Punjab Sangeet Natak Academy award for 2003 and 2nd ETC Punjabi Award for Lifetime achievement. “Jab tak bika na tha koi puchhta na tha; tune mujhe kharid kar anmol kar diya”, (None took notice of me until I was put on sale, you have made me priceless by buying me up) is how they define their journey from a hamlet in Amritsar to the present day hall of fame (Tandon 2003: n.p.). Puran Shah Koti, the living legend of Panjabi Sufiana and folk, the disciple of Baba Sai of Shahkot village, has been the guru of Hans Raj Hans, Jasbir jassi, sabar Koti, sameer and others.

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Figure 3.2 gurdas Mann current musical trends. Most viewers would remember him as a 20-something, clean-shaven Sikh in the 1980s disseminating the celebrated “josh” spirit of Panjab across the nation with his happy love songs. But over the years, Mann’s persona has evolved from a fun-loving youth to a sombre, serious, reflective man in his prime. Mann has carefully reinvented himself as a venerable Bhangra elder, who is seen encouraging and supporting younger boys with the tone of a leader. it is not surprising that contemporary Bhangra singers and listeners, less than half his age who address him as Gurdaspaaji (Brother Gurdas) should view him as a conservative element. In a Bhangra field pervaded with a shockingly large number of experimenters, gurdas Mann might, in fact, appear to be a pendu, a rustic, which the older generation identified with. Mann himself appears keen to play up his conservative side by insisting on his musical purity and traditionalism. Though his early albums dealt mainly with the theme of love, Mann today delves into serious issues and genres like heer and Sufiana kalam and enjoys taking up difficult musical challenges in every new album.

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But when Mann began in 1980, he was considered a trendsetter who pioneered a new brand of music that came to be known as Bhangrapop. Hybridization with other sounds, cited as the primary factor in Bhangra’s reinvention, is only one way Bhangra has been reinvented. Bhangra was invented after 1947 by its combining of a variety of Panjabi dance genres. Bruno nettl’s third model that refers to internal changes or eleanor Long’s notion of “integrative creativity”, that is, to the combining of old and new materials in different ways consistent with the expectations of diverse audiences, best describes gurdas Mann’s reinvention of Bhangra (Long in Bohlman 1988: 79). Mann isolated from folk performance features intrinsic to these genres that had been elided in folklorized Bhangra performance. He did not look outwards to modernize Bhangra but within to identify aspects in traditional performance that would be perceived as “Kool” but also those that the Panjabi community accepted as an internal change transforming tradition. it must be noted that Mann dissociates himself from Bhangrapop and establishes his continuity with the medieval Panjabi cultural tradition of sung verse by describing himself as a poet. “Poetry is the foremost ingredient of a song. and it always comes in spells”, Mann says. “i never sit and conceive the lyrics of my songs. i have never done that. The words are there, so are the thoughts. it is when the two decide to meet that my song is born. i can’t really say whether I consciously wrote ‘Heer’” (Tandon 13 June 2004: n.p.). While Bhangra would plunge him into the older, earthy tradition of Panjabi folklore, Mann would like to stake his claim to the more sophisticated legacy of Panjabi poetry by setting the verses of poets like Shiv Kumar Batalvi to music. His emphasis on poetic diction and lyrical originality lends his music depth and intensity while placing him in the rich tradition of Panjabi poetry but they also prevent his crossover to non-Panjabi speaking regions. But since Panjabi verse itself traverses a wide range from the oral simplicity of twelfth-century Sufi verse to the literate complexity of modern Panjabi poets, Mann is able to amalgamate the oral and the written, simple and complex irrespective of the tradition in which he may be placed.23 Panjabi poetry, dance and song had emerged as independent traditions led by individual specialists with diverse skills by the time Mann appeared on the scene. The tradition of setting poetry to music characteristic of Panjab had been substituted for written verse. Bhangra, separated from geet with its emphasis on lyrical complexity and depth, was clearly positioned as a dance genre. Mann 23

“By God’s grace I have never had to look for gurus, I have met them at various stages in my life. I remember, when I was a school kid, there was this sweet vendor who’d tap a flat board and sing to its beat – I picked the basic sense of rhythm from him. Then at the village chaupal, our elders taught us Waris shah’s traditional heer. During the impressionable years, I followed folk singers Yamla Jat and Surinder Kaur. Later in life, I learnt a great deal by listening to Ashaji, Lataji and Rafiji. But, Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, I must admit, was the biggest influence in my life for I too sing in the Sufiana style”, Gurdas Mann reveals (Mann 2006: n.p.).

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borrowed elements from each traditional genre and combined them into a new one. Eschewing traditional formulaic composition like an entire generation of folksingers before him, he composed original poetry, which he set to traditional folk melodies. He took over movement from Bhangra and presented the three in a harmonized whole. With Mann was born the category of the poet-singer-dancer, who combined the singing talents of Kuldip Manak with the dancing skills of Manohar Deepak. The two important features noted in Bhangra’s transformation are its contact with other regional dance and music styles through its folklorization, and the Bollywood influence through its inclusion in films. Like the generic Bhangra created after 1947, Mann’s reinvention of Bhangra is an internal change but Mann reinvented Bhangra by marrying dance with song and both with poetry. But Mann also “modernized” Bhangra by inserting an indian popular cultural idiom in rustic Panjabi music.24 Despite his cultivating a traditional singing style distinctive from that of his predecessor asa singh Mastana as noted by Peter Manuel, Mann displays a strong Bollywood influence in his early albums (Manuel 2001a). Though he dresses in traditional lungi kurta for his stage performances, his sartorial style displays a heavy influence of Bollywood kitsch and his lungi kurtas, which have turned more resplendent over the years, infiltrate Bhangra with Bollywood glamour. More than the gayaki or singing style, Bollywood-style singing has influenced his arrangement of Bhangra bolis in the compositional style of the Bollywood geet. instead of relying on the formulaic couplet that constitutes Bhangra bolis, Mann casts his lyrics in the stanza division of Bollywood songs or ghazals packing a string of words in a sequence that follows the popular song format. he uses light verses as well as heavy ones in his compositional style, which relies to a large extent on verbal meaning in addition to musical, making a clean departure from the nonsense verse conventionally employed in Bhangra. While Mann is a spontaneous dancer who displays a preference for a particular style of traditional Bhangra, his introduction of choreography in Bhangra reflects a pronounced Bollywood influence. Unlike folk performers who dance freely, improvising one movement after the other as their spirit moves them, Mann’s dance moves appear to be carefully choreographed and rehearsed. Mann has stated somewhere that except for the opening vandana (Hindu prayer) and the ardas (Sikh prayer) at the end, he lets the performance pick up its own momentum. But anyone who has watched Mann perform on video or live will not fail to recognize the rehearsed gestures and steps and the careful organization of space echoing Bollywood-style choreography. Though Mann diluted Panjabi folk’s earthiness in the 1980s to popularize it, he is soundly grounded in Panjabi folk genres and has balanced his Bollywoodized numbers with renderings of traditional Panjabi genres like Mirzan Sahibaan and 24

in his later years, Mann, as an active member of the Patiala theatre scene, came into contact with Bollywood actors and playback singers whose influence is visible in his “glamorization” of folk music.

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heer (Mir 2006).25 Even his Bollywood-style numbers invoke the Panjabi cultural memory. For example, in his thoroughly Bollywoodized song “Pyar Kar Lai”, Mann cites examples from Panjabi love stories to illustrate the motif of love. Mann’s new album vilayatan (2005) exhibits his versatility in handling a variety of traditional and modern Panjabi genres. Though “Baabe Bhangra Pounde ne”, Mann’s ode to the dancing skills of Panjabi elders, has caused great disappointment to Mann’s Panjabi fans due to its Bollywood style choreography,26 his julli experiment, “ishq Di Mari”, is more successful with Mann performing the gestures of a Sufi saint in a trance like state.27 his lyrics follow the simple but profound vocabulary and structures of Sufi poetry and, like the Sufi singer, Mann assumes a female persona to articulate the theme of possession. ishq di mari Stricken with love ve main jhalli ho gayi i have gone mad (Gurdas Mann. “Ishq Di Mari”)

The album demonstrates Mann’s consummate skill in handling other complex traditional Panjabi genres. Mann’s collaboration with Pakistani Abrar ul Haq and the UK-based Sukhshinder Shinda is another novel experiment with the three talented musicians rendering different versions of the traditional genre heer in their characteristic singing and dancing styles. The text articulates another Bhangra trope about the making and breaking of friends to engage with the fracturing of Panjab and suggests that its undivided cultural memory can possibly put together Panjab’s fissured body. Mann holds his own ground against his equally talented collaborators by attempting a vocal scale that makes him stand out clearly against shinda’s middle and abrar’s low scales. Despite his adoption of Bollywood style, Mann has endeared himself to Panjabi viewers through his conforming to the concept of safsuthra or clean family 25 waris Shah ki heer and Mirzan Sahibaan ka Sur are seminal texts in the qissa tradition of Panjab that drew on the literary tradition of Persian qisse that locates them in the sphere of Perso-islamic literary aesthetics but also “constitute a regional tradition, one that incorporated local aesthetic principles and responded to the religious plurality and social organization of the Punjab” (Mir 2006: 28). 26 The Bollywood style choreography and Western gear inhibits the elderly Bhangra maestros who participated in the music video and marginalizes them in relation to the “phony” Bollywood “baabe” or elders flanking Mann. The insertion of Bollywood grammar makes Mann’s paean to the virility and dancing prowess of Panjabi elders turn into a mockery. Mann’s elders are made to perform Bollywoodized moves to the count of 1-2-3-4 in a parody of the Bhangra dance that the song celebrates. 27 “julli is a dance associated with Muslim holy men called pirs and is generally performed in their hermitages. Typically the dancers dress all in black, and perform Julli in a sitting posture, but it is sometimes also done around the grave of a preceptor. julli is unique in that one person, alone, can perform the dance if he so desires” (“Bhangra”. oxford Sikhs: n.p.).

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entertainment mentioned in Chapter 2. Mann is conscious about maintaining his family-man image in his stage persona as well as concrete identity. “i don’t need semi dressed girls and a 199 musicians to perform on stage”, he proudly declares (Nandy 1999: n.p.). Though he embodies a sense of fun and exudes joy, it is the “clean” kind of fun that families would approve of rather than the sexually laced humour of many Bhangra albums. Mann gives voice to the spirit of joy characteristic of Panjabis without resorting to the double entendre or sexual punning that had entered Panjabi folksongs described as ashleel or vulgar. he provides clean, healthy entertainment that families can participate in, inviting the listener to enjoy the depth and complexity of his lyrical composition, a concept alien to traditional Bhangra genres. rather than his being dismissed as an impostor, Mann’s endogenous creativity is viewed as leading Panjabi tradition to a new level of complexity. Mann demonstrated folk music’s ability to incorporate change by adapting itself to different tunes and rhythms without losing continuity with tradition. But Mann also “modernized” Bhangra by incorporating an indian popular cultural idiom in rustic Panjabi music, which illustrates a unique trend noted in Panjabi folk traditions – namely the reinsertion of popular into the folk. Mann’s Bhangrapop should be viewed as a new Panjabi genre, which has developed independently of both British Bhangra and indipop. Both British Bhangra and indipop reveal a strong Western accent and marry a particular indian music with a Western genre. Mann’s music is produced by marrying Panjabi folk, literary and Hindi popular genres resulting in a new Panjabi popular genre. Mann is also the first Bhangra practitioner to fix Bhangra to language and place. Though he is now based in metropolitan Mumbai, he is still celebrated as the voice of rustic Panjabi tradition because his music still remains rooted in place. Mann’s experimentation with Bhangra intersects with the production of a new narrative of Panjabi modernity in the 1980s through the reinvention of tradition. Mann’s music is deeply rooted in the Panjab region and he began the trend of celebrating place that has now become axiomatic in Bhangra. The myth of rustic authenticity undergirding Bhangra texts was propagated by Mann’s celebration of rural Panjabi culture. Though he did not pen the lyrics of his famous song “apna Panjab Hove”, the glorification of panjabiyat that the song embodies are typically Mann, which are repeated in several of his songs. The celebration of the Panjabi pind or village that he began with “apna Panjab hove” continues with the song “Pind Diyan galiyan” from the album Punjeeri (2003). an analysis of “Pind Diyan galiyan” illustrates the narrative of panjabiyat in which the pind plays a central role as well as Mann’s compositional style. “‘Mud mud yaad satave pind diyaan galiyaan di’ also evoked a rural feel”, Mann said in an interview. “We shot beyond Fazilka, close to the border. The village practically had no electricity” (Tandon 13 June 2004: n.p.). The song is cast in the nostalgia mode of the returnee that forms a staple feature of Bhangra nationalism. The imagined subject of the song is the urban/diasporic Panjabi reminiscing about his

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lost childhood in the forgotten village, which breaks through his reverie in the form of a children’s song. luk chup jana Hide and seek makai ka dana a grain of corn raje di beti ayi je The princess is on her way (Gurdas Mann. “Pind Diyan Galiyan”)

as the high-pitched children’s song ends, we hear Mann’s grave voice lamenting the loss of childhood and youth and expressing a yearning for the lost village after a caesura that seems like a long sigh. bachpan chala gaya, jawani chale gayi My childhood has vanished, so has my youth zindagi di keemti nishani chale gayi … all the valuable signs of life have disappeared murh murh yaad satave pind diyaa memories of my village lanes keep galiyaan di haunting me (Gurdas Mann. “Pind Diyan Galiyan”)

a maudlin Mann drives home leading us down memory lane to introduce us to the sights and sounds of a Panjabi village. As Mann makes his way through the narrow mud lanes of the village, he is greeted by children and a gypsy fruit seller before he enters his ancestral home, hoka dindi phirdi bibi phaliyan di sasti lai lao darjan kele faliya di gurhti kaun duawe gurh diyan dallian di

Where the fruit seller roams about calling “Buy bananas cheap by the dozen” Whoever is going to pour gurhti in the newborn’s mouth? (Gurdas Mann. “Pind Diyan Galiyan”)

The visit home refreshes his memories and he can see himself being dressed and fed by mother before leaving for school, Mother, calling me her brave lion, maa di halla sheri sher eggs me on bana dindi and puts a bowl of half-churned buttermilk te adh rirhke da chanha mooh to my mouth nu laa dindi I begin to smile thinking of my hun vi haasi aundi vaghdiya nalliyan running nose di … hahaha (Gurdas Mann. “Pind Diyan Galiyan”)

he fondly recalls chasing buffaloes in the village pond and being caught stealing mangoes by the gardener.

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majha diyan poocha farh ke taari swimming in the pond holding buffaloes laun diyan by their tails kaun bhulayu galla yaari laun diyan Whoever can forget the tales of making friends kad rut aa ke tur gi kachiya kalliyan di When did the season of blossoms pass away? (Gurdas Mann. “Pind Diyan Galiyan”)

Many of the images and melodies function intertextually, recalling familiar popular cultural images and tunes. For example, the mood and tone of the song carries strong echoes of jagjit and Chitra singh’s soulful ghazal “yeh Daulat”: Take my wealth away yeh daulat bhi le lo as well as my fame yeh shohrat bhi le lo mujhe de do meri jawani But return to me the days of my youth who kagaz ke kashti who The paper boat baarish ka pani and rainwater (Jagjit and Chitra Singh. “Yeh Daulat”)

similarly, the shot of the mother combing young Mann’s hair recalls the unforgettable image of Apu looking in the mirror with Durga and mother in the background in Satyajit Ray’s film Pather Panchali (1955). The text maintains a tension between the oral ethos of the children’s song, the literate dynamics of the popular song and the cinematic idiom to reproduce the life rhythms of the Panjabi village. a similar tension is visible between the oral rhythms of the aural text and the Bollywoodized imagery of the visual. if “Baabe Bhangra Pounde ne” from vilayatan is a tribute to Panjabi masculinity, “Aisa Des Hai Mera” from the film veer Zaara (2006) – in which Mann sings – recaptures the mystique of the Panjab region and its culture. Mann expresses great pride in being a cultural ambassador of Panjab and regards the propagation of Panjabi language and culture his sacred duty. on winning the national award for his film Des hoyaa Pardes (2005), Mann commented, “The honours are for Punjabiyat [Punjabi culture] and for me the signal is to move on to the next project and try and do it well” (Dutt 2005: n.p.). Since he first appeared on nation television, Mann has become the ethnocultural signifier of Panjabi identity in the Indian imaginary and his position in the popular cultural sphere has served as a rough barometer of the relationality of Panjabi identity to the national mainstream. Mann’s deep, throaty voice singing in Panjabi pierces through the hindi dominated indian popular cultural universe to be heard above the din of Hindi noise. One can hear in Mann’s music a new confident narrative of Panjabi modernity articulated by the rural, vernacular subject that foregrounds the divide between the urban, modern india and the rural vernacular Bharat as well as between the nation and the region. he has opened a space for Panjab and other regional musics in the hindi dominated music industry through his articulation of the confidence and the self-assurance of a regional rustic ethnicity. Unlike the diaspora where Bhangra articulates in-between, hybrid identities,

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Bhangra in india vocalizes vernacular, regional identities in which gurdas Mann has played a leading role. With Bhangrapop, Mann signals a different indian subject’s arrival in the elitist indipop cultural space. With him vernacular, rural and regional subjects have emerged to stake their claim to Indian popular culture dominated by urban, Westernized, middle-class Indians and to inflect mainstream popular culture, including Bollywood, with regional nuances. It wouldn’t be right to speak of Bhangra in India without acknowledging the contribution of Malkit Singh (Figure 3.3) known as “the frequent flier” for his shuttling between the Bhangra scene in Birmingham and Jallandar. Though Malkit is now based in Birmingham and is equally well known on the UK Bhangra circuit, he visits india several times a year, performing at various places. “Though i have shifted to London, i still love india. The culture and love i have got here can never be compared with any other country. Though the times are changing and perhaps very soon, California would exist in place of Punjab and vice versa, but still i will always respect and love my country”, he said in an interview (Gupta 2002: n.p.).

Figure 3.3

Malkit Singh

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It is Malkit rather than Mann or Mehndi who is believed to have ushered in the Bhangra revival in Panjab and represents a third stream of Bhangra’s transformation (Atul Sharma. Personal communication 2006). Malkit made his reputation virtually through a Pashtun boli, “tootak tootak tootiyan” underlining the inherent mobility across Panjab’s borders that predates the present phase of sonic migration. The success of “Tootak Tootak Tootiyan” tells the story of the fluidity of musical boundaries as well as the continuity of Panjabi musical traditions with the Perso-islamic musical region that explains tootak tootak’s popularity in Panjab, and of Mirzaan Sahibaan in Lebanon.28 Furthermore, its popularity also illustrates how the memory of the shared musical relations is stronger than the new cultural narratives of the nation state. Malkit borrows the ditty and the loop and improvises on the boli in the traditional folk compositional style as follows: Tootak tootak tootiyan tootak tootak tootiyan hey jamalo hey Jamalo tera matha bada sohna your forehead is so beautiful utte tikka manmohna and on top of it is a beautiful dot (Malkit Singh. “Tootak Tootak Tootiyan”)

The song continues praising other physical attributes of the beloved or the items worn by her in the conventional manner of praising the beloved in the boliyan pana (praise song) tradition of Panjab. Malkit usually plays it safe by playing on traditional formulae dealing with love and beauty: gud nalon ishaq mittha Love is sweeter than jaggery (Malkit Singh. “Gur Nalon Ishq Mitha”) mar jaavan ni gud kha ke i will die eating jaggery in your love (Malkit Singh. “Mar Java Gud Khake”)

Once again, repetition, characteristic of oral folk composition, is a feature of Malkit’s style, as is punning on and rhyming of words and the play on bolis through substitution of words and lines. he is most comfortable improvising on traditional formulae than in composing complex lyrics like Mann does. However, the text does not dissolve into pure sound as it does in Mehndi in his case because of his indulgence in word play. oh ik pal beh jana mere kol, tere mithde ne lagde bol

For a moment sit down with me, i love your sweet words

28 This corroborates Mir’s point about the continuity of Panjabi qissa cultural traditions with the Perso-islamic qisse tradition (Mir 2006).

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love baby there are sticks of wheat, jind mahi baajre diyan chattiyaan, jattis have come to see the party) mela vekhan aayiyaan jattiyaan (Malkit Singh. “Jind Mahi”)

With simple lyrics exhorting the listener to dance, and images of a beaming Malkit performing the Bhangra in traditional costume with a beautiful Panjabi lass, the playing of his albums at traditional weddings and nightclubs doesn’t come as a surprise. Malkit Singh also follows the Bhangra convention of celebrating jat identity while the object of his adoration might hail from any community.29 The most celebrated beloved in Malkit’s music is the Gujarati lass with whom Malkit reportedly fell in love: The lass like patola silk kudi patole wargi (Malkit Singh. “Kudi Patole Wargi”)

In “Paaro” he is willing to cross a continent to woo a dusky beauty: Paro PPPParo The one who stole my heart dil lai gayee sada yaro (Malkit Singh. “Paaro”)

Malkit’s tone and delivery are extremely rustic in deference to diasporic preferences and helps him to stand out as the authentic home voice against anglicized British Asian accents. For the British Asian performer, Malkit Singh is the signifier of pendu or rural Panjabi identity, which it must preserve at all costs to restore its links with its roots. Malkit represents a third form of panjabiyat in the making, a diasporic one that returns panjabiyat to Panjabi rurality after its sojourn abroad. he is the voice of the largely rural migrants from Panjab in the UK whose nostalgia for the home village translates into a Utopian vision of Panjab. Malkit acts as the perfect interpreter between Panjab and the diaspora giving the diaspora a feel of rustic Panjabi rhythms and to his listeners at home a taste of musical trends in Britain. In England, Malkit wears the native garb and turns British when he returns home. his stay in the UK has transformed the folk character of his composition. Initially remixed by Bally sagoo with Western rhythms to enhance its appeal to British asian youth, and hybridized by Apache Indian with reggae, Malkit confesses to a reggae weakness proving the syncretic character of folk music and the folk musician’s openness to musical influences. His hybridization of Bhangra with other musical traditions looks back to earlier moments of contact when Panjab music hybridized with other musics to rejuvenate itself. atul sharma pointed out to me that while most Bhangra songs celebrate jat pride, the object of the jat’s adoration may hail from any community, including from Bihari or U.P. guestworker communities in Panjab (Personal Communication 2006). 29

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While Mann and Mehndi might play freely with the traditional genre, Malkit is burdened with a representative and custodian status. his is the voice of tradition that must be modernized in tune with the needs of the new generation without losing its pristine rustic essence. Though Malkit might work to modernize his music, he is pressured to remain rustic due to his positioning in the diaspora. Though Malkit disengages Panjabi music from place, he is archaized to promote the cult of authenticity in the diaspora. The Malkit Singh–Apache Indian collaboration in “independent girl” illustrates the containment of singh’s individual creativity by the diasporic desire for “authenticity”. apache indian: independent girl from you no say you are one away in the whole wide world a you run things sohniaye 24/7 chawvee ghetaye, Indian style a lick … Punjabi Chorus – Malkit Singh Oh sweet girl you take away my heart ni man mohniaye ni hai sohniaye Oh sweet girl you take away my heart ni man mohniaye ni hai sohniaye no one can miss your beauty tere husan tau bach da koi aaj kal di toon haigee heer Saleti you are today’s heer saleti For centuries i’ve been your ranja jogi tera sadian da ranjha main Jogi you are today’s heer saleti aaj kal di toon haigee heer Saleti For centuries i’ve been your ranja jogi tera sadian da ranjha main Jogi (Malkit Singh. “Independent Girl”)

But, in order to watch “real” Bhangra, we must travel to Panjab, where Paramjit Siddhu, alias Pammi Bai (Figure 3.4), a graduate of Panjabi University, Patiala, works closely with academic and cultural institutions to preserve and promote traditional Panjabi culture. “I am the missionary of Panjabi folk culture and would like to preserve it for future generations”, he announced when given the 3rd ETC Punjabi Award for the best folk album (Dhaliwal 2002: n.p.).30 The popular press appears to agree: There are certain folk singers who have stood as guardians of the Punjabi culture to keep the banner of its richness and uniqueness flying. Pammi Bai, alias Parmjit Sidhu, is one such singer. Whereas many folk singers have gone astray, he has kept himself rooted in the basics of Punjabi folk singing. (Dhaliwal 2002: n.p.)

a disciple of the trainer of the Bhangra team that performed in 1954, Pammi is proud to have inherited the pre-partition legacy of Bhangra from his Ustad Bhanna Ram Sunami who migrated from Lyallpur in West Panjab after partition and took 30 he has also stated: “i have no competition with anybody. My objective is to popularize Punjabi culture all over the world” (Inderpreet 2004: n.p.).

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Pammi Bai

it upon himself to train youth in Bhangra. as Bhanna ram is regarded as the father of Bhangra, Pammi could be said to represent the pure voice of tradition.31 While he concedes that Bhangra has transformed several times since its reinvention, he is 31

“Bhanna Ram was born in Shekhopura-Pakistan in 1910 in a ‘baazigar’ community. He trained under Janab Mohammad Ali, in Pakistan, from whom he learnt not only to play the dhol but also the double flute-algoza and the iktaara. What made him an exceptional artist was that he could also sing beautifully as well. Migrating to India after partition in 1947, in 1952 he set up his first dance troupe comprising of lead dancers, Manohar Deepak, the late Gurbachan Deepak, Avtaar Deepak, along with baazigars Mali ram, jallu ram and Mangal singh sunami. he was invited for his first performance by the great art patron of Punjab, the then Maharaja of Patiala, the late Bhupinder Singh. It was the same team which performed in the first cultural performance at the Republic Day celebrations in 1955, and was also part of the cultural delegations taken by Pandit nehru to China. Bhanna Ram was also the first Panjabi dholi to star in films like Naya Daur, Jagte raho, Mirza Sahiban, and Panjabi films like Khaedan de Din Chaar and Jagga Daku. a magnetic performer, Bhanna ram’s style has gone with him to his grave. not even his star pupils can match the virtuosity and the dramatic infusions of his performances. as a dancer and singer he added perfect drama to each of his performances. as a dholi his beat was

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concerned about preserving traditional Bhangra forms to prevent them from being forgotten. The albums are unique in their showcasing dance steps and movements while keeping lyrics simple and minimal, and the bolis are present in their original form with no attempt at embellishment. There might be many singers, but when it comes to dance, none can match the King of Bhangra Pammi Bai, nor equal his knowledge of traditional bolis and compositions. Pammi is particularly offended by Bhangra’s being confused with song or geet because he views it primarily as a dance with a particular beat and structured, stylized movements performed in a certain manner. Unlike the rest of the Bhangra brigade, Pammi regards dance as the essence of Bhangra and dismisses other Bhangra artists as mere singers, the majority of whom can’t tell Bhangra from dhamal or malwai giddha (Pammi Bai. Personal communication 2006).32 The relationship between music and place noted among Panjabi Bhangra practitioners is strongest in Pammi Bai’s compositions. his videos showcase Panjabi culture in a self-conscious manner and Pammi himself provides a narrative knitting together the dances. Each dance performance is traced back to its originary genre and a brief history provided before the performance that re-embeds Bhangra in its rural contexts. Traditional Bhangra links genres to physical spaces that are interwoven with Panjab’s cultural history and geography. The mustard field, the harvested crop, moonlit nights and rivers have a physical spatiality in traditional Bhangra performance as well as the social performance contexts of mela and chind.33 Its pastoral origins ground it firmly in seasonal and agricultural rhythms. Pammi’s re-embedding Bhangra in its specific geography goes beyond routine invocations to the Panjabi place in Bhangra songs. The originary myth is partially reinforced in this tracing of Bhangra to its location in the doabas of the five rivers of Panjab. But Bhangra also sings the Panjabi physical geography through the location of Bhangra’s genres in specific regions of Panjab that recall a pre-colonial geography of Panjab. This pre-colonial geography is drawn over the natural boundaries of rivers with each region forming the delta of one of the rivers. it would be an error to view these regions merely as “style provinces” for differences in their performance styles parallel dialectical, socio-cultural differences. More than anything else, they evoke narratives of identities tied to very small places and their relationship to people living in places.

faultless, his ‘bolis’ were elegant and melodious, and his presentation touched with stylised pauses, touched with the appropriate dramatic statuesque postures” (Pande 1999b: n.p.). 32 “Dancers also form a circle while performing Dhamal. They also hold their arms high, shake their shoulders and heads, and yell and scream. Dhamal is a true folk-dance, representing the heart of Bhangra” (“Bhangra”. oxford Sikhs: n.p.). Malwai giddha is a male dance from the Malwa region that Pammi Bai has been trying to recover. it is also a circle dance but it is more graceful than Bhangra and involves more movements of the arms and the upper body with participation from as many as three generations of performers. 33 Both mela and chind are types of rural fairs.

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Pammi, unhappy with the mixing of traditional genres in modern Bhangra, has attempted to restore the regional specificity of forms through moves like instituting a separate contest for jhoomar and Bhangra in college competitions. His in-depth knowledge of various genres prevents him from mismatching traditional verses with dance moves as often occurs in modern Bhangra and he is extremely particular about preserving the regional difference of bolis in addition to dances. his album Majhe Malwe Doabe Diyan Boliyan (2003) dissociates Bhangra from the homogenized narrative of Panjabi music by bringing out the differences between the genres originating in different regions and restores regional specificity to Bhangra’s different genres. The video is naturally central to the exhibition of Pammi’s virtuosity as a dancer not only in Bhangra but also in a variety of other genres that Bhangra has incorporated. in this album, for instance, he is seen performing the malwai giddha or babian da giddha whose movements are altogether different from those of Bhangra. Unlike Bhangra, in which the entire body is in play, the arms and the upper body are prominent in the malwai giddha. Secondly, unlike Bhangra that is performed mainly by youth, malwai giddha is traditionally performed by men of all ages, even by three generations. Pammi’s refusal to “compromise with tradition” and his “desire to preserve folk genres” makes him the custodian of Panjabi folk (Inderpreet 2004: n.p.). He professes to be an exponent of pure Bhangra, undiluted by mixing. in order to maintain their generic purity he mixes neither Bhangra with an exogenous genre nor one genre with another. He exposes the Bhangra aficionado to the differences between the movements of different genres by choosing a particular genre for a particular composition. similarly, he eschews modern lyrics and returns to traditional bolian affixed to particular genres. His singing style is derived from the rustic folkloric manner. Pammi’s loyalty to tradition extends to his refusal to make even sartorial compromises in the interest of glamour. his troupe dresses in simple traditional lungi kurta for their performances. But Pammi’s primary mission is to purge Bhangra music of the vulgarity that has “contaminated” the traditional genre through the popularity of ambiguous lyrics and the incursion of the pop video format in performances. Pammi laments the disappearance of traditional performance contexts in which traditionally Bhangra was performed and the introduction of staged performance. The melas and the chinds in which traditional mirasi performers displayed marvellous Bhangra feats and visitors joined in spontaneously bound performers and their audience in a rural context that has been replaced by a network of capitalist relations.34 The staged versions performed after partition in institutionalized 34 “it has become a thing of the past when the people used to throng the place dressed in traditional attire. They even entered the festival dancing and playing folk tunes on instruments. Then there used to be ‘akharas’ where bhangra and gidha dancers tried to out dance each other. Others tested their might in kabbadi and tug-of-war games. Nothing of this sort happens now”, states an old timer to a reporter covering the popular chapar mela where crowds still flock in thousands from all parts of the state and outside to pay their

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contexts demonstrate a destruction of the call-and-response poetic that regulates Bhangra in melas. Pammi Bai’s enlisting of electronic media in reconstructing traditional performance contexts of Bhangra in his music videos attempts to fill up these lacunae but the reconstructed mela and chind have the air of musealization that is also visible in the republic Day vignettes. equally at home in all the Bhangra genres, Pammi practises different genres in his different albums and is best equipped to arbitrate on matters of mixing and hybridization. Watching Pammi perform different Bhangra moves in the traditional manner, one is delighted to discover that Bhangra’s innate energy, vigour and appeal does not require pop cultural props. While Pammi must be lauded for his crusade for the preservation of traditional genres and against Panjabi music’s vulgarization, the project is far more problematic than presented by him. The tradition that Pammi has taken upon himself as a mission to preserve is no older than half a century and is, as noted earlier, a tradition transformed through a major rupture. Pammi’s own mentors are credited with transformations in Bhangra through their introduction of new instruments, movements and tunes. The problem seems to lie in the fact that in viewing the hereditary legacy of mirasi performers as embodying a pure unchanging Bhangra essence, Pammi overlooks the syncretic character of mirasi performers through their nomadic status that made them open to external influences. Besides their intrinsic flexibility and openness, changes in performance contexts, modes of transmission and socio-cultural environment have transformed Bhangra in multiple ways. The distinction between traditional and modern begins to grow fuzzy in view of the alterations in traditional performance compelled by technologies, urbanization and industrialization. Pammi Bai’s attempt to preserve purity, however noble his intentions, is a desire for a fabricated authenticity. Pierre Bourdieu explains the relationship of taste to authority through the investing of cultural authority in certain individuals and groups (1994). Through his examination of the investment of cultural authority in a particular group, he shows taste to be determined by the preferences of definers. Speaking about European art, Bourdieu reveals the responsibility of the determination of the cultural capital of high art to be vested initially in a class, and subsequently in a group. Bourdieu shows that the aristocratic class or the new literati’s right to consecrate art with cultural capital emerged from their socio-political dominance which legalized their right to define high “taste” for the masses. By applying Bourdieu’s views on taste to the determination of asliat or authenticity in Bhangra, one can appreciate the role played by definers in determining Bhangra’s authenticity. however, for determining Bhangra’s cultural capital in the present, one cannot seek the authority of an aristocratic class but of an old performing caste and new institutions. The disciplinary authority of new institutional structures will be found to be propped on the caste knowledge of individual performers. Being a folk cultural form, the power to define is vested in the case of Bhangra in castes – obeisance at the Gugga Marhi, a shrine dedicated to the Nag devta or snake god (“Chhapar Mela sans jinda dance” 2003: n.p.).

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the performing caste of mirasis and their feudal patrons the jats – and like the aristocrats, jat’s cultural authority in consecrating music accrues from their political power in rural Panjab. not only do the jats appropriate the voice of the mirasis in distinguishing the asli from the naqli, but Bhangra performance is authenticated only if it conforms to the expectations of the jat audience. In addition to official institutions are self-appointed custodians of Panjabi culture, including musicians, dancers and traditional connoisseurs or shaukis. authenticity is referred, in the last court of appeal, to the authority of rustics or pendus, the folk. While the Western/ ized mock the pendus or rustics and their tastes, it is the pind’s preferences, which, unaffected by national or global trends, can make or break a musical career.35 The consecration of asliat or authenticity on particular Bhangra genres or texts may be seen to be deeply implicated in the relations of power between different castes in Panjab and the categories of asli and naqli Bhangra music to be imbricated in the cultural politics of panjabiyat.

35 apache indian’s cult status globally might have little impact on pendus who would accept nothing short of the real asli stuff. “Beware of the Boys” might have been on the top of the charts in the UK and the Us but Panjab danced to Panjabi MC’s global hit only when pendus gave their whoops of approval. Even internationally acclaimed Bhangra stars quake in their juttis (shoes) when they perform before a rural audience because neither fancy labels nor celebrity status has any impact on rustics who are impressed only if the music is khara or pure. Music producers take this fact into account when marketing Bhangra albums. it is believed that if a Bhangra album does not do well in Panjab, it would hardly work elsewhere. Every music producer is aware that Bhangra’s real market is in the pinds from where the volumes come because Bhangra played in metropolitan clubs and urban recreation centres for its urban listeners constitutes only a fraction of the music heard on tractors, and in trucks and taxis by cultivators, truck drivers and taxi drivers across the length and breadth of Panjab.

Chapter 4

Naqqal, Mimicry and the Signifying Monkey The Naqqal Performing Tradition The primary trope of Panjabi performing arts, traditionally the domain of performing castes like baazigars, bhands, mirasis and other categories of naqqal artists, is naqqal (“to copy” or “to mimic”).1 The term naqqal (Persian: who passes on, transmits the tale) referred originally to professional storytellers, mainly men, whose life’s work and art was to perform the Shahname in the kavahane or coffeehouses.2 The Persian transmitter of tales evolved over the centuries into the Panjabi naqqal who entertains people through the art of mimicry. The official website of the North Zone Cultural Centre defines Naqqal “as an old form of Drama displaying the art of mimicry performed by male actors known as naqqals in an open arena” with the objective of producing satiric humour.3 Traditionally, Bhangra 1 i am using the term in a lay sense and not with reference to its etymological roots in Persian Naqqal (Persian transmitter; the one who passes on, transmits the tale). Naqqals are professional storytellers, mainly men, whose life’s work and art was to perform the whole of the Shahname in the kavahane or coffee houses but also in private houses, the bazaar and, more recently, on radio and television and in theatres. There are still naqqali performing, but sadly the art form is gradually diminishing. Most naqqali used a stick as a prop to tell their story or a drum and a bell to accompany their speech, and even a real sword instead of a stick. Mirasis (jesters), known as Bhand or Naqqal (actors), played a central role in the cultural life of Panjab. They were good storytellers who made people laugh by enacting humorous anecdotes and amusing scenes similar to slapstick by using a leather strap call chamota, and entertained with their pungent witticisms, mimicry (swang), humorous and satirical dialogues, rough dances and pantomimes. Berland (2003) mentions that Qalandars were excellent impersonators. Naqlia (Naqqal): “The Naqlia perform a rural variety show with a family-based troupe that includes dramatists, comedians, singers, instrumentalists and female impersonators (nacar). With the decline in popularity of their characteristic entertainment genre, many naqlia have shifted focus to singing qawwali” (K.S. Singh 1998: 2587) (qtd in Schreffler 2006: n.p.). 2 Shahname or “The Book of Kings” is an epic tale structured around the mythical and historical reign of 50 Persian Kings composed by Ferdowsi. 3 “it is an old form of Drama displaying the art of mimicry. it resembles the Bhavai of gujarat the Tamasha of Maharashtra and swang of haryana. various actors, males and those in the guise of females perform in an open arena. The naqqals collect events and episodes from their surroundings and reproduce them in a humorous manner. The main

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privileged movements or baazis displaying strength, vigour and acrobatic skills over mimicry or naqqal and swangs.4 But the denigration of new Bhangra mutants, particularly of Bhangrapop, as imitations or naqqals has imbricated Bhangra in a dialectic of authenticity and inauthenticity that has reemerged in the indian media and academia in the wake of globalization. The reiteration of the familiar theme of “aping the West” in denigrations of new Bhangra mutants ironically reinforces their resemblance to the conceptual categories of naqqal and mimicry. Bhangrapop is a new genre believed to have been invented in 1990 by Daler Mehndi by mixing Bhangra with popular Western and non-Western sounds, though gurdas Mann had pioneered the modernizing process a decade earlier.5 neither Bhangra nor pop, Bhangrapop produces a copy of the self that is disavowed by both moderns and traditionalists. neither “Bhangra at all” because it merely “apes” Bhangra rhythms and movements, nor pop because it “apes” Western pop, Bhangrapop is located at the interstice between Bhangra and Western pop at which cultural difference is negotiated. The common view of Bhangrapop as a fusion of oriental and occidental beats must be modified by adding that both its oriental and occidental rhythms and movements are “blurred copies” of the original, which are in tension with one another. in this Chapter, i shall establish naqqal as a legitimate thrust of their humor is satire, which regales the audience. in the princely states of Punjab the Naqqal performers were rewarded with Jagirs (estates), elephants and other offerings” (“Folk Theatre: Naqqal” 2006: n.p.). 4 “The word Swang (or saang) stands for disguise or imitation. A mutual dialogue between two characters or groups of characters, costumes and music are the main elements of the performance which is accompanied by a number of folk instruments like Dholak, nagara, Tasha, Been, Cymbals etc. swang dwells upon themes based on popular tales (i.e. Harishchandra, Nal Damyanti etc.) heroic episodes (e.g. Heer-Ranjha, Leelo-Chaman etc.) or social satire. Dialogues are crisp and the singing is done at a high pitch” (“Folk Theatre: Swang” 2006: n.p.). The Panjabi theatre person Neelam Man Singh has included this group of traditional performers in her repertoire. Schreffler (2006) mentions that a style of jhummar evolved by Pokhar Singh includes swangs. 5 Unlike Gurdas Mann, Daler Mehndi is proud to be regarded as the pioneer of Bhangrapop who brought about a complete structural change in Panjabi music by introducing new words and instrumentation along with a liberal use of harmonies and chords. Bhangrapop is a new genre invented by Daler Mehndi that has a strong base in Indian classical music. Mehndi’s compositions are deeply embedded in the strict framework of the ragas (musical notes) and rhythms (beats in meter) of Indian classical music but are camouflaged with harmonies (vocal) and chords and the use of Western string instruments and octopad for rhythm. his use of an urban idiom was a clear departure from Panjabi singers’ mimicry of rustic folk lyrics. Moreover he made a conscious effort to eschew standard Panjabi rhythm and munzal instruments such as algozey, tumbi, ektara, been and baja even though dhol continues to be dominant. Until Daler Mehndi’s arrival, Panjabi albums, marketed as regional music and largely confined to Panjab, would not even sell in Delhi. But Mehndi’s debut album sold 2.5 million units in Kerala alone. hence Daler’s fusion of rustic lyrics, deceptively simple sing-along tunes, fused with the right blend of Western instrumentation are often viewed as signalling the birth of Bhangrapop.

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Panjabi trope for disrupting political and cultural authority through examining two new Bhangra mutants, namely Bhangrapop and Bollywood Bhangra. While purists are enraged by Bhangrapop’s travesty of traditional Bhangra and Western/ized listeners amused by its mimicry of Western pop, i will show how the Bhangrapop performer appropriates both Western pop and traditional Bhangra through the deployment of naqqal strategies to disrupt both dominant and (non)dominant authority by engaging with the discursive category of difference that is mimicry, “almost the same but not quite” (Bhabha 1994: 130). The oxford English Dictionary defines mimicry as “the action, practice, or art of mimicking or closely imitating … the manner, gesture, speech, or mode of actions and persons, or the superficial characteristics of a thing” (“Mimicry” 2006). But Batesian mimicry is “a form of protective mimicry in which an unprotected species, especially of an insect, closely resembles an unpalatable or harmful species and therefore is similarly avoided by predators” (The American heritage Dictionary of the English Language 2000: n.p.). In Mimesis and Alterity, Michael Taussig opposes mimicry to alterity and looks at the way individuals come to adopt or assimilate another’s nature or culture (mimesis) as well as distance themselves from it (alterity) (1993). Mimicry, a recurring trope in literature and philosophy, has been appropriated by homi K. Bhabha to provide illuminating insights into the post-colonial condition. Defining colonial mimicry as “the desire for a reformed, recognizable other, as a subject of difference that is almost the same but not quite”, Bhabha views the imperial desire for a colonized subject who resembles the self as underwritten by ambivalence (1994: 130). As the imperial self cannot really allow the other to be the same for it would entail the loss of its moral justification to rule the colonized, mimicry reveals a double vision as well as a double articulation (1994: 126). The colonized subject who might repeat the habits, assumptions and values of the colonizing culture but not conform to the ideal image of the colonizer can therefore, only be a “partial presence” (1994). Bhabha’s idea of mimicry as mockery invests it with a subversive potential because the colonized subject, in the act of repetition with difference, destabilizes the authority of colonial power. Thus, mimicry does not produce compliant or appropriate subjects who would form a chain of command in the transmittal of colonial power but inappropriate or resistant subjects whose repetition of the cultural behaviour of the colonial master would produce an excess that is disruptive of colonial power. Mimicry as mockery is menacing for it challenges the moral authority of the colonizer to rule by turning its own principles and concepts against colonialism. Bhabha’s notion of mimicry has been particularly helpful in elucidating the strategy of colonial resistance. “almost the same but not quite” also describes the naqqal, the mirror image in which the Panjabi self recognizes itself, though mimicry and naqqal reveal strategic differences (Bhabha 1994: 130). While both mimicry and naqqal depend for their effects on recognition or (mis)recognition, mimicry demands that the mimic identify with the object of mimicry whereas naqqal compels the mimicked to identify with the mimicked image. While “the mimic man’s” imitation of the cultural behaviour of the colonizer foregrounds the failure of the colonized

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to conform to the image of the ideal-i embodied by the colonizer, the naqqal accentuates his difference from the object of imitation. Naqqal has stronger shades of the Lacanian meaning of mimicry as camouflage reinforced through the naqqal’s ability to slip in and out of its many camouflages as a bahurupi (one with many forms and guises), which depends on his dis-identification with the object imitated.6 in colonial mimicry, “the partial presence” produces a sense of inadequacy in the self when it is confronted with the other’s wholeness. But camouflage is a survival tactic the naqqal adopts to shield the self from the depredations of the other. The “partial presence” of the colonized subject in colonial mimicry, which is a reminder of a lack, becomes a conscious strategy in naqqal because the naqqal must consciously preserve a distance between himself and the object of his mimicry. it is this “double articulation” of being himself and the person imitated that prevents his identification with the object of mimicry. Humour is produced in naqqal through recognition of signs that are visibly those of the impersonated character but so exaggerated and stylized to introduce a distance between the real and the copy. The naqqal’s ability to disrupt social and political authority depends on his ability to satirize social and moral foibles by a double codification in which he is and is not the person/s he is mimicking. In naqqal, as in the mimic man, the self sees a mirror image or an otherness in relation to which it fashions itself. But the naqqal’s presence, unlike mimicry, is not menacing because in naqqal the doubling process accentuates the gap between the real and the copy. Both the naqqal and the mimic man ape the other’s behaviour but one’s aping provides healthy laughter and the other’s ridicule because the naqqal repeats with the full consciousness of its aping whereas the mimic repeats to be like the same but seems ape-like to the observer. However, it is in the area between mimicry and mockery that Bhabha emphasizes that mimicry resembles naqqal most because mimicry, though it does not set out with the intention to parody, has a parodic effect that results in destabilizing authority. Dance and music have been key tropes for primitivizing the other in the Western discipline of anthropology. The anthropological text either dehumanizes indian music as a cacophony of discordant notes to reinforce the native’s savagery or exoticizes it to feed Western fantasies of oriental luxury and depravity. What happens when the gaze is reversed and fixed on the observer? How does the Western/ized subject appear in the primitive other’s gaze?7 ashish nandy’s thesis 6

“The Impostor is an exemplar for a kind of performative agency that renders a person capable of expressing more than one kind of truth of the self to the scrutiny of power. a ‘bahurupi’ is a person of many forms and guises, a polymorph, a shape-shifter, a fantastic masquerader and pantomime, a primal ‘Fantômas’. The ‘bahurupi’ make their living by masquerade, by the performance of different roles by itinerant practitioners, for the entertainment, edification and occasionally, defrauding of the general public” (“Dreams and Disguises, as Usual” 2005: n.p.). 7 A short film Dekh Basanti Dekh Batasi, an exercise in reverse ethnography, has a rajasthani slum-dwelling performer in Delhi called Basanti watch a popular indian doctor-

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about the non-West’s image of the West that revealed a reverse orientalism is illustrated through the representation of the gora or white in Panjabi folk culture (1983). In Panjabi folk tradition, not only gore but also kale gore (the brown sahibs) are singled out for ridicule as is the jat turned “guntulman” to which the slick city dweller, particularly the city girl, are later additions. a familiar character in Panjabi folksong is the “just back from abroad jat” whose affected mannerisms produce much laughter.8 Any number of folksongs may be cited where both the gore and the kale gore are objects of irreverent laughter. But like oriental stereotypes, the Panjabi stereotype of the gora also displays an ambivalent desire of the gora other. The polarization in the construction of the exotic native and the ugly native is replicated in the opposition between the saab, the idealized object of the jat’s veneration and the bandar, the contemptible object of his ridicule.9 Panjabi folk performances abound with images of “the simian white”, which borrow the mode of racialization and bestialization employed in the stereotype of “the simian black” in the Euro-American text. But the reversal of the representation of the native as animal-like in the colonial text is enacted literally in the figure of the performing monkey accompanying the folk performer, particularly the bandarwala (monkey leader) or the madari (magician) (Berland 2003: 111). Henry Louis Gates Jr’s deployment of the figure of the signifying monkey embodied by the Yoruba deity Eshu Elegbra in the signifying practices of afro-americans illustrates the strategic disruption of hegemonic power through shared rules of performance (1989: 11). The performing monkey, dressed in human attire, mimics social and moral categories at the madari or the qalandar’s command.10 The performing monkey may be seen as the prototype of the naqqal whose reproduction of recognizable socio-cultural types produces the desired musician perform in a stage show one evening and meet him in his clinic the following morning. visibly amazed by the pop musician’s transformation into the grave doctor, Basanti exclaims: “Are you the same person who was jumping about on the stage like a madman last evening?” “Jumping about like a madman” is how the Western popular dancer appears in the gaze of its disciplinary other (Partho Sarkar, Personal Communication January 2004). 8 This tradition of mocking the Western/ized continues after Independence, for example, in the “Main Koyi jhoot Boliya” song in the film Jagte raho (1956): (The modern gentlemen are creating a ruckus Ajkal de gentlemainan paya bada siyapa Mataji noon akhan mama te pyo noon akhan Papa They call Mother Mama and Father Papa) 9

The racist allegation against harbhajan singh during the india versus australia cricket match in January 2008 has been dismissed for want of evidence. Whether Harbhajan actually abused andrew symonds or not, the term he is alleged to have used to abuse the australian was bandar or monkey, reiterating the stereotype of “the simian white” in the Panjabi imaginary (Dean 2008). 10 Qalandar are one of “the multi-service nomads” in the north west of Panjab who perform with a monkey. Madari and baazigar are both subsets of this peripatetic performing class. Madari is a magician category of qalandar who performs with a monkey while baazigar is an acrobat who specializes in gymnastic skills (Berland 2003).

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effect of humour. Through a reverse chromatism, the red face of the performing monkey is mapped onto the reddened face of the gora and produces the stereotype of “the simian white”. “The simian white” or the bandar is one of the bestial stereotypes through which the native jat subverts the civilizing pretensions of the white man and disrupts his authority. While the gori female is similarly parodied as baandari, she is more often fetishized as the object of the jat’s desire. The desire of the mem reinvents the devotional genre jugni as a song about a city girl who is simultaneously mocked and desired. The images of “the simian white” and the mem reverse primitivist representations of the native in the colonial text, which proceed by the mode of racialization. The Bhangrapop album appears like a farcical copy of Western pop formed by jumbling together a maddening array of genres, styles, instruments, beats and melodies in complete disregard for history or geography. Pastiche, the style that jameson ascribed on postmodern architecture, might also describe the method of Bhangrapop. Jameson defines postmodern architecture as a pastiche, which patches together features from different periods and styles (instead of returning to any particular period or style) and amalgamates them in a new mix (1991: 19). Bhangrapop, similarly, appropriates different features from a diversity of Western popular sonic styles to produce a totally novel mix. it is this sonic medley, insensitive to the specific contexts and origins of Western popular genres, which sounds like all but is like none that makes Bhangrapop a repetition with a difference. Since it does not imitate or mix any particular music but arranges different bits and pieces picked up from here and there at random, it can’t be viewed as an inappropriate copy but as a new musical mix. a musical composition that repeats “Western” sounds that have no recognizable referent in order to modernize traditional music, Bhangrapop occidentalizes Western popular music as an other through which it constitutes itself. in this repetition of the other to accentuate its difference from the self, Bhangrapop reverses the oriental narrative through which indian music has been represented in the West. every Bhangrapop album presents twin images of naqqal – rustic repetitions of Western pop and urban/Western simulations of Bhangra – both of which produce a farcical effect. While the urban/Western viewer greets the mimicry of Western dance with sardonic amusement, the rural viewer fumes at the sight of aerobics masquerading as Bhangra. These twin images of naqqal exhibit the playful engagement of the colonizing gaze with that of the colonized. The primitivizing gaze of the urban/Western viewer fixes the Bhangra performer as a primitive whose repetition of Western pop merely serves to accentuate the difference between Western modernity and native savagery. This naqqal is produced within the discourses of visual anthropology, photography, terrorism and music video that have othered the “native”. These repetitions of Bhangra reenact the images of the leaping, shouting, animal-like native that have been passed down from the colonial to the post-colonial Western text. The Bhangrapop performer is the new “noble savage” whose strange speech, mannerisms and rites signify his lack of civilization, which is the source of the Western/ized self’s fascination. imitations

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of Bhangra beats and movements enact the primitivist desire for the other – the vitality and vigour that the other is believed to possess. The Bhangrapop performer’s body becomes the site for the inscription of an other in opposition to which the self may define itself. Through imitating his moves, the Western/ized self wishes to possess the other, and form itself in conformity with the image of the other. This identification with a part of the self serves the function of compensating for the lack that the self detects in itself. If Western pop inserted in Bhangrapop comes across as a mockery, its Bhangra moves, as purists allege, are “not Bhangra at all”. Bhangrapop employs a similar cut and mix technique in yoking together disparate Bhangra genres and movements with scarce regard for gender, caste, contextual boundaries. it is this irreverent mixing of categories that has been considered particularly objectionable by Panjabi purists. Bhangrapop is held culpable for mixing dhamal beats and giddha moves with Bhangra and thus compromising with generic purity for commercial advantage.11 Whether it is dictated by capitalist interests or is an autoexoticizing exercise, Bhangrapop’s repetition of Bhangra moves, too, strikes Panjabi listeners/ viewers as a parodic imitation. Decontextualized both from the Panjabi world and the specific dance grammars of different Bhangra genres, Bhangrapop isolates a few sounds and movements that it repeats with mechanical regularity. its vocal component is reduced to loops like oye oye, aye haye, hadipa, balle balle and so on. The visual content is similarly simplified as shoulder shakes, arm raises, leg hops and bends. Loosely interpreted as jumping about in high spirits, Bhangrapop is viewed as a free play of the body with little regard for the aesthetics of Bhangra performance. neither concerned with the sequence nor the coordination of movements with one another that are generic requirements, Bhangrapop is the Western/ized attempt to do the Panjabi thing. Like no particular Bhangra style or like all, Bhangrapop represents an essentialized image of panjabiyat constructed in the Western/ized imaginary. The Bhangrapop album reproduces Bhangra through the gaze of the Western/ized other in which complex, stylized movements specific to particular Bhangra genres are travestied as a “metonymic presence” of shoulder lifts and shakes, flailing arms and leaping feet. The “partial presence” of the Western other observed in the repetition of Western beats is duplicated in the wild shaking of shoulders, arms, legs, feet, hips (Bhabha 1994). Unlike mimicry, which takes itself too seriously, play is the essence of naqqal performance. Bhangrapop performances are marked by a self-reflexivity in which the performer constantly calls attention to play. The postmodern text reproducing past styles and periods in a playful manner calls attention to its “imitative” character. This “playfulness” is evident in the Bhangrapop performer’s repetition of Western popular styles, which he cuts and mixes at his whim. The Bhangrapop performer seems to be enjoying himself, copying the gestures and movements of the Westerner/ized. identifying himself as a jat or rustic, he reproduces, like the 11 Giddha is a genre designated as a female genre though Schreffler argues that this is a post-independence development (Schreffler 2006: n.p.).

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naqqal, the gestures, speech, and actions of the Western pop performer for his audience’s entertainment.12 it is this playful repetition of Western beats and moves that is Western and not Western – a mish-mash of rock, pop, blues, jazz, reggae and rap rolled into one –that recalls and parodies the most respected figures of Western popular music. The “performing monkey”, whose antics produce condescending humour in the Western/ized, is really henry Louis gates jr’s “the signifying monkey” communicating meaning to the preferred addressee of Bhangrapop in a coded idiom that draws on their familiarity with folk caricatures of gore (1989). The parodic intention in the repetition of Western pop becomes visible when it is juxtaposed against asal or real Bhangra music. But the Bhangrapop album is inscribed with variations of naqqal – the rustic jat’s imitation of Panjabipop and the Western/ized imitation of Bhangra, both of which are different from the original.13 The confrontation of one with the other produces a particular form of play in which one form of mimicry is set off against the other, to show how the self appears to the other. Through the repetition of Bhangra in the body and gaze of the other, the Bhangrapop performer challenges Panjabi tradition to recognize itself and constitute itself in opposition to its image reflected through the Western/ized gaze. The West, viewing itself reflected as a caricature through the distorting Panjabi gaze, similarly suffers misrecognition. The Western/ized self fails to recognize itself in Bhangrapop’s repetition of Western musical and kinemic vocabulary because Bhangra repeats its own interpretation of the West. The Bhangrapop performer, singing and dancing about “like a madman”, is the Western/ized other as reflected in the native gaze. Through performing his naqqal, the Bhangrapop performer repeats the speech, gestures and actions of the gore like the performing monkey in the baazigar’s street show.14 Though the Western/ized self fails to recognize itself in its performing double, the jat’s imagined audience recognize his play on Western speech and behaviour. The tension between the two naqqals – that is played up in the performance – visually and vocally produces the Western/ized and Panjabi selves as mirror images of one another, each requiring the other for its completion. These encounters of the self with its other in Bhangrapop drive home the need for music as well as identity to reinvent itself in relation to the other. Bhangrapop comes closest to performing the role of the naqqal in forcing the self, both Western/ized and Panjabi, to recognize itself in its representation in the naqqal’s body.

12 Bobby Friction from BBC radio 1’s asian underground music programme notes: “There are many songs about jat pride, about the life of a jat … jat nationalism is running rampant in bhangra music now to the point where every bhangra album that comes out in Britain has at least one track that alludes to the power of the jats” (Puri 2003: n.p.). 13 Jat refers to the cultivator caste but is also used as a generalized term to refer to a rustic. interestingly, to date Daler has never used or performed “jat” messages in his songs. 14 Baazigar is another category of performer who excels in acrobatics and other feats of strength.

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Mimicry, as Bhabha shows, is an ambivalent enterprise. The colonial desire for a reformed other might, in fact, produce its opposite, not the appropriate but the inappropriate subject that refuses to be reformed and through this signals the failure of the colonialist project. The colonialist desire for an other who is “almost the same but not quite” is deflected by the recalcitrant subject who refuses to be the same. The jat’s ambivalent adaptations of modernity – its visible signs – without the cultural habits, values and assumptions – produce a counterimage that threatens the self’s identity. its “partial presence”, Western in dress and manners but jat in its values and assumptions, foregrounds the ambivalence in the production of the colonial subject. The imitation in colonial mimicry might set in motion an other who is far from reformed. The Bhangrapop performer, who has a second-hand experience of the contexts of Western pop, can reproduce it only in parts. It is difficult to trace the unrestrained flailing of arms, swaying of the torso and the thrust of the pelvic and the loud shouts and cries to any particular Western popular cultural practice. rustic Panjabi youth replicating the visual, vocal and kinaesthetic vocabulary of Western youth subcultures sans the angst that has shaped those subcultures can only offer a “metonymy of presence”. repetition of Western pop underlines not the resemblance between the naqqal and the Western other but its difference through the contrast between the Western attire and mannerisms and the “structures of feeling” underlying Bhangra. The Bhangra performer’s naqqal of Western pop, which is “almost the same, but not white” produces the image of a double whose naqqal appears to parody the self. Bhangrapop’s assimilation of Western pop also fits the Taussigian definition of mimicry as “adaptive behavior (prior to language) that allows humans to make themselves similar to their surrounding environments through assimilation and play” (“Mimicry” 2006). Camouflaging itself as Western pop – the preferred music of Indian youth – Bhangrapop has ensured the survival of Panjabi folk, but the Bhangra performer’s strong consciousness of his jat identity prevents identification with the other. The Original Impersonator Naqqal, in its meaning as mimicry and mockery, is embodied in the figure of Daler Mehndi (Figure 4.1), the progenitor of Bhangrapop who has been dismissed as a pretender in Panjab and denied the right to represent Panjab and panjabiyat. But Mehndi’s Bhangrapop, a parodic imitation of Bhangra and Western pop, is animated by the strategies of naqqal, the prime trope of Panjabi cultural tradition. in his self-presentation, Daler Mehndi has invented a persona over the years that evokes several iconic orientalist images such as that of the Maharaja, the

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Figure 4.1

Daler Mehndi

magician, and even of the african Bambata.15 Dressed in a flowing cloak, and sporting colourful, jewel-encrusted turbans, the corpulent sardar appears to have stepped straight out of fairy tales or mythologicals. There is something larger than life about the new Daler Mehndi and his performance. Like the naqqal, he does not seem to take himself very seriously and his exaggerated gestures and movements appear to parody Bhangra moves in a spirit of play. at the same time, he leaps and shouts wildly to parody the “primitivist” images of the orient. By exaggerating “primitive” movements and sounds transmitted through orientalism, Mehndi appears to interrogate the “primitivist” myth of the native. Though Daler Mehndi is often dismissed as a naqqal in Panjab, it is Mehndi, rather than gurdas Mann, who may be truly credited with crossing the linguistic barrier and nationalizing Bhangra. “Today, bhangra means Daler Mehndi. he’s made bhangra like pop music”, Bombay DJ Akhtar Fazel announced in 1995 when 15 it was the international press that conferred on him these titles. Post 1984, Mehndi made a strong sartorial statement by retaining the turban and the beard, despite the demonization of the Sikh in the Indian imaginary, and restored Sikh pride. In fact, by making his colourful turbans part of his distinctive sartorial style, he transformed the turban into a signifier of Sikh identity and Panjabi music, shunned by urban Indians as loud, into “cool”.

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the Bollywood star amitabh Bachchan borrowed Daler Mehndi’s raw energy to boost his sagging image in his comeback film Mrityudaata (1997) (Ghosh and Oorjitham 1997: n.p.). Daler Mehndi may be viewed as another instance of individual creativity that brought about a change in the Panjabi harvest dance. Daler broke free of all traditional dance genres and produced a new Panjabi dance genre that is his individual creation. He brought to his performance a deep knowledge of classical indian music that he combined with his own interpretation of Western popular music to create another version of Bhangrapop. Mehndi did not borrow from a single, particularized Western genre like Apache Indian or British-Asian artists, but created a potpourri of Western dance and musical traditions that he translated into his own distinctive style. While most Bhangra performers choose to perform either one or a combination of Bhangra genres, Daler Mehndi drew on no particular tradition. He pranced about on stage, shaking his shoulders and throwing his arms in perfect synchronization with the beat, and although Panjabis denied this the status of Bhangra, others have begun to understand it as modern Bhangra. As in movement, Daler broke free of all rules in composing his beat, mixing freely from Indian classical and folk with “Western” tunes. if Mann embodies rustic authenticity, Mehndi epitomizes an urban Panjabi sensibility, and the difference between the musical productions of these two “kings of Bhangra” highlights the fissures in the differing narratives of Panjabi modernity in circulation today. Unlike Mann’s music, Daler Mehndi’s music is not tied to place but is the result of mobility.16 While the mobility of Panjabi music by overseas migrations has attracted plenty of attention, the intranational movement of Panjabi music from the village to the cities through urbanization and displacement of Panjabi groups outside Panjab has not been examined. This movement of people, a product of industrialization, disengages it from rusticity and adapts it to the urban setting. The myth of rustic authenticity which locates folk music in a rural place or region prevents us from looking at the production of urban working classes as a form of folk music. Mehndi’s is the voice of the urban subaltern class deterritorialized from its rural contexts that expresses the life rhythms of the urban working classes. Like all diasporas, internal diasporas, living in a different time of the region, also return to an early memory to constitute the imaginary homeland. Mehndi’s voice is simultaneously urban and ancient for it represents an older narrative of Panjabi culture that might have become extinct in 16 Born in Patna, Mehndi had no access to rural Panjabi culture. Mehndi also had a different class location from the majority of Bhangra performers who belong to the rural elite landowning caste of jats. yet Mehndi, who also grew up in Patna, came into direct contact with performing castes, when he ran away from home to join a band of travelling singers in search of the late Ustad raahat ali Khan sahib of the Patiala gharana. Mehndi, who worked as a taxi driver in New York before launching his first album, states that he would have either been a bus driver in the UK or a truck driver in India had he not become a singer. Thus, Mehndi represents an urban, working-class, Sikh diaspora dispersed across india and the world.

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the homeland. Mehndi’s singing style, compositions, dance are typical of displaced groups and recalls an earlier and parallel narrative of panjabiyat contrasting with the literate tradition of contemporary Panjab. Mehndi, like several urban Panjabi migrants, brings a rustic sensibility to Bhangra music but it is a rusticity that has become imbricated with the working-class ethnos of the city. We must not forget that Bhangra is no longer a pastoral dance but has moved into an urban milieu and its biggest listeners are not farmers but truck and taxi drivers. It would be a mistake to look for meaning in Mehndi’s nonsense verse but his lyrics are free of the Utopian vision of Panjab visible in Panjab-based singers. rather, Mehndi is the urbanized folk musician incorporating urbanized objects and settings. Not surprisingly, the majority of Mehndi’s music videos are set against an urban backdrop of a stage or a dance club. Unlike Mann, Mehndi pruned down the lyrical element to pure nonsense in his compositions and liberated sound and movement from verbal content. Daler Mehndi’s lyrics, which have been dismissed as fluffy and light-hearted, restore the lyrical minimalism defining traditional Bhangra performance.17 Mehndi’s nonsense syllables and rhymes produced an effect similar to traditional nonsense calls and verses. he offered a number of substitutes of oye oye, such as tara ra ra, na na na, hai oh rabba, sha ra ra and so on. nonsense formulae are designed to provide pleasure through the play of sounds rather than through semantic content. Mehndi’s nonsense rhymes competed with nonsense formulae in the play of meaningless sounds. The amazing permutations and combinations of sound patterns that he strung together in his nonsensical compositions displayed a consummate understanding of the play of sound patterns and repetition in traditional performance. he exploited the play of sounds and repetition but also the tonality of Panjabi language in stringing together these syllables. he combined his understanding of the play of sound in folk compositions with his formal training in hindustani classical music to deploy lyrical phrases in the place of musical notes. Musically, Mehndi’s daring experimentation, not attempted in any musical genre, “combined the most unlikely forms of music with newfound subject matter” by stringing together nonsense formulae and sounds in an explosion of sounds that communicate with the listener at a pre-expressive level (Daler Mehndi 2007: n.p.). Though Mehndi’s lyrics look back to the Panjabi folk tradition of nonsense verse, he combines nonsense syllables to create musical mood and produce emotions much in the way hindustani classical music does.18 With nonsense syllables functioning in the same way as musical swaras or notes, Mehndi accomplishes unimaginable musical feats through his play on a single syllable or phrase repeated throughout the score such as the following, 17

The high energy Bhangra dancing and drumming can accommodate shouts of “oye oyei” or, at the most, short formulaic bolis in the pauses between rounds of dancing. Before the dholi introduces a new beat, he pauses briefly to insert a short formulaic call, giving time to the dancers to recover their breath and ready themselves for the next round of dancing. 18 hindustani and Carnatic are the two major classical streams of indian music.

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bolo tara rara hai o raba hai o rabba na na na na re

as a trained classical singer, Mehndi is conversant with the relations of particular ragas to rasas or emotions and manipulates sounds not to produce verbal meaning but a particular emotion or rasa in the listener’s heart. it is Mehndi’s consummate knowledge of the relationship between performance and the universal language of emotions that accounts for the penetration of his music beyond the Panjabi or even the Hindi market. as with sounds, Mehndi’s dance movements captured the essence of Bhangra without following a structured sequence. Daler Mehndi introduced steps and movements into Bhangra that may not be traced to any particular Bhangra genre but are an amalgamation of eclectic borrowings from Western pop with those he invented himself.19 he devised his own steps that he combined in a certain pattern and fitted them to the beat. His leaps and jumps, shoulder shakes, and hand and arm gestures resembled no particular Bhangra genre but were his own visual translations of his Bhangra beats. Like Mann, Mehndi did not blend bodily gestures from traditional dance genres but extracted from Panjabi dance genres their essence, which has been described variously as a sense of rhythm, energy and joy. But Mehndi’s movements, despite being meticulously choreographed, appear spontaneous and open, almost threatening to break free of choreographic constraints as Mehndi bursts through the screen. Though Mehndi’s style resembles no recognizable Bhangra genre, his unbridled dancing on stage or screen that appears to follow no rules captures Bhangra’s raw energy. The superstar amitabh Bachchan himself copied his moves as an acknowledgement of Mehndi’s dancing talents in the film Mrityudaata in which they appeared together. Mehndi also set the trend, which has infiltrated Bhangra, of surrounding himself with a bevy of beautiful girls in skimpy outfits, a move borrowed from American popular culture. it is these girls, the most beautiful names in the world of indian modelling and films, who vouch for his tremendous stamina and energy. However, with “Tunak Tunak”, Mehndi proved his critics wrong by showing that he could sell his albums by dancing without girls. Mehndi’s dancing, a distinctive style he has created for himself, has not only spawned many dance clubs but also millions of fans worldwide. “Tunak Tunak” has become an internet meme and its catchy tune has inspired several spin-offs and parodies. The use of the dance for the dance emotes of the males of the Draenei race in the game world of warcraft by Blizzard entertainment, and in the game Medal of honour: Allied Assault – Spearhead as an Easter egg, as well as the song being used as an unofficial anthem in Concordia

19

Asked to comment on his repetitive steps he answered, “Who has the time to think up new steps?”. “Rather than try something half-baked and risk a flop, I prefer go for my tried and tested dance routine, which is already popular with the audiences” (Srilekha 1997: n.p.).

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Language Villages International Day confirms the power of Mehndi’s Bhangra to produce universal emotions. if Mann altered tradition by injecting lyrical originality, Mehndi liberated rhythm and sound from semantic logic. Mehndi’s foregrounding of beat and rhythm returned the spirit of Bhangra to the dance floor. The beat was not an accompaniment to vocals as it is in modern Bhangra numbers but the essence of Daler Mehndi’s Bhangra. Mehndi borrowed from old-style Bhangra its speed and tempo. But his vocals were not fillers punctuating transitions from one dance step to another delivered in a slow, stylized manner. rather they were vocal equivalents of the fast-paced Bhangra beat that could be heard competing with or booming above the loud, fast beat. Mehndi presented vocal and visual expressions of a particular mood through voice, beat and dance that mirror one another and explode in a riot of sound and movement. Though Daler might not be as familiar with Panjabi literary traditions as Panjab-based artists/practitioners, he packs the raw energy of traditional Bhangra into his performance not by repeating traditional conventions and formulae but by finding contemporary equivalents that produce the same effect. Mehndi reinvented Bhangra by minimizing the lyrical content found in the original harvest ritual to traditional formulae, by returning its beat and rhythm, and by fusing the two with his knowledge of hindustani classical music. in the process, Mehndi coined a different version of Bhangrapop that did not infuse Bollywood elements but offered stiff competition to film music. Daler Mehndi broke the Bollywood monopoly because his voice resembles no playback singer but stands out loud and clear in the hindi-dominated popular musical space. as Mehndi’s singing voice does not conform to the carefully modulated, deep baritones of playback singers like Mohammed Rafi, Kishore Kumar or Mukesh, he overturns his listener’s expectations.20 This happens because of the intrinsic voice quality but also because he adopts a rustic gayaki or singing style. This gayaki, though familiar in Panjab, strikes a new note in the standardized Bollywood Urdu rhythms even though it might not conform to many people’s idea of an appropriate singing voice. Mehndi’s popularity has, in fact, changed vocal norms to such an extent that even urban singers today affect rustic and nasal accents. Daler Mehndi’s regional singing voice and rustic accent has made way for the regionalization of Bollywood playback singing so that one can hear songs in Haryanvi, Gujarati, Rajasthani, Bihari dialects in addition to Panjabi.21 since Daler’s arrival, big sardars, both with thin and loud voices, have become acceptable to indian masses as singers. secondly, Daler does not imitate the stanzaic division of Bollywood songs or ghazal but borrows the repetitive pattern of Panjabi folksong. As in Panjabi folksong or Bhangra bolis, which develop through the substitution of a single item in the formulaic couplet, Mehndi employs bolo ta ra ra ra both as the boli and as 20 Mohammed Rafi, Mukesh and Kishore Kumar were the troika of playback singers who ruled Bollywood from the 1960s to 1980s. 21 These are languages spoken in different regions in India.

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a loop. other Mehndi numbers coin more personalized bolis and loops repeated in a like manner: tunak tunak tun oh my love, hear my call tunak tunak tun The high pitch of the tumbi is ringing wajje tumbey wali taar Let’s play the game of love sun dil di pukar aaja kar lijiye pyar (Daler Mehndi. “Tunak Tunak”)

a few of the bolis are traditional but the rest have been invented by Mehndi; scared to death dardi rab rab kardi dardi rab rab kardi she calls out the name of the Lord loki ken chui mui chui mui people call her “Touch me not” hai o rabba hai o rabba oh my lord oh my lord (Daler Mehndi. “Dardi Rab Rab Kardi”)

These couplets, consisting of nonsense syllable and words, may hardly be termed poetic in the style of ghazal or even Bollywood songs.22 Mehndi delights in puns and word play in the manner of folksong. gadde te na chaddi She refuses to get into a bullock cart gaddi te na chaddi she refuses to get into a motor car chadian de tattoo te chaddi but happily mounts bolo tara rara the ponies of bachelors bolo tara rara (Daler Mehndi. “Bolo Tara Rara”)

as in bolis, the entire couplet consists of 3 repetitive phrases, 3 nonsense words, a play on the sounds (dd/dd, e/i) of the first two items gadde (cart) and gaddi (motor vehicle), which belong to the same category, that is, modes of locomotion, 22

One could cite any number of Panjabi folksongs that consist of pure nonsense. Mehndi’s manager, Taranpreet, points out that far from being nonsense sounds, Daler has consciously used words such as rab, meaning god, as he views his music as a form of communication with god expressed through a dialogue between the lover and his beloved. Mehndi silences his critics who accuse him of writing fluffy lyrics by providing a spiritual interpretation for the lyrics of a song like “Tunak Tunak Tun”. He explains that the lyrics state that the body is a vessel (tumba) continuously struck by the breath (taar or strings) and that one should remember and love the “Lord” as the heart yearns for the “True Lord”. Mehndi has the widest target audience crossing barriers of caste, age, colour, language, faith, country and creed. saffron-clothed sadhus sway as deliriously to his music as pirs in Pakistan or men with tasbis in the U.a.e. or youth in pubs.

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which is contrasted with a third item in a different category, tattoo (pony). Bolis’ impact depends largely on the play of sounds through the repetition, rhyming and improvisation of nonsense items. Mehndi’s lyrics never expand to fill up the divisions of ghazal or song but are, in general, repetitions of a few phrases over and over again with lists of items thrown in. These correspond to the minimalist, nonsense idiom of Panjabi folksong necessitated by the speed of oral composition. Daler Mehndi burst onto the Indian popular musical scene like a meteor because he broke all the rules pertaining to different categories of music, jumbled incompatible categories and created a genre that is neither folk nor popular but may be termed as the glide from the folk to the popular or even a return to the primitive. Ashok Ranade lists five features as being important to symbolism in primitive music that seem to fit Mehndi’s texts (1998: 57). Unlike the “textual” music of Mann and other Panjabi folk singers, “literary and linguistic orientation has a minor role to play” in Mehndi’s music as in “primitive music” (Ranade 1998: 57). even where Mehndi’s text is pitched at an expressive level, “linguistic and literary movements are deliberately dimmed through employment of other musical means” (1998: 57). Mehndi’s delight in sound per se, through his play on nonsense syllables rather than in poetry, locates his music in the category of primitive. it is Mehndi’s emphasis on rhythm and beat to the exclusion of verbal meaning that makes his music a pure exercise in rhythmic variation. Like Ranade’s category of the primitive, Mehndi’s music, too, appears “uninterrupted and indivisible” (1998: 57). One could begin his songs anywhere or everywhere without affecting their enjoyment. at the “music-psychological” level, his music symbolizes “a primal emotion”, a primordial rasa that might be transmitted to all irrespective of whether they follow the textual meaning or not. Mehndi’s music, while emerging from Panjabi folk tradition, isolates from Panjabi those universal emotions that are common to all rather than the culture specific aspects of Panjabi tradition. This is the secret of Mehndi’s appeal to a cross-section of listeners not confined to Panjabis. The Panjabi verses of his are foreign sounds that produce an unsettling effect in the listener’s mind. Mehndi has altered Panjabi folk so completely that it is no longer recognizable and acceptable as folk. But at the same time he has altered the rules of Indian popular music to make room for folk acoustic conventions. His rejection of the sophisticated Bollywood style of enunciating, singing and dancing in favour of a rustic Panjabi accent and enunciation, a high volume and pitched voice, a rigorous free style of dancing brought a change that made a permanent dent on Bollywood. By introducing a singing rustic voice and behaviour that contradicted the Bollywood styles of ghazal, qawwali and indipop, Mehndi changed the sonic grammar of popular music. since Mehndi, popular singers have a wider option than choosing between the scylla of genteel Urdu Bollywood enunciation and the Charybdis of anglicized Indipop delivery. For the first time in Indian popular cultural history, the subaltern has wrested the right to sing in his own voice and style unfettered by middle-class norms and conventions of sonic behaviour. after

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Mehndi, Bollywood and other popular cultural music has opened itself to a variety of regional and class accents, which are a far cry from the carefully enunciated Urdu of the past. it is also important to remember that though Mann is a more graceful dancer than Mehndi, Mann’s music is intended for the listener, as Manuel points out (Manuel 2001a). Daler Mehndi’s music, which arrived with the dance culture in urban India as a complete ensemble of dance, music and words, is unmistakably dance music, a genre that Mehndi ushered in to displace the disco dancing popular in the 1970s and ’80s. Mehndi’s music is played as background listening at social occasions, parties and clubs where the prime requirement is a catchy beat. even those who claim to have no taste for Mehndi’s kind of music cannot remain still when Mehndi booms his way into their ears. against their will, his “primitive” sounds bring even the most staid listeners to their feet if not to the dance floor. Mehndi has provided India an inimitable dance beat modelled after Panjabi folk rhythms but modernized to suit the requirements of the new age. in fact, Bhangra has been almost so naturalized as dance music in india that traditional as well as modern dancing bears an unmistakable stamp of Mehndi. Furthermore Mehndi epitomizes schechner’s professional performer whose ability to manipulate the relationship between universal and culture-specific systems can explain his huge national and international fan following (1997: 32). The secret of his innumerable fan clubs, a doll named after him, even a Universal Church of Daler testifying to his world-wide popularity, lies in the singer’s layering of the universal language of emotions with culture-specific Panjabi kinemes. In Mehndi’s music, Bhangra’s lyrical minimalism is reduced to vocal cries like tara rara, dardi rab rab kardi, na na na na re and tunak tunak tun that a speaker of any language might reproduce with the least effort, which produce similar emotions in the listener. Music, such as Daler Mehndi’s, appeals to listeners at a subconscious level, reactivating universal emotions of joy, fear, excitement and even loss. But the nonsense sounds he uses are drawn from the Panjabi cultural repertoire, producing an altogether different recall in the Panjabi listener. Daler Mehndi does not and has not been permitted to represent Panjabi identity in the same way as Mann does. But his creation of a combination of sounds that can cross over to various indian ethnolinguistic groups and penetrate mainstream Bollywood culture signals a regionalization of the state and a different model of sonic multiculturalism in which different linguistic regions might dialogue with one another through the universal language of emotions expressed through music and rhythms. How else could one explain the infiltration of dhol into Tamil music except through the stupendous success of Daler Mehndi – the first North Indian singer in the south? The recent collaboration between Mehndi and hariharan, the indipop Carnatic vocalist illustrates the dialogicity that music might be able to forge between representatives of two disparate musical gharanas and linguistic groups. The north and the south meet through the jugalbandi between Daler

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Mehndi and hariharan with each symbolizing the best of each tradition.23 Mehndi’s numbers pruned to bare nonsense cross the linguistic barrier when they are played in different contexts in the south, east, West or the north for Mehndi embodies the triumph of sound and beat over language. Bollywood Impersonations Those who know their dhamal from malwai giddha, and heer from jugni, understand that Panjabi song and dance are complex sonic and kinesic genres requiring natural talent and intensive training and are capable of articulating a wide range of emotions or rasas as any other folk or classical genre. Bhangra aficionados object to Bollywood Bhangra for its disrespectful hybridization of distinctive Panjabi dance genres into a single Bollywood Bhangra dance, to the containment of Bhangra’s open and spontaneous movements by Bollywood-style choreography and, most of all, the dissemination as Bhangra of sexualized moves performed to ashleel or vulgar lyrics. In their view, Bollywood Bhangra is a fake copy, a humiliating naqqal; it is “not Bhangra at all”. But to the rest of India, and now a large part of the globe, Bhangra is Bollywood Bhangra. What is Bollywood Bhangra? Bollywood Bhangra is a made-in-Bollywood genre in which men and women of all ages, resplendent in exotic ethnicity or glittering clubwear, are made to throw their arms and legs about, jump, shout and step forward, backwards and sideways against the backdrop of spectacular ethnic or modern settings. Unlike traditional Bhangra, that is governed by elaborate, culturally coded rules of performance, Bollywood Bhangra is a free-for-all dance in which one is legally permitted to make wild noises. These images of leaping, prancing, jostling bodies are presented as Bhangra and are made to signify the body-in-pleasure. Bhangra’s dominant rasa is undoubtedly joy, and it articulates the eat-drink-and-be-merry ethic that is mapped on the Panjabi body. Bollywood bowdlerizes it and reduces it to a saleable formula and its signification of the epicurean Bhangra ethic takes place only through a gross violation of Panjabi gestural codes. To stage Bollywood pleasure, females are made to perform male gestures and vice versa; dissimilar dance genres are mixed with one another or display a dissonance with the music. Most of all, Bhangra is decontextualized in Bollywood and becomes a “free-floating signifier” that may be pasted on any occasion in any setting. Finally, Bollywood, with the exception of wedding Jugalbandi is a musical collaboration between two performers each playing a different instrument. hariharan is a highly popular singer from the south on the indipop scene. Daler Mehndi, as playback singer for Rajnikanth (the iconic hero of cinema in the south), has sung in Tamil as well as Telugu and has delivered many hit songs in these languages. as the brand ambassador for Coca-Cola, he has also sung a commercial in Tamil. The soft drinks company capitalized on his massive fan following down south during its branding tenure with Daler Mehndi from 2007 to 2009. 23

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Bhangra, isolates erotic pleasure from Bhangra to the exclusion of other forms of pleasure. Due to its misrepresentation of Bhangra, Bhangra has come to signify to Bollywood audiences a wild shaking of torso or limbs best performed in an inebriated state. Though it might privilege some forms of pleasure over others, Bollywood Bhangra, as celebratory dance, still draws upon the traditional connotations of Panjabi harvest dance to signify different forms of joy, which i will describe as hindu family values, hero woos heroine, and item number. one of the main tropes Bollywood Bhangra inscribes is the enactment of family bonding and love and Indian family values. Like the harvest dance, Bollywood Bhangra is also performed at all family gatherings and events and is used to signify filial affection and traditional values. Bollywoodized Bhangra performed at family gatherings has become as naturalized in Bollywood to connote family togetherness as dancing around trees is to express romantic love. Bollywood families rarely perform bhajans or aartis together as they did in the past, but always dance together irrespective of age, gender, class or ethnicity to express family togetherness and reaffirm tradition. While its lyrical content might be the same as other Bhangra texts, the “family values” Bhangra may be easily distinguished from other forms of Bollywood Bhangra through its traditional setting and costumes and the presence of elders. Family-values Bhangra has become such a recurring trope in Bollywood that the filmmaker merely needs to follow established Bollywood conventions to signpost the Bhangra. These include males shaking their pelvis and raising their arms in embroidered sherwanis or kurtas with a colourful stole thrown around the neck, and females swaying their waists in elaborate Indian costumes, the younger ones in salwar kameezes and lehnga cholis and the older ones in saris.24 The leader of the group changes depending on whether it is a amitabh Bachchan film or any other. In a Bachchan film, Bachchan himself, flanked by younger Bollywood actors – for example, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Akshay Khanna or Abhishek Bachchan – is given the honour of leading the dancers and of wooing his female lead – for example, jaya Bachchan, hema Malini or Kiron Kher – with a Bhangra boli. not only that, Bachchan also gets to dance with the pretty young things – for example, Rani Mukherjee, Kajol, Preity Zinta or Kareena Kapoor – in addition to sexy female dancers of all complexions. Shah Rukh and Abhishek get to dance with Rani, Preity or Aishwarya Rai Bachchan only when the elder Bachchan releases them, and must make do the rest of the time with Jaya Bachchan, hema Malini or sushma seth, or even Farida jalal and Zohra sehgal. if the younger stars are in the lead, it is they who lead the dancers to call out to the heroine, with uncles such as Anupam Kher and Alok Nath joining in indulgently. in both, the characters gaze lovingly at each other as they dance the Bhangra together; fathers hug sons, brothers hug one another, as sisters, wives, mothers and aunts look on adoringly until young couples can steal a private glance. Whether it is a sangeet or an engagement, karva chauth or diwali, families resplendent 24 a sherwani is a long button down coat; kurta, a long shirt; salwar kameez, traditional Panjabi dress worn by women; and lehnga, a long skirt worn by Rajasthani women.

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in silks and gold perform traditional rituals by dancing the Bhangra and singing Bhangra bolis.25 The meaning that family-values Bhangra signifies in Bollywood may be summarized in a single sentence: “Families which dance together are happy families.” The corollary to this is that the best way of expressing filial love and affirming family values is to dance the Bhangra in ostentatious costumes in ancient havelis or modern farmhouses. The major change that family-values Bhangra documents is the new hedonist ideology of the 60-plus male and the 50-plus female that subverts the self-denying, austere elders of the Bollywood film prevalent as late as the 1980s. While the swinging sam characters that Bachchan has been playing might have been created to accommodate the superstar, Bachchan’s new screen persona, embodying the aesthetic of pleasure, revises the suffering, self-denying Bollywood father. With Bachchan, Bollywood fathers do not have to retreat to the himalayas or Varanasi to meditate, but can eat, drink, womanize and be merry. Bollywood’s new-found hedonism is not restricted to fathers, except when Bachchan plays the disciplinarian, but also percolates to mothers, and even grandmothers. in viruddh (2005), Sharmila Tagore, Bachchan’s wife, is allowed to confess her weakness for wine, in Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna (2006), Kiron Kher is vain about her figure and loves to dance, in Kal ho Na ho (2003), the grandmother Sushma Seth is permitted to revive her romance with her village beau, and Zohra sehgal never misses a chance to dance. The second trope that Bhangra enacts in Bollywood is “hero woos heroine”, which is repeated time and again despite the differences in age, ethnicity and setting. Bhangra is an expression of different forms of love, including divine and patriotic. But in Bollywood, with the exception of “aisa Des hai Mera” in veer Zaara (2004) and “Rang De Basanti” in rang De Basanti (2006), romantic love is isolated from Bhangra to the exclusion of other forms of love. it was Bhangra’s courtship idiom’s perfect fit with the Bollywood romance vocabulary that facilitated its adoption as the new Bollywood courtship language. Bollywood Bhangra songs are invariably praise songs to the beloved or expositions of romantic love and only rarely directed to the homeland or the divine. Bhangra’s lyrical minimalism is taken to ridiculous extremes in Bollywood Bhangra and its repetitive play reduced to repetitive endearments and nonsense loops. a Panjabi girl ik Panjaban a girl Panjabi kudi Panjaban dil lai gayi has stolen my heart sona sona oh Beautiful beautiful dil mera sona My beautiful heart (“sona sona Dil Mera” from Major Saab 1998) all of these are hindu festivals. Diwali is the annual festival of lights and karva chauth is a fast kept by married women to safeguard their men’s lives. Sangeet is a musical evening before a wedding. 25

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Traditionally, Bollywood resorted to Urdu poetry, particularly the ghazal, to expound on the beloved’s beauty or the theme of romantic love. Unlike Urdu poetry, which offers a means of expressing romantic love in the ghazal’s gentle melody, Bhangra is an unequivocal, loud, public declaration of adoration. The traditional format of the Bhangra boli is that of the praise song in which the singer calls out the attributes of the beloved in a plain, homespun idiom. Unlike the metaphoric, allusive, complex rhetoric of Urdu poetry, Bhangra bolis achieve their effect through plainspeak and tonality rather than ambiguity and euphemism. Bhangra’s difference from Urdu poetry as courtship song in its directness makes it a better match for contemporary plainspeak styles, just as its exploitation of tonality rather than semantics for constructing meaning helps it to cross the linguistic divide. With its repetitive and restricted lyrics, the Bhangra song is invariably a variation on the beloved’s beauty, an object worn by the beloved, or that of the heart being stolen, lost or broken. Call it the limitations of folksong or Panjabi laconicity; the Bhangra song vocabulary might be reduced to a handful of words strung together in various permutations and combinations. The most frequently repeated word is the address to the beloved, sohni or sohna, which translates as beautiful. The other frequently repeated words are dil, heart and ishq, love. But Bhangra’s lyrical minimalism turns out to be its strength in its incorporation into the national romantic repertoire. Much in the same way as the Urdu terms such as dilruba, mehbooba or janeman had served as nationally recognizable codes for naming the beloved, Panjabi equivalents for the beloved such as mahi, heer, ranjha, dholna, makhna have entered the national romantic idiom. But Bhangra’s greatest advantage over the ghazal is its complementing of word and music with the body language of dance. The generic fetishization of the female object through the imagined feudal, patriarchal male subject of Bhangra in Bhangra bolis is exploited in the item number’s sexualization of the exposed female body to seduce the male viewer though the same bolis might be used to articulate romantic adoration in the “hero woos heroine” trope. it might seem fundamental to premise Bhangra’s “vulgarity” to the draping or undraping of the female body, as purists are prone to do, but the item number seduces the male viewer by fixing the camera gaze on the female body. Bhangra functions both as courtship dance and item number, depending on its particular location in the Bollywood narrative. its bolis might equally enact courtship and romance in family settings or a brazen variety of modern indian sexuality as item number. a distinction must, therefore, be made here between Bhangra songs that are intentionally positioned as item numbers and those performed in family settings. Malaika Arora’s “Mahi Ve” and Sanjay Dutt in “Ishq samundhar” in Kaante (2002), and Bipasha Basu’s “Ishq Khudaai Rab Ne Banaai” in rudraksh (2004), as well as Katrina Kaif, Madhu Sapre and Padma Laksmi sashaying seductively down the runway to “Mundian To Bach Ke” in Boom are clearly positioned as item numbers, which “shava shava” in Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (2001) and “Meen Wasda” in Monsoon wedding (2001) are not.

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While their lyrical content remains the same, Bhangra’s positioning in the Bollywood text determines its signification and the meanings that the Bollywood audience make of them. A Bhangra performed by Abhishek Bachchan and Rani Mukherjee in Banti Aur Babli (2005) epitomizes how contextual differences can alter semantic content. in contrast to “shava shava”’s hinglish loops and hindi mixed Panjabi in Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, “nach Balliye” retains the traditional bolian format in a mix of Panjabi and english but is positioned as “club music”. Unlike “Shava Shava”, which borrows the mode of representing festive music as in the wedding video, “Nach Baliye” exemplifies the mapping of Panjabi song on a nightclub setting that has now become the conventional mode of representing panjabiyat in Bollywood. in the Bollywood text, Panjabi song and dance has been encoded both as Panjabi epicureanism as in “shava shava” but also as the form of “sinful” pleasure signified by the nightclub. The images of turbaned males and salwar kameez-clad females in the mustard fields traditionally representing Bhangra are superimposed with semi-clad bodies of youths carousing and cavorting in the “dens of vice” inaugurating Bhangra’s resignification as dance music. While “nach Baliye”’s lyrics are no different from traditional bolis in celebrating the pleasures of dancing (Aaja weh aaja weh / aaja ni baliye rajke to nach baliye [Come on come on / Oh my beloved dance to your heart’s content]), their signification, produced in the text from the rhythm, bodily signifiers and movements, alienates them from their traditional meanings. The foreignness of Panjabi is mediated for the Bollywood viewer through the suffixing of the Panjabi loop “balle balle” with the English phrase “on a Sunday Sunday” or the prefixing of the traditional address “oh kudiye” with “on the dance floor”, thus articulating Panjabi to forbidden youth leisure activities in “unindian” settings. Though Bhangrapop invented by Daler Mehndi is regarded as the first nonfilm music to have threatened the Bollywood monopoly in the popular music market and Bollywood Bhangra has been instrumental in making Bhangra the new national popular music, their rejection in Panjab once again raises the issue about folk’s capacity for change. Can change occur in folk music only within permissible limits? if so, who has the authority to decide what form of change is legitimate and what is not. it appears that performers whose individual creativity is contained within norms are socially sanctioned, whereas those who transgress these norms are labelled outsiders. yet outsiders, who have the license to move between different territories, have been credited with bringing change in folk music traditionally. While internal change brought about by individual creativity finds easy social acceptance, externally induced changes tend to be regarded with suspicion. gurdas Mann’s innovations in Bhangra do not prevent him from attaining the traditional bearer’s status but Daler Mehndi’s breaking of the rules is viewed as an unacceptable transgression resulting in his exclusion from the Panjabi cultural space. What is the Panjabi cultural space and who has the power to define it? What does it say about the Panjabi subject that is being formed in the process? The presence of multiple claimants to Panjabi identity and culture illustrate that it cannot be reduced to a fixed, unitary essence articulated through

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unchanging traditional genres but must be located through the various musical expressions through which it is being articulated. To me Mann, Mehndi and Malkit singh represent three points through which Panjabi modernity and locality is being produced, the Panjabi in Panjab, the Panjabi in india and the Panjabi in the diaspora, in addition to many others.

Chapter 5

global Bazaar, Local Peddlers Despite Adorno’s going out of date after the Frankfurt School’s decline, popular cultural debates in the euro-american academy continue to return to adorno’s seminal critique of mass culture. in the days when it has become customary to counterpoise celebratory narratives of the electronic media against the Frankfurt School’s misplaced anxieties about mass culture and media, John Hutnyk’s attempt to reinstate Adorno in his critique of the reification of third world cultural productions in World Music in his essay “adorno at Womad” comes as a surprise (2000). Conceding his complicity in this process as a spectator at Womad, Hutnyk invokes Adorno’s authority in unravelling the mechanics of the culture industry. He argues that though one might disagree with Adorno over details, the Frankfurt School founder’s central argument about the reification of culture still holds good. Different aspects of Bhangra’s reification have engaged the attention of Bhangra aficionados across the globe. The Euro-American spectator’s concern stems from its exoticization; the Indian elite’s contempt is rooted in distaste for the popular; and Panjabi horror stems from the sacrilegious act of its removal from the sacred to the profane. Attributing its reification to the field rather than the genre, i shall explore the possibilities of resistive spaces still available to all Bhangra genres within the popular cultural sphere (Bourdieu 1994).1 The debate on Bhangra’s reification in the Euro-American academy is largely framed within a postmodern, post-colonial cultural theory paradigm, which expresses deep concern about the ethnographic, anthropologizing and sociologizing overtones in the euro-american expression of interest in the cultural products of non-Western societies. Cultural theorists writing on this issue express their misgivings about the elision of genuine Western interest in the cultural heritage of its others with its appropriation by a global culture industry. yet the frame of asian Dance Music through which Bhangra is received in europe and america displays a convergence between the salvage ethnography school of ethnomusicology and a savaging global music market. This was Sanjay Sharma’s (1996) contention in his essay on World Music, where he remonstrated against the ethnographic impulse 1

Findings of a marketing research project conducted by Avinish Jain, Darshpreet Mann and sanju nair, MBM students of the vinod gupta school of Management at the indian institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 2000 for saregama hMv were used for preparing this chapter in addition to conversations with music producer atul sharma in Chandigarh during 2006 and viewing of a market research-based programme on ETC Punjabi from 2000 to 2006. Excerpts from Mann’s report (2000) on the marketing of Panjabi music are attached in appendix 1.

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undergirding even contemporary valorizations of non-Western music. Philip Bohlman’s short introduction to world Music, which employs the ethnographic trope of encounter to describe his discovery of World Music, appears to be one such valorization (2002). Though Bohlman, the ethnomusicologist sensitive to the epistemologies and ontologies of music, begins with problematizing not only the difference in the categories but the epistemologies of music in different cultures, he, too, is culpable of privileging place over form that Timothy Brennan objects to in the label World Music. Though its attention to the epistemologies and ontologies of music from elsewhere separates ethnomusicologist interest in World Music from its appropriation by global sonic markets, ethnomusicology begins the process of the exoticization of others’ music, which the industry converts into a unique selling proposition. The germ of corruption, however, lies in the terminology, which the music industry borrowed as a “user-friendly” classificatory label to enable the “other-friendly” buyer to browse through the record store. Timothy Brennan’s definition of World Music as a “longing in metropolitan centres of europe and north america for what is not europe or north america” corroborates the orientalist overtones of the label (2001: 45). Brennan locates in this longing, “a general, usually positive, interest in the cultural life of other parts of the world found in all of the major media”, a metatext of desire, escape and self-constitution recalling earlier imaginings of the european self in relation with others. arguing that the term is used to describe “local or regional music that either does not travel well, or has no intention to travel”, he concludes that World Music “does not exist” (2001: 47). Brennan’s problem with World Music is its homogenization of non-Western difference through yoking together totally dissimilar categories, for instance, Indian classical music with Irish folk music. Treading the middle path, Brennan neither joins the cheerleading section of cultural theory nor hails the arrival of an equal world. nor does he reiterate a cultural imperialist concern about cultural glottophobia. he locates himself as a white, male consumer of nonWestern music whose pleasure in listening or buying music overrules his ethical qualms about the violence in intervening in others’ cultural development. adopting a similar posture, of the consumer of World Music, Hutnyk wonders if the visibility provided to World Music artists by commercial interests in festivals like Womad catapults them in global sonic commerce. Hutnyk argues that the space created by World Music does not “escape the dominance of commodity fetish forms” and that music such as Bally Sagoo’s makes a space-claiming gesture for Asian music in mainstream popular culture “through the capital market itself” (2000: 5). on the indian subcontinent, cultural theorists have adopted a high modernist stance and displayed an adornoesque horror of popular cultural products. adorno’s caveats against mass culture may be heard almost verbatim in the litany about the alleged “degeneration” in musical tastes as reflected in the popularity of film and other light music in which Bhangra is included. As Bhangra enters the popular sphere, it is dismissed with the derogatory gesture directed at all mass cultural products. The concerns about Bhangra’s commodification on the Indian subcontinent combine Hutnyk’s Adornoesque angst about the fetishization of

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non-Western music with Brennan’s post-colonial anxieties about the submergence of generic difference. Contemporary Indian musical consciousness is defined in the typically Adornoesque nightmare of a split between the high and the folk, the aesthetic and the ascetic, entertainment and pleasure. As high and folk art begin to be defined by “displeasure in pleasure”, popular culture acquires pure entertainment value even as the enjoyment it promises is simultaneously denied. Adopting a typical Frankfurt School line, cultural critics dismiss popular cultural products lamenting the decline in musical tastes, standardization of cultural products, the personality cult, the regressive character of listening, and the passivity of the masses. Popular culture is seen as destabilizing the harmonious relationship between the high and the low cultural spheres in which the low served as a sort of introduction and preparation for the high. Indian folk cultures, assigned a supplementary role in the great/Little traditional interdependence theory, are seen as violating this hierarchy through their domination of the popular sphere. As Panjabi folk music transmogrifies into its new popular avatar, it becomes the object of diatribes against popular culture. “vulgarity”, the platform from which new Bhangra mutants are denigrated, merits a fresh look against this background. The Bakhtinian sense of the vulgar as “the popular, the informal, and the underside” might provide another angle through which this allegation might be investigated (qtd in Hall 1993). Stuart Hall’s view of the popular as that of the people and the local could also lead to further insights (1993). Vulgarity has yet another dimension, of the bazaaroo, or commercial, qualifying the field of the popular that Bhangra has entered. The notion of the bazaar embraces both the visible and invisible obscenity of the undressed female body as well as overdressed ethnic difference, which is the preferred mode of Bhangra’s marketing inside and outside the nation. With vision having become the most privileged human sense in “the society of spectacle” and with the mediatized image ruling the globe, the music video’s specularity reifies the Bhangra body even in situations where Bhangra is consumed as an aural text (Dubord 1994). Aesthetic compromises by artists meet the “aesthetic” justification of nudity and the exoticization of ethnicity on the common ground of the global marketplace ruled by the ideology of “what sells is good”. The global bazaar, or the marketplace, in which third world artists traffic in “export-import” in collaboration with those in the diaspora or without, peddling their wares to the highest bidders, implicates both folk and hybrid practitioners in the field of popular cultural commerce.2 Bhangra producers, artists of various dispositions, generic preferences, classes, castes, religious affiliations and geographical location tour non-stop between the folk and the popular, at times ill at ease with, but at others happy, to play along with the “girls” and other (un)dressings of the popular cultural industry. “Thinking 2

“export-import” was used as a euphemism by traders, particularly in the 1970s, to allude to a number of illegal businesses. Bhangra export in the 1980s and 1990s has replaced the highly profitable garment export of the 1970s that earned traders a variety of tax benefits.

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artists” alone put their foot down in a defiant Bhangra gesture to lay “no navel show” as a precondition for participation.3 similarly, Bhangra consumers, dancers and viewers of all colours, ages, genders, castes, classes and creeds “bhangra pao” (dance the Bhangra) with great gusto, unperturbed by academic wrestling. There is no doubt that contemporary Bhangra texts “fall completely into the world of commodities, are produced for the market, and are aimed at the market” (Adorno 2002: 38). The rules of the “commodity market” demand that in delivering itself “over to consumption for the price for its wages” (adorno 2002: 35), Bhangra ought to relinquish its prerogative to take on high culture as folk music. Bhangra mutants are undoubtedly implicated in global capitalism, operating as transnational and electronic imperialism. however, denunciations of “the fetish character” of Bhangra music display a peculiar fetish that directs this debate away from more disquieting issues. resistance to Bhangra hybrids on the indian subcontinent has rallied around the “vulgarization” charge, in which visual promiscuity is invariably read as a mass or alien cultural attribute.4 as vulgarity is normally a thin dividing line defined by a society’s permissive limits, one could do well to focus on the more obscene gesture in its vulgarization, that is, in its opening out to the vulgaris, the common folk. Bhangra’s obscenity may be viewed as the effect of its expulsion from the sacred ritual enclosure to the profane mass culture arena. Bhangra’s vulgarization is imbricated with its decontextualization and deterritorialization, which open the door to its fetishization. Bhangra acquires its fetish character in the moment of its translation from ritual to spectacle as it transmutes from harvest ritual to popular music. a simple reversal of popular and high, the standard postmodern practice, cannot elucidate Bhangra’s decentring of the indian cultural universe. The fetishization of vulgarity manifests a deep-seated phobia about the dissolution of boundaries and taste hierarchies concomitant upon the folk’s insertion into the popular, which essentially entails its disengagement from a pre-capitalist system of gift exchange to that of capitalist commodity relations. Arguing that Bhangra’s reification began in the substitution of its use value by exchange value in professional Bhangra performance and vulgarization 3

gurdas Mann, the Doordarshan star of the 1980s, who erased the gap between the singer and the dancer, takes great pride in keeping his performance safsuthra in keeping with family viewing conventions. To Pritish nandy’s allegation that despite the high moral position he has adopted he still prances about the stage, he responded. “yes, but tradition still breathes in my music. I do not use half naked girls as props. … I did not need an entourage of six movie stars, hundred musicians, another hundred dancing girls in varying stages of undress. i sang alone, all by myself and the audience listened. The entire stadium was full. That is my reward” (Nandy 1999: n.p.). 4 adorno objects to popular music for its isolation of the sensual from the balance of sensual and spiritual that music usually maintains. in contemporary Bhangra, too, the exclusive focus on the sensual through themes of love and the sexual disturbs the balance between sexuality and sacral in the fertility rite. secondly, the joy of participation is substituted by the pursuit of pleasure that Bhangra has come to signify.

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through the isolation of sensual pleasure from the total aesthetic pleasure provided by traditional Bhangra performance, i shall follow it to its natural limits in the commodity cultures of global capitalism. Bourdieu opines that “the art business, a trade in things that have no price belongs to the class of practices in which the logic of the pre-capitalist economy lives on (as it does, in another sphere, in the economy of exchanges between the generations)” (1986: 131). These practices, functioning as “practical negations, can only work by pretending not to be doing what they are doing” (1986: 131). The struggle between autonomous and heteronomous principles in the field of Bhangra production assumes the form of a conflict between the pre-capitalist and the capitalist. Bhangra, which followed “the logic of the pre-capitalist economy” as folk ritual, is made to obey the dictates of global capitalism as popular or World Music (Bourdieu 1986: 131). As folk music, it must function by “a collective disavowal of commercial interests and profits” whereas popular culture makes no bones about “economic profits” in conformity to the laws of the economic universe (1986: 131). In its movement from folk to popular, Bhangra enters this economy of self interest. But it is expected to express a disavowal of commercial interest to be able to retain its symbolic capital as a folk tradition. Ironically, in World Music, Bhangra’s symbolic capital (or economic or political capital that is disavowed, mis-recognized and thereby recognized hence legitimate) becomes the source of its valorization as it becomes confused with cultural authenticity. Cultural theorists engaged in the talk of consecration, arbitrating over the authenticity of cultural texts, unwittingly play into the hands of heteronomous interests by raising the stock of those texts which disavow economic gain.5 The same argument, disinterestedness in its commerce, becomes the ground for the valorization of certain texts and artists over others. The symbolic capital of those who have not sold out to market interests is far higher and is likely to be matched with economic capital eventually than of others who have capitulated to market demands. Marcel Mauss elaborated the concept of the gift (“le don”) to provide an insight into the system of reciprocal relations in “primitive” societies (Willis 1991: 347). Baudrillard, too, regarded the gift that binds the performer with the community in “a symbolic exchange” as an anti-form to capitalism (1988). While the business of art and music, as Pierre Bourdieu pointed out, still maintains the façade of pre-capitalist relations, the feudal jajmani system in india predicated on obligation, spontaneous gift, prodigality and symbolic reciprocity offered a genuine pre-capitalist alternative to capitalist producer consumer relations (“Jajmani” 2006: n.p.). The Encyclopaedia Britannica online defines jajmani:

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Bourdieu views the artistic field as the site of a double hierarchy. He calls the first the heteronomous principle of hierarchization by which he means success, and the second the autonomous principle, which refers to “degree specific consecration (literary or cultural prestige)” (Bourdieu 1994: 58).

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… reciprocal social and economic arrangements between families of different castes within a village community in india, by which one family exclusively performs certain jajmani (Hindi deriving from the Sanskrit yajamana, “sacrificial patron who employs priests for a ritual”) services for the other, such as ministering to the ritual or providing agricultural labour, in return for pay, protection, and employment security. (“Jajmani” 2006: n.p.)

Beginning with the myth of the sacred origins of art, including music and dance, as a god-given gift, the folk performer was embedded in a system of reciprocity in which the maintenance of artistic talent was regarded as the sacred obligation of the community, led by the king or the feudal lord. Both sacred and secular music and dance were embedded in the system of social relations predicated on the gift and musicians compensated through the spontaneous gift that varied according to the host’s socio-economic status. Alka Pande’s study reveals that the abstraction of labour in exchange value was alien to Panjabi performance traditions until the collapse of the jajmani system after partition (Pande 1998). Traces of these pre-capitalist relations in which wandering minstrels, street performers and professional castes depended on the largesse of the community expressed through the spontaneous gift may still be found in rural pockets such as the ones Schreffler discovered during his field work in Panjab. Schreffler’s field work in melas in Panjab reveals that dholis, whose person is deemed sacred, still depend on the largesse of visitors (2005: n.p.).6 The hereditary Sufi singer Puran shah Koti is perhaps the last exponent of the jajmani system bound to his community in a relation of social obligation as revealed in his interview to a newspaper: i was born in a very poor family and didn’t even have the money to continue studies. My neighbours and other villagers saw potential in the quality of my voice and singing and said i had a good future. They were the ones who helped me financially for a basic education, gave me clothes and even food. It was for them that i was able to matriculate and learn music professionally. Baba sai of Shahkot village was my guru. I will be eternally grateful for the help the villagers of Shahkot have given me to bring me to this level of recognition. (“Puran Shah Koti” 2005: n.p.)

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Schreffler’s fieldwork revealed three types of performing communities, the first type being those who were “part of the jajmani system of exchange of goods for services between communities. of the second type are erstwhile itinerant tribes who historically had remained unassimilated into mainstream society. of the third type are unorthodox communities that perform due to extraordinary circumstances. in most communities of the first two types, women as well as men may perform, although women are limited to increasingly fewer contexts” (Schreffler 2005: n.p.).

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The sacred origins of music and the idea of the musician as a divine medium are also reinforced in the public statements of the Wadali brothers, fourth generation Sufi singers, who, seemingly oblivious to national acclaim and international popularity, continue to sing the name of rab or God in the Sufi devotional tradition. The underlying assumption in standard denunciations of mass culture is that economic interest is inimical to creativity, individuality and authenticity. Bourdieu shows that though high art’s claims to superiority are propped on its disavowal of commercial interest, the symbolic capital it accumulates through the denial of commercial interest is converted into economic capital in its marketing (Bourdieu 1986: 132). Nowhere is this illustrated better than in the symbolic capital acquired by Panjabi folk performers through their institutionalized consecration by state honours and awards. Puran Chand Wadali, the elder sibling of the Wadali brothers, who was recently conferred with the President’s award, cynically sums up the relationship between ethnomusicological discovery and reification of traditional music: “Jab tak bika na tha koi puchhta na tha; tune mujhe kharid kar anmol kar diya” (None took notice of me until I was put on sale, you have made me priceless by buying me up) (Tandon 2003: n.p.). Suspicious of the alien world of the music business, the Wadali brothers have firmly resisted their cooption into the field of commerce by refusing to have their albums recorded or even singing for films, which paradoxically increases the value of their few recorded albums or of their live performances and their reputation among connoisseurs of Panjabi music. Claiming that they “make no compromise” with their “andaaz of singing” and regard “visuals, which have no connection with our songs” as anathema, the brothers believe that their public performances do not distract them from their true spiritual calling (Zutshi 2005: n.p.). But folk performers and traditions in urban areas, as Alka Pande notes, are either forced to languish due to the absence of support or to make a transition from the system of the gift to that of market exchange (1998). var pher is part of a post-performance ceremony in which a patron, pleased with a performance, might gift cash or other valuable gifts by circling them around the performer’s head. Whether the Panjabi var pher concept, located in the gift economy and still practised widely, can serve as an anti-form to capitalism in view of the cooption of purity and spirituality in global commercial systems is interrogated by Kajri jain in an unpublished essay. jain views the var pher ceremony observed after a performance by the folksinger Pammi Bai at a family function celebrated by a top business family based in the UK in Panjab as a fabricated rusticity (2004: n.p.). Bhangra appears to have no choice except to languish or to consent to its “vulgarization” by agreeing to follow the dictates of popular culture. Bhangra’s popularization, while ensuring its survival, has also inscribed it with the logic of capitalism, the mode of production from which popular culture emerged. Lukacs’s notion of reification – “in the commodity the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour” – explains the abstraction of use value into market value in capitalist production (Lukacs 1971: 87). In “On the Social Situation of Music”,

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adorno states that the role of music in contemporary society is “exclusively that of a commodity” with its value determined by the market. Bhangra turned into a commodity when it ceased to be a spontaneous expression of joy through its penetration by the principle of exchange. instead of the community coming together to express its collective joy, when it bought a performance for a fee equivalent to the labour expended on it, “use value” was overwritten by “exchange value” for the purpose of providing mere entertainment. The act of buying removes Bhangra from the lived form of exchange in which the talented individual or the hereditary musician performs for the community and is rewarded with a gift and inserts it in the economy of consumption. With its descent into the popular sphere, particularly as dance music, it becomes emblematic of background listening, which Adorno saw as the first sign of regressive listening. Bhangra’s foot-tapping rhythms make it the most preferred music on the dance floor. As Bhangra was never intended for listening, spectator passivity should be interpreted as its removal from participatory ritual to spectacle. Bhangra’s objectification and alienation, in fact, preceded its reification in global capitalism and consumer society. i have located this moment in the birth of the professional artist and paid performance, which introduced a spectator–performer divide mirrored in the spatial configuration of the staged performance. Philip Bohlman points out that the category of folk musician is a paradox in the context of the understanding of folk music as “the art of everyman”, which depends on the requirement of “universal participation” and the valorization of musical communality (1988: 70). In this theory of group origin in which individual effort goes unrecognized, the human role is limited to transmission as suggested in the original meaning of naqqal or “transmitter” or mirasi as the custodian of heritage. In a participatory performance genre like Bhangra, performance is the joint creation of the performer along with members of the community through a distribution of specialist and non-specialist skills. While skills related to playing instruments are hereditary and require long training, dancing and singing are widely distributed across the community in such a way that the specialist’s role is limited to that of the lead performer.7 since the compositional and performative responsibility is distributed widely across the group, attachment of ownership to an individual specialist or non-specialist is an impossibility. Folklorists’ “discovery” of folk artists altered Bhangra as a communal tradition and displaced ubiquitous musicality by individual ownership. The separation of the performer from the community began with the staging of Bhangra in the 1950s and 1960s in college competitions and official functions and alienated both the performer and the 7 it is the drum player or dholi, a hereditary specialist performer, to whom is assigned the responsibility of initiating the performance by sounding the saddh or the call on the dhol. The dholi also doubles as lead singer by introducing bolis during periods of rest between vigorous dance movements in a dialogical composition in which the community shares the performance responsibility by responding appropriately to the bolis, correcting the dholi if he errs, and by dancing the steps to match the beat.

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community from the music by displacing communal participation through passive spectacle. it began with a new system of patronage that displaced the pre-capitalist jajmani network in which the state supported by the aristocratic elite played a dominant role. This development in folk music is a prelude to the reification of Bhangra as popular culture and the transformation of lived relations into rational modes of production. Connell and gibson, while revealing authenticity to be “socially constructed”, unpack fixity by examining traditional music primarily in relation to commodification (2003: 19). With the loss of royal patronage, the mirasi, a parttime performer who rendered other services to the landowner in addition to singing and dancing, transformed into the professional performer and was made to enter a commercial relationship with his audience. The hereditary oral practice of Muslim mirasi musicians who had historically been the mainstay of music production in Panjab was challenged by the displacement of feudal by bourgeois patronage. The legacy of the singing legends of the 1920s was a major transformation in the genre that privileged song over dance and beat and displaced Bhangra from the folk performance context into “the culture industry”. While there is no documentation of pre-Independence Bhangra dance genres, the history of recorded folk music dates back to several years before Independence. The list of artists recorded by the Gramophone Company of India includes several Panjabi folksingers popular in undivided Panjab and ends with the living legend Mohammed siddique, the mirasi singer-dancer who performed in several Bollywood films and was recently honoured with a lifetime achievement award.8 The first individual performer in Bhangra may be described as a mirasi singer recorded by the music industry with its system of copyright, royalty and commission well before the destruction of the mirasi tradition after independence. in singing, if not in dancing and music, the notion of individual ownership and commerce was well in place before the reification of dance and music in the culture industry. Though “the ideologies of authenticity” underpinning Bhangra are defined in opposition to capitalism, commodification is not necessarily viewed as antithetical to the production of authenticity (Connell and Gibson 2003: 29). The questions of artistic freedom and innovation, musical purity and authenticity, and communal responsibility are repeated with unfailing regularity in the context of the standardization of culture, and the system based on stars, fan clubs and bestsellers. Whether one laments the regressive nature of Bhangra listening or dancing, or hails it as a regional/folk arrival, one cannot deny that Bhangra’s giving itself completely to consumption makes it part of the global commodity culture through and through. its participation in the commodity dynamics of the popular cultural sphere subjects it to the authoritarianism of the 8

Though Mohammed siddique, the veteran Panjabi singer of “asin allad Pune Wich Aaiven Akhiyaan Laa Baithe”, a rage in the late 1970s, condemns the Western influence for degrading Panjabi music and corrupting youth; he has himself recorded more than 1,000 Panjabi songs and given about 18,000 stage performances during his 42-year-long career.

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market. Through its implication in the global capital music world of commodities, Bhangra is completely subject to the authority of commercial success. Bhangra’s production, distribution and consumption today is dictated by market demand. Emerging out of the post-industrial market economy, it is packaged and marketed like any other consumerist item. The music, the artist and the genre are invested with a mystique that the advertising industry is wont to bestow on other products. Through their assent to the economics of the commodity markets, the Bhangra artist and his music give their tacit consent to their own commodification. The production of Bhangra and Bhangra artists proceeds by the rules of the marketing of other commodities. not only is Bhangra manufactured, distributed and consumed in accordance with the conventions of the commodity market, it is converted into a brand. The logic that is seen at work in the making and marketing of other brands works to make Bhangra an unprecedented marketing success. Defining the present phase of production as the era of the brand, Naomi Klein argues that the production and consumption of commodities today is secondary to the manufacturing of the brand (Klein 2000). Similarly, Baudrillard’s seminal study of the philosophy of advertising focuses on the role of the brand in the manipulation of needs (1988: 71), and Susan Willis’s thesis on packaging confirms Baudrillard’s assertion that the gratification of needs in consumerist societies takes place through a complex system of needs (1991). Bhangra’s reification in global commodity markets offers the most successful instance of brand marketing in recent marketing history. Sanju Nair’s study of the unprecedented success of Panjabi music conducted in june 2000 at saregama hMv, Mumbai traces the undocumented history of Bhangra’s invasion of the indian popular cultural space (2001). Nair reports that the marketing whizkids of the Indian music industry, faced with a challenge similar to that posed to the Western music market in the last decade of the twentieth century, were enjoined to concoct a magic mantra that would open the way for ethnic beats in a Hindi film music-dominated industry. The same sonic environmental conditions – unfamiliarity, inferiority, difference – that had impeded ethnic Asian music’s entry in the mainstream Western music market had to be addressed by regional Panjabi music to break into the Hindi dominated indian popular cultural mainstream. nair contends that Panjabi music’s national success is the first space-clearing gesture of a non-film, non-Hindi performance tradition into the national popular. He discerns in Panjabi music’s brand marketing a complex strategy based on its similarity and difference from Hindi film music. He argues that while the similarity of Panjabi with hindi enabled listeners to understand the mood of the song without understanding meaning, Panjabi music’s generic difference from Hindi film music equipped it for challenging Hindi’s hegemony without confronting it directly. Bhangra was packaged simultaneously as rustic and diasporic sound evoking both the rural Utopia of the Panjabi countryside as well as the city “Kool” of the diasporic settlement.9 nair’s argument is supplemented 9 nair regards Mann and Mastana as Panjabi pioneers who had made inroads in the Indian popular music market but attributes Panjabi music’s challenge to Hindi film to the

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Cycle of music production (Mann 2000)

by Darshpreet Mann’s visual representation (Figure 5.1) of the key factors in the success of a Panjabi music album in his report (2000). unprecedented success of Daler Mehndi in the mid 1990s, which altered the indian popular music scene permanently (Nair 2001).

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Building on the theory of market segmentation, Bhangra creates a niche for itself both in the national and the global music market by its unique positioning. The ethnographic frame of World Music through which Bhangra is othered and exoticized is borrowed by the Indian music market to package Panjabi and folk difference for the consumption of urban, middle-class Indian youth. In the popular cultural advertising lingua, Bhangra is packaged as a global brand with a particular local appeal that cannot be copied by any competition. since Bhangra’s unchallenged position in the global sonic market depends on its brand marketing, individual and generic acceptance is interlinked with its conformity to the total brand image and positioning. The brand image created for Bhangra by the music industry plays on its generic ethnicity, rusticity and folk antecedents. Marketing of Panjabi music picks up the mode of racialization in which blackness is imbued with certain stereotyped traits absent in the white culture and is used in marketing black music in the West. bell hooks in “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance” outlines the process of the commodification of the Other and argues that “within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture” (1992: 424). The pleasure in racial difference that bell hooks notes in the West reproduces on the subcontinent as delight in ethnic difference where the hedonistic Panjabi ethnicity is the seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream hindu culture in addition to livening up white culture. in the brand production of the Sikh/Panjabi body as rustic and the source of natural pleasure, the Sikh/Panjabi is reconstructed as the Hindu’s Other. The turban and the beard, the glittering Bhangra costumes, the rustic settings all contribute to the aura surrounding Bhangra. The Panjabi body acquires the contours of the “primitive” and the longing for the primitive is expressed by the projection onto the other of a sense of plenty, bounty and a freedom from constraints. a “bit of the other” in the Indian context is free of the sexual overtones that hooks notes in the white male’s desire for the other female. But dance and music become vicarious means of consuming the Other and to partake of the vitality and joy that the body of the other is inscribed with in popular culture. inscribed as rustic and “primitive”, the Panjabi male body becomes the signifier of wildness, and capable of experiencing intense pleasure. Through listening to Bhangra music and dancing the Bhangra, the urban indian is invited to enter the zone of pleasure written over the joyous body of the Bhangra performer. The primitivized Panjabi body bears the promise of a “use value” that is always anticipated but may never be accessed. Bhangra is able to penetrate both the national and global popular musical sphere because of its special positioning as the non-technologized sound of peasant cultures and societies uncorrupted by modernity. even Bhangra hybrids, which mix synthesizers with traditional instruments like dhol and tumbi, work by the play on the contrast between the modern and the traditional, the pristine and the mixed, the rural and the urban. As the ethnocultural signifier of a Panjabi or Asian ethnicity in and outside india respectively, Bhangra is dragged into the promotion of an authenticity cult based on origins. The violence perpetrated by the global culture

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industry by uprooting music from its traditional contexts is replicated in indian popular music. While Western music industry dresses up Bhangra in an exotic outfit to sate Western desires for others, Indian popular culture casts Bhangra in a popular musical costume for urban, middle-class entertainment. In Lukacs and Haug, there is a common idea that in commodity capitalism not only are objects affected, but human qualities and activities are also objectified and abstracted so that they are no longer an organic part of human beings’ personality but things they can “own” and “dispose of” (Willis 1991: 339). In Bhangra’s marketing, the personal qualities and talents of performers are abstracted and appropriated in the construction of brand images that, in turn, overwhelm the personality of the performer and are invoked in the individualization of Bhangra music. Bhangra’s brand marketing draws on its intrinsic difference from other popular performers, a difference that the image of the youthful gurdas Mann dancing and singing on stage in rustic accent and attire presented in the 1980s. young Mann’s innocent abandonment to the pleasure of dance and Mehndi’s insouciance were meticulously appropriated in the fabrication of Bhangra’s brand image by the music industry. in Mehndi’s case, his visible ethnicity offered the first component of product differentiation but the turbaned Sikh’s marketing is an example of how ethnic markers like the five Ks, rustic Panjabi pronunciation and delivery can be reified as a unique selling proposition.10 Mehndi’s larger-thanlife persona – corpulent, jovial but brimming with energy – is employed in the construction of a powerful Bhangra image that has become normalized in indian popular culture. The displacement of the image of the “Sikh terrorist” with that of the dancing Sikh in the 1990s may be attributed entirely to a brand-building exercise that now has a permanent recall value. The dancing Sikh body has now becomes as ubiquitous in indian popular culture as that of the north indian hero and the east or south indian heroine in Bollywood. The Bhangra star’s appeal is predicated on the stereotyped Panjabi essence in the indian imaginary: high energy, robust rusticity, hedonistic abandon and unbridled impulse. That Panjabi Bhangra’s appeal depends entirely on the Bhangra artist remaining in his frame, is proved by the bombing of Bhangra legends’ experiments with hindi lyrics and new genres. in the concept of brand that enables the differentiation of homogenized or similar production through the construction of a difference, one can hear disturbing echoes of adorno’s point about the standardized products of mass culture individualized through superficial differences. Bhangra exemplifies the standardization associated with mass cultural products. not only are those artists whose music fits in with market demand signed on but also the content of the music is dictated by what appeals to a primarily youth market. In the star-studded Bhangra industry, musical genre, content, lyrics, video and the artist’s image are determined by market requirements. Individual difference and innovativeness may be exercised only within the parameters established by the Bhangra culture 10 The five Ks – kes (hair), kangha (comb), kaccha (shorts), kirpan (sword), and kavach (shield) – were enjoined on Sikhs by the Tenth Guru.

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industry. Conversely, differences between individual artists are exploited as a brand manufacturing strategy. Artistic freedom and creativity must be sacrificed at the altar of saleability largely predicated on standardization. Bhangra artists play it safe by sticking to the tested formula resulting in a highly standardized market. The difference is between those who disavow self interest and those who give themselves completely to commercial interests on which the market cashes in to project an authenticity cult centred on the disavowal of commercial interest. it wouldn’t be incorrect to say that the global Bhangra boom is largely due to ingenious market strategization capitalizing on genuine diasporic and folk cultural resistivity in promoting an authenticity cult predicated on ethnicity. But it would be simplistic to view Bhangra’s reification as a product of global transnational conglomerates or white performers cannibalizing third world artists and industry to serve euro-american consumerist interests as its euro-american guardians do (Hutnyk: 2000).11 Fernando Coronil’s notion of the globocentricism of the dominant globalization discourse relates the ongoing domination of the West by “a number of representative operations that include the dissolution of ‘West’ into the market and its crystallization in less visible transnational modules of financial and political power, the attenuation of cultural antagonisms through the integration of distant cultures into a common global space, and a shift from alterity to subalternity as a dominant modality for constituting cultural difference” (2000: 354). Coronil considers discourses of neoliberal globalization as “an ‘economic’ cultural dominant subsuming the world’s multiple cultures, and competing discourse about them as subordinate elements within an encompassing, planetary economic culture” (2000: 354). Peter Manuel’s study of cassette culture in north india has put to rest the globophobic anxiety about the nefarious designs of the global sonic market cannibalizing third world labour (2001b). Protests against Bhangra’s commodification by Western musical marts are predicated on the assumption of hapless third world musical victims held in thrall by the Western music industry with the promise of “big bucks” and a bigger name. The ground reality in the Bhangra industry is quite different. While indian localities cannot escape the global sonic dragnet, the complicity of the indigenous music industry in the Bhangra boom complicates Bhangra commerce beyond local–global asymmetry. While exploitation must be accepted as the prime strategy of capitalism, the Bhangra industry displays intranational rather than global hegemonic designs. The local music industry’s exploitation of the popularization of Bhangra as World Music or New Asian Music primarily accounts for Bhangra’s return and marketing within india. as nair’s study has revealed, the indian music industry, cashing in on Bhangra’s success overseas, worked overtime to devise an altogether different strategy in Bhangra’s marketing within the mass music segment in India (2001), succinctly analysed in Table 5.1. 11

Hutnyk’s well-intentioned critique of the exoticization of India and Indian music by white popstars like Madonna and Kula Shaker does not take into account domestic appropriations.

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Mass music and future scope (Jain 2000: 5)

Language

Folk

Devotional

hindi devotional Bhojpuri rajasthani Punjabi Total North

0 128 50 120 298

300 20 10 30 360

0 2 0 3 5

300 150 60 153 663

Marathi gujarati Total west

25 30 55

75 40 115

22 1 23

122 71 193

Bengali oriya assamese Total East

25 10 7 42

15 15 5 35

10 1 1 12

50 26 13 89

395

510

40

945

Grand total

Repertoire

Film

Total MCs (lakhs)

Market size (MCs annually – crores)

Old Hindi films (including versions) New Hindi films New South films (Tamil etc.) South catalogue (old films and devotional) indipop international music Ghazal and Geets Premium devotional others

6.5 8.5 1.5 1.5 1.0 0.7 0.2 0.1 0.5

Total Mass devotional Regional devotional / Folk / Film

20.5 3.0 6.5

Grand total

30.0

Note: MC = music cassette; 1 lac = 1,000,000; 1 crore = 10 million

It is tempting to posit Bhangra against the World Music marketing model in which Bhangra is packaged and dressed for the consumption of the first world consumer. While this model might fit the remixes of Bhangra produced for the vilayeti market, Bhangra is made to participate in a national economy of consumption while vilayeti products are more likely to be overwritten with resistance. While Bhangra is completely implicated in capitalism today, the world

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system theory in which the periphery provides the raw material for markets located in the core can only partially explain how the Panjabi practitioner’s body and music are appropriated for consumption by a global capitalist industry. The world system theory is complicated by two factors, the first being the national music industry’s appropriation of the performer and the second the performer’s own complicity in his own reification. While Panjab does remain an important Bhangra production centre in global sonic commerce, the hegemonies in the Bhangra industry can’t be simplified as global because Panjabi labour and body is equally appropriated in the service of homegrown capitalism. as Peter Manuel’s study of cassette culture in north india demonstrates, the periphery might evolve its own system of production that escapes the world division of labour (2001b). The Panjabi body is coopted not only in neo-imperial primitivism but also in the pleasure of the nation in a manner reminiscent of the cooption of Panjabi labour in the national dream of the green revolution and the imperial one of the British empire. The labour of the Panjabi body is abstracted and incorporated for the satisfaction of the consumer’s desire. Through the polarization of the Panjabi self as the body that is juxtaposed against the nation’s civilized mind, the Panjabi body is reified in the economy of production as well as consumption. While the nation, during the decades following the green revolution, consumed the products of Panjabi labour as the empire did in the nineteenth century, now it directly consumes the body of the Panjabi Other to fill its lack or desire for authenticity or pleasure. The Panjabi body, coopted in the economy of production after independence, is now appropriated in the economy of consumption. This can happen, as i have argued, only through a gross misrepresentation whereby the Panjabi self is projected as pure body to the exclusion of the soul and the mind. The centrality of the body in the agricultural cycle of production is now transferred to the popular field of consumption. But the etherification of the Panjabi body is not the exclusive curse of the global industry but of the indigenous industry as well. Bhangra critics’ narrow focus on the commodification of the female body in hybrid Bhangra performance prevents them from perceiving the commodification of the Panjabi body, voice and the self in Bhangra’s national and global marketing. If the female dancers are undraped for male consumerist consumption, the Bhangra artist is draped in traditional Bhangra finery in the exoticization of rusticity and tradition to sate global as well as local consumerist desires. Bhangra artists’ urban, literate antecedents need to be downplayed in their archaization and antiquitization. This incorporation of the Panjabi artist in global capitalism often occurs through the mediation of the Panjabi diaspora. a complex hegemonic chain binds the diaspora artist with the native artist in this sonic market exchange. The diasporic artist, signed by a transnational conglomerate turns to the third world/Panjabi artist to produce “a bit of the other” for the global consumer’s pleasure to which the Panjabi artist gives his tacit consent for the price of visibility. While the majority of pendu artists might not be able to make a dent in the global market directly, their rusticity packaged in globally recognizable sonic conventions might provide them global visibility even though they might remain nameless. This applies not only to

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living pendu artists like Malkit, Mann and others, but also late legends whose songs have been remixed or rerecorded by diasporic performers. Manmohan Waris, one of the popular younger singers, deplores this trend in the Bhangra industry where “even established singers find themselves in the dock because anybody with Rs 5 lakh and above can be a singer nowadays even if he does not know the ABC of music” (Varinder Singh 2004: n.p.). Waris alludes to a form of diasporic hegemony constructed by better marketing and production that differs from that projected by culture studies scholars such as Hutnyk. “I feel an artiste is born. What pinches me the most is that dollars, with their high convertibility rate, are posing a threat to the music industry” (Varinder Singh 2004: n.p.). Sarbjit, one of the few wellknown female singers, agrees: “The real singers have been pushed back and their place has been usurped by stage performers with the force of money. anybody with real talent should come forward and sing. instead, nris who have money but little talent, have spoilt the show. it is all a money game now” (varinder singh 2004: n.p.).12 an analysis of a national Bhangra industry, which exhibits multiple players bound in a complex system of contracting and subcontracting, does not explain Bhangra’s incorporation into global capitalism. rather than a centralized world economy in which the production of the periphery is appropriated for the consumption of the core, the Bhangra industry functions through an unconventional division of labour where performers, industry and media mutually coopt and cannibalize one another. in the Bhangra economy, the division of labour is not polarized in the assignment of production to the periphery and consumption to the core but is equally distributed over all Bhangra sites from Ludhiana to London. Bhangra’s producers and consumers are similarly dispersed across all centres. The world system in the era of global capitalism operates largely through a system of subcontracting the production function to agents in the periphery that indentures them to global capitalism but also opens out an emancipatory space that destabilizes traditional hegemonic structures. The anxieties about Bhangra’s marketing as exotica expressed by Hutnyk, Feld, Brennan, and Lazarus are well placed in the metropolitan context (Hutnyk 2000; Feld 2000; Brennan 2001; Lazarus 1999). But the exotic visibility Bhangra has acquired through being labelled as British Asian music has diversified its market outside Panjab. The metropolitan function of the Asian Music label, as a convenient classifying category to lead the browser to the right shelf, is altered in the indian context. The promotion of British asian music on “Westernized” channels like MTV or Channel V exoticizes Panjabi folk for the Westernized Indian youth mimicking Western technonostalgia. In spite of the undeniable reification of ethnicity and ethnic artists by multinational channels, the corporate imperialism thesis of musical giants and media corporations collaborating to appropriate third world artists and imposing alien cultural images on passive third world consumers gets deflected through the unethical but effective strategy of undercutting in the 12

nri = non-resident indian.

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extremely competitive Bhangra market. Against the status and visibility that mainstreaming through commissioning by international labels might bring, the autonomy offered by local labels has returned well-known Bhangra legends to the small labels that launched their fledgling careers. Appropriations of the market by artists might occur through the stipulation of the condition of autonomy while seizing the opportunity for visibility, connivance with piracy, support to indigenous players, and, finally, the launch of an independent label. T-Series and Bally Sagoo’s Ishqrecords represent two options through which the Bhangra market is nativized to fend off transnational market hegemony. A marketing study conducted in 2000 by Avinish Jain, Darshpreet Mann and Sanju Nair for Saregama HMV (reported as Jain 2000; Mann 2000; Nair 2001), the indian musical juggernaut, corroborated Peter Manuel’s thesis (Manuel 2001b). Saregama HMV, earlier known as the Gramophone Company of India, was a pioneer in the history of indian music. having set up its operations in 1902, it enjoyed a virtual monopoly over the Indian music market until the 1970s with 50 per cent of Indian recorded music and 85 per cent of film music and catalogues in 12 languages and eight music categories till the early 1980s. jain, Mann and nair cite the entry of T-Series into the Indian music market as a lesson in how a small company can challenge a mammoth competitor by identifying a niche market. T-Series captured a huge chunk of the market from Saregama HMV by identifying the demand for low-priced regional and devotional music cassettes and began to threaten Saregama HMV’s monopoly in the film music segment after emerging as a market leader in the regional music segment. T-Series’ success story was propped on excellent promotion and distribution based on its understanding of rural consumer behaviour and relationship marketing. T-Series’ extensive dealer network and excellent relationship with dealers has largely been responsible for its scoring over other players in the music market. T-Series uses a multipronged advertising strategy that includes producing Tv capsules and promoting its albums on national and regional Tv as well as using traditional advertising avenues such as melas, festivals and other community gatherings. it also monitors its dealer network closely to keep an eye on cassette sales and general market trends. But T-Series’ strength lies finally in its ability to predict new trends and spot fresh talent. By luring upcoming talent to sign exclusive contracts with the company, it manages to control costs and uses other incentives to retain top selling artists. T-Series also captured the popular music market by a carefully calculated strategy of price cutting, a major determinant in music sales among the masses. By exploiting artists in all genres and promoting them at the right time and place, T-series has revolutionized the Indian sonic market enabling several small players to emerge in the Panjabi music market. T-Series’ business model, based on low prices and high volumes, not only made music available to the mass consumer at an affordable price of Rs 25 per cassette against Saregama HMV’s Rs 35, but also took into account their musical preferences in recording music. While T-series has been accused of piracy and other unethical practices like undercutting prices, stealing artists and versioning products, which led to the alleged sensational murder of

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its owner Gulshan Kumar by his rivals (Kumar 2010), the T-Series business model reveals a sophisticated management of price, inventory, stock movement, distribution and market research. With T-Series’ identification of the needs of the regional rural market in the late 1970s, the subaltern rural and regional consumer gained a powerful voice in shaping musical preferences and the indian music market. By the time Saregama HMV awakened to the realization that its marketing policies had addressed only the elite urban consumer, leaving the vast rural and regional music market untapped, T-Series had already garnered the largest market share in regional popular music. saregama hMv recognized the price that elitism might extract in the indian market when it discovered that its business model and marketing strategies, predicated on the tastes and preferences of the middle-class consumer, were formulated in relation to Western marketing and consumption concepts. T-Series’ business model and marketing, on the other hand, was in tune with ground realities and the needs of the masses (see Figure 5.2). For instance, its realization about price being a major factor in the consuming behaviour of the masses made T-series pull out all the stops to cut costs by slow inventory, low cost manufacturing, fast movement and low margins even though this might have involved its compromising on quality. While elite companies like HMV began with the presumption that they had the right to define the nation’s tastes, T-Series was quick to realize the masses’ stronger identification with music in their own languages and styles. T-Series’ ,ŝŐŚWƌŝĐĞ

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identification of a need for local and regional genres such as Bhangra, bhavai or rasiya, similarly interrogated the middle-class’s right to arbitrate the tastes of the masses. Due to its focus on high musical genres, hMv, despite having recorded regional music for close to a century, could not feel the pulse of the masses. T-series’ success in the regional and devotional music segments proved that the masses required something other than classical musical genres or film music that was Saregama HMV’s forte and that they could influence musical tastes through their purchasing decisions. T-series’ role in this sonic revolution was to provide the masses a greater choice. The critique of consumerism that has emerged in the West about the control of the consumer through advertising and subtle manipulation of needs is more relevant to the middle-class urban consumer in india rather than to the masses. hMv’s business model being based on the middle-class consumption model was ill equipped to deal with the vagaries of the masses’ taste. T-series’ niche creation for the preferred devotional and regional music of the masses depended on the identification of a gap or lacuna in the music market, which catered primarily for the elite urban consumer as well as on its choice of music and pricing policies. T-series’ capturing of the regional music foregrounded the domination of the Indian sonic sphere by Hindi and film music and the power of the dominant urban groups in shaping market production as well as musical tastes in the past. The destabilization of hMv’s monopoly by T-series and other local players has shown how a sonic revolution might be set in motion through the control of markets and market trends that might make the subaltern masses more audible and visible in the cultural sphere. T-series’ miraculous success is an educating example of the complex operation of the capitalist production system in which the market itself may be used for redressing imbalances in the cultural sphere and taste hierarchies defined by dominant classes destabilized through controls of the marketing mechanism. The emergence of several new entrants threatening the monopoly of the giant saregama hMv has been facilitated due to the low cost of investment and simple technologies. in addition to T-series, a number of local players, who provided an opportunity to emerging talent, appeared in the 1980s and 1990s in Delhi and Panjab (Varinder Singh 2004: n.p.).13 equivalent to the Do-it-yourself labels in Britain, these local producers present alternatives to the major production circuits, allowing new talented performers the possibility of finding a market for their music notwithstanding the sloppiness of the recordings. even big Bhangra stars like Daler Mehndi began recording with such small outfits until they were discovered by bigger labels like Saregama HMV. Though T-Series and Saregama hMv have their own studios and recording facilities, they often prefer to have their music recorded at studios in Panjab. alternatively, artists might have their 13

varinder singh reports, “so enamoured are they of Panjabi pop that almost every other youngster has no other dream than to be a singer or a model. Becoming a singer is like a self-financing programme that requires Rs 5 to 8 lakh at the entry level” (2004: n.p.).

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albums recorded by small labels and send them to bigger ones who might choose to launch them. Today, the Panjabi music business operates through a system of subcontracting. This distribution of production makes the Panjabi music industry more democratic than the nightmarish prospect of global conglomerates cannibalizing third world production might suggest. atul sharma, one of the most respected names in the Panjabi music industry, is one such producer who works from his home in Panchkula, on the outskirts of Chandigarh. A chance invitation to record for Hakam Sufi in 1984 gave the young music major from Punjab University a break in the HMV-dominated music industry and offers haven’t stopped pouring in since then. according to sharma, Panjab has its own studios where Panjabi music is produced and sent only for final production to Delhi, Mumbai or the UK. sharma mentions Ludhiana emerging as one of the major production centres with many of the Bhangra artists being based there. he attributes the shift in production to Panjab to the music majors’ realizing that they wouldn’t be able to get the regional nuances right and thus subcontracting music production to small outfits in Panjab (Personal communication 2006). Bhangra is now virtually a cottage industry in Panjab with every singer with a bit of talent and every producer with a recording machine willing to take their chances. According to Kanwar Iqbal, a music producer, with every one of Panjab’s 12,729 villages boasting of at least two singers, about 20,000 singers form a part of the Bhangra cottage industry producing about 450 albums a year. Competition among these singers, most of whom self-finance their albums, has made the music industry wary of investing even in big stars like Mann and Manak (in Varinder Singh 2004: n.p.). Other than disrupting international and intranational market hegemonies, Bhangra’s popularization makes it the prime instrument for displacing national sonic hegemonies and taste hierarchies. nair, jain and Mann’s study (reported as Jain 2000; Mann 2000; Nair 2001) traces the process through which Bhangra’s discovery by the music industry unwittingly destabilized traditional taste hegemonies. They point out that though non-film and regional music was not unpopular earlier, its audience was confined to small regional or taste groups. According to them, Panjabi music, like ghazals and qawwalis that have traditionally enjoyed a loyal North Indian market, has always had its die-hard fans. Their research reveals that ghazals had a limited shelf life in the 1970s and 1980s and that ghazal singers, appreciated by elite connoisseurs, could neither take the film industry head-on nor popularize regional music. Similarly, Indipop that began optimistically to challenge film music’s hegemony appeared to have fizzled out after the limited success of the indipop sensation alisha Chinai. They conclude that at the time when Hindi film music virtually monopolized the popular music segment, the music industry seized on Bhangra as a magic formula for rejuvenating the satiated Indian popular music market, which appears to have worked. Whether Bhangra would also prove to be a passing trend remains to be seen. But Bhangra’s penetration of the national popular music market was an unprecedented feat facilitated by the music industry’s marketing machinery that challenged Hindi film music’s monopoly and initiated the regionalization of the indian music industry.

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adorno maintained that popular music “no longer serves direct needs nor benefits from direct application” and that “the alienation of music from man has become complete” due to the absorption of both production and consumption by capitalist relations (2002: 391). While this transformation in Bhangra’s character accrues from the flaws in modern society itself, Bhangra’s withdrawal into the hermetic space illustrates the romanticization of primitive art that Adorno marked in the “serious” art produced in capitalism. Adorno located the reification of music from “the simple immediacy” of use by which he meant its social responsibility and its inability to dismantle systems of domination. The traditional prerogative of folk traditions to attack “the cultural privilege of the ruling class” (Adorno 2002: 34) must be forfeited by Bhangra in the separation of the high and the low and the change in its function – to provide pure entertainment. as popular culture, Bhangra is “delivered over to consumption for the price of its wages” (Adorno 2002: 35). Through its implication in the global capitalist musical world of commodities, Bhangra is completely subject to the authority of commercial success. But adorno’s suggestion that the distinction between light and serious music should be displaced by a different distinction, which “views both halves of the musical globe equally from the perspective of alienation”, is pertinent to Bhangra’s alienation. all Bhangra mutants are alienated through their inability to perform a communal function by their removal from the social performance context to a modern performance context. Bhangra is caught in the contradictory requirements of the fields it shuttles between. Predicated on the condition of the disavowal of the commercial as a folk ritual, its transmutation into dance music inserts it in the sphere of commerce. Most Bhangra players have refrained from making token gestures of disavowal of commercialization even when they have objected to the tampering with lyrics and music. Bhangra artists, ever since the emergence of the professional Bhangra performer, have been implicated to different degrees in the field of Bhangra commerce. Their complicity in Bhangra commerce notwithstanding, they have proved themselves to be capable of shuttling across different fields with remarkable ease. Though the commerce of professional performance has invaded ritual space as well, Bhangra artists’ complicity in its commercialization has not distanced them from ritual performance contexts. Bhangra practitioners of all nationalities, location, religion, age, class, caste and gender might be heard or performing live in different locations, rural and urban, Panjabi and non-Panjabi, traditional and modern, in india or outside (nandy 1999: n.p.). While the nature of the audience would definitely alter the nature of the artist–audience interaction, the dynamics of performance are controlled by Bhangra’s oral call-and-response poetics. Through my viewing of several recorded live performances and presence at a few live ones, i discern a desire in Bhangra practitioners to infuse their performance with the rules of Bhangra’s participation. one could argue that this is true of any performer–audience relation but i could clearly see a Bhangra performativity leaking through the popular cultural in the interactions between performers and their audience in these performances. as

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gurdas Mann explains to Pritish nandy in an interview, Bhangra performance continues to be interactive and participatory irrespective of the performance space. “I do not lip sync on stage. I do not do minus one track; I always sing live. I have no dancers. i am alone on stage and i hold my audience, i interact with them all the time. That is the soul of my music. interaction. Live interaction with a live audience. It always works. I had eight shows last month in the UK – in Glasgow, Leicester, Birmingham, Manchester, etcetera – and each one was chock full. Including Wembley” (Nandy 1999: n.p.). My first example dates back to the mid-1980s when the rumbustious response to a Panjabi number in a ghazal performance by the celebrated ghazal maestro jagjit singh in new Delhi’s classy siri Fort auditorium appeared to me then to be a gross violation of the etiquette of ghazal viewership. Moving a decade and a half later to Malkit Singh performing live in Mumbai, I spot Singh calling out to the audience, inviting them to come to the stage, or at least to respond to his calls. Before Malkit can end “chal hun bhangra payiye ni” (Come on girl, let’s dance the Bhangra), the audience is swaying, clapping and dancing in the aisles. in another performance in amritsar, jasbir jassi declares his audience’s reluctance to participate in the dance and singing downright bad manners. jassi teases the audience, taunts them with, “Don’t act sophisticated! Come on! sing along!”, until several dance groups form in the shamiana (canopy) in addition to those who join him on the stage (Jasbir 2003). More recently, the sufi singer hans Raj Hans got even the venerable Chief Minister of Panjab and other senior Sikhs to dance to his tunes at a public ceremony marking the 100th birth anniversary of the freedom fighter Bhagat Singh. The next scene is an akhara in a Panjabi village, the place where roadshows are regularly held.14 The audience, who have arrived on tractors, in jeeps or on foot, form a close circle around the performers. Bhangra’s new heartthrob, Manmohan Waris, begins the show by touching his guru’s feet, invokes the name of the Sikh guru, greets his audience with a “sat sri akaal” and gets into his act. While the presence of elders inhibits his usual play on stage, he gradually gets in the groove and has a large number of males on their feet. Finally, i turn to Bally sagoo’s show held in the Banquet room of the Taj Residency in Bangalore (2 January 2002). Bangalore’s best-dressed teens, who have been assembled here, begin in the “disco” mode. But even before Bally can sample “Gur Nalon Ishq Mitha”, the five star setting turns carnivalesque with the teens’ parents and siblings joining in with equal gusto. The music in all these performance contexts could not be demarcated along the categories of pure or hybrid because they brought together different forms of music and practitioners. in the same vein, though contexts sometimes affected the display of Bhangra energy,

Akhara is an open ground where wrestling matches are regularly held in villages in Panjab but it also doubles as a public space for other gatherings. eTC Punjabi airs a programme Akhara in an attempt to showcase traditional Bhangra in its traditional context. 14

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they were equally coloured by Bhangra’s josh spirit.15 What connected them, in my perception, was Bhangra’s participatory ambience, which is quite distinct from pop cultural, which restored Bhangra to the participatory space from which it had detoured through its staging. The retention and recovery of Panjabi orality and collectivity in Bhangra mutants, in old and new performance contexts, to renew the Panjabi memory and perform new identities recovers the social bonding through which the harvest ritual has always performed communitas. irrespective of their lyrical content, compositional style or generic mode, cultural or social settings, the meanings Bhangra players produce in relation to Bhangra performance reterritorializes Bhangra from the spectacularized media space back into the ritual space, not always Panjabi. The social centrality of the Chandigarh, Delhi, London or new York nightclub to Panjabi, Indian or Asian youth performing identity that has been noted might shock with its scandalous association with the sacred, but the congregation of Panjabis, desis (Indians) and South Asians in these unhomely settings, to construct the self in relation with a distant home, reclaims Bhangra from its appropriation by the music industry. similar reclamations are seen at work in the performance of Indian tradition in Indian gatherings in the Indian diasporas in the UK, the United states, australia and Canada. Rather than officially sponsored festivals such as Womad and Festivals of india, the analogy of the rural mela (fair) captures the diversity of Bhangra genres and practitioners “doing their own thing” in Bhangra’s carnivalesque setting.16 in the mela’s carnivalesque field, art fights for survival not through artistic patronage but through ordinary folk’s acceptance and support. The mela also relocates Bhangra into the field of commerce from which the romanticized narratives of rusticity had removed it, making the disavowal of commercialization no longer the criterion for authenticity. The mela’s intersection with the bazaar makes way for appropriations that occur within and in spite of the commodification of and by the market. As John Hutnyk argues, “Bally Sagoo’s ‘Asian space’ is a space wholly within the commodity system and is not in any way a necessary dysfunction or disruption of that system” (2000: 31). Pammi Bai or Gurdas Mann’s much exalted Panjabi folk or Panjabi space is won equally within the maligned T-Series and the media machinery, including the transnational, exploited by T-Series’ marketing network. Bally’s creation of a space for Asian music in Britain and Daler Mehndi’s of a Panjabi space in India through the appropriation of the marketing channels by Josh is a particular blend of enthusiasm, “can do” and optimism associated with Panjabis. 16 it is interesting that Pammi Bai, in his album Nachde Panjabi, should attempt to relocate Bhangra in its traditional contexts by recording the video album in the famous chapar mela. While Pammi attempts to restore Bhangra performance to its pristine context, one cannot miss the reconstructed rustic setting of a theme park in which the album is shot. Gibb Schreffler’s (2004a) photographs of dholis and dancers may be contrasted with the romanticized images presented by Pammi Bai. 15

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which their music is commoditized must negotiate with the same homogenizing nation narrative in which difference might exist only as the other. it may be argued that the moment Bhangra descends to the profane popular cultural space, it tacitly consents to be subjected to the same rules and regulations governing other popular cultural items, including to its own commodification. having consented to its desacralization, it appears to have forfeited the right to interrogate details of the desacralizing process. as Bhangra’s desacralization cannot be separated from its reification, one being the effect of the other, the problem seems to be one of being in the wrong place or category. Bhangra is caught in the contradictory requirements of the fields it shuttles between. Predicated on the condition of the disavowal of the commercial as a folk ritual, its transmutation into dance music inserts it in the sphere of commerce.

Chapter 6

Desi Networks The privatization of the Indian skies in 1991 opened up a public debate on the new media that converged on the cultural invasion argument. While the focus of the nationalist wrath was the “alien cultural invasion”, these debates raised the bigger issue of the implication of the signifying practices of television in the ideological struggle over the meaning of culture through which the narrative and generic conventions of dominant groups are naturalized. although the statecontrolled broadcasting media’s cooption in nationalistic ideological apparatuses was fairly well known, the extent to which the national media All India Radio and Doordarshan were implicated in the naturalization of elite cultural practices as indian culture has become apparent after the academic and popular critiques of media emerging in the last two decades or so. Many of these studies have focused on the appropriation of satellite television in the construction of a form of religious nationalism and the incorporation of advanced technologies in the formulation of the fundamentalist ethic of hindutva.1 ananda Mitra, in Television and Popular Culture in India, makes some important observations on the engagement of the signifying practices of television in the ideological struggle to reproduce certain practices as dominant and central. arguing that “the narrative and generic practices of Doordarshan have been reproducing a hindi-centred set of practices”, which have been slowly naturalized (1993: 79), he points out that signifying practices that are in opposition to the hegemony of that hindu-hindi bloc are either marginalized or brought back into the mainstream. In Politics After Television: religious Nationalism and the reshaping of the Public in India, arvind rajagopal substantiates this by investigating the interface between three seemingly disparate elements: economic liberalization, the rise of hindu fundamentalism and the role of the mass media (2001). Similarly, Shanti Kumar shows how an Indian personality for television was constructed to conform to the nationalist agenda of “the rapid development of a sovereign, post-colonial, nation-state” (2000 92). It is only with the publication of Melissa Butcher’s when Star Tv Came to India that the focus of academic research shifted to the impact of transnational television on the changing identities of rural and urban youth in post-liberalization India (2003). Drawing on qualitative research with youths aged 15 to 25, adults of their parents’ generation and media personnel, Butcher’s analysis offered valuable insights into recent discussions on the agency of audiences. vamsee juluri’s Becoming a 1

Hindutva (“Hinduness”) is a word coined by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar to describe movements advocating Hindu nationalism (1989). These movements received an impetus with the Bharatiya janata Party’s ascension to power in the 1990s.

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Global Audience: Longing and Belonging in Indian Music Television examined the concerns of cultural imperialism in relation to the actual reception of television in the indian context. Warning that the localization of global music television was not a cause for jubilation, juluri argued that the reception of Top Ten shows is part “of a reordering and appropriation of common sense under the changing social relations of globalization” (2004). This Chapter will compare the content of a global music television channel and a local one – MTv and eTC Punjabi – to examine the impact of transnational television and satellite technologies on the monopolistic control of national television in cultural definition and diffusion. voicing the concern about new technologies and media underlying the cultural imperialism theory, Alex Seago asks “whether or not the global presence of MTV in itself signifies the development of a uniform Americanized capitalist monoculture” (2000: 125). Warning against conflating the simple presence of cultural goods to an attribution of deeper cultural effects, seago shows that apprehensions about the birth of an americanized global MTv generation were refuted by the indigenization of contemporary pop culture, citing india as one of the most obvious examples. inquiring if “MTv’s near global reach necessarily signals the end for local, regional or national differences”, simon Philo similarly sets out “to challenge the still widely-held premise that MTV’s now global reach makes for a kind of Invasion of the Body Snatchers-scenario” (1997: n.p.). When satellite channels were introduced in india in 1990s, it was assumed that globally focused, english aspiring indians would prefer to view Western-style programmes. This predicted viewership model directed MTv, the global music channel, to broadcast international pop and rock programming. But MTV broadcasts turned out to be a major flop compelling a shift in policy. MTV was forced to indigenize after competition from the rupert Murdoch-owned Channel v, which had abandoned the global pop ideology and announced its arrival in pure Hinglish “We are like this only”.2 When MTV returned on its own “it was western, but it did a flip and went Hindi”, as Channel V Asia Managing Director Steve Smith put it (1999: n.p.). MTv localized by getting the right hindi–english mix and gained a critical mass. By 1999, 70 per cent of its music was Hindi film music and the MTV success story was being hailed as a case study in adaptation, or a generic strategy against semiglobalization. David Flack, Senior Vice President of MTV Asia’s Creative and Content Division, had learnt to sing the glocalization tune the hard way by the end of the century. “Despite MTv being a global brand, we are local in approach. We reflect the taste and demands of our viewers and this differs in each market. Thus the need to create specific channels (in each country) that meet the needs of our target audience”, he bravely announced at the C21 World Marketing Conference in 2000 (Santana 2003: n.p.). By 2003, MTV had gone completely “filmi” and reportedly did not make much profit. One can visualize the tele-journalist Vir Sanghvi’s trademark smirk when he asked, “What happened to global rock and 2 This was Channel v’s strapline formulated in hinglish, a mix of hindi and english, the preferred youth register.

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roll? What happened to Baywatch and The X Files? Sanghvi himself provided the answer”: “india ignored all existing models of Tv development and evolved its own” (2003: n.p.). Today, the programming on MTV is hardly different from that on other music channels with the exception that the programmes are in english or hinglish rather than hindi or other regional languages. The critique of the effects of mass media has been derived mainly from the works of the theorists of the Frankfurt School, mainly Theodor Adorno. The Frankfurt School’s view of the mass media gives them and the culture industry a role of ideological dominance, which destroys both bourgeoisie individualism and the revolutionary potential of the working classes. Though the Frankfurt School theorists were criticized even in their own time for their elitism and hegelian idealism, adorno’s pessimistic view of the media as a threat to the democratic process and elite cultural institutions still continues to govern debates about the effects of the mass media. While the Frankfurt School theorists have made valuable contributions to the understanding of the media through their recognition of the importance of the culture industries as agents of socialization and as providers of ideological legitimization of existing capitalist societies, their anxieties about the mass media have been proved to be anachronistic with the advent of new media and technologies. Mark Poster, in The Second Media Age, has critiqued the Frankfurt school’s theory of mass media for its inadequate understanding of technologies (1995). Poster feels that these theories are not particularly useful in understanding the effects of the new media defined as they are in relation to the old broadcast model of one producer and many consumers, which was expensive, centralized and controlled by an exploitative market. Poster systematically demonstrates that the new interactive media and technologies of the second media age possess a truly democraticizing potential compared to those in the first. Peter Manuel, too, sees great potential in enzenberger’s “democratic-participant” forms of new media for alternative forms of control, effects and content. he argues that grassroots, micromedia would provide dominated social groups “with an unprecedented degree of access to, representation in, and control of mass media” (Manuel 2001b: 3–4). similarly, reception theory has gone a long way in refuting the notion of media audience as passive receivers as imagined in the writings of the Frankfurt School. Through elucidating the complex process through which receivers give different meaning to messages disseminated over the mass media, it demonstrates that media audience cannot be manipulated into accepting the dominant ideology of producers. Particularly significant in this regard is Stuart Hall’s model of encoding and decoding that he has borrowed from communication theory (1980: 136). if the broadcast media can indeed indoctrinate and manipulate, as alleged by the Frankfurt School, they were certainly made to serve the ideological imperatives of the post-independence indian state though their effects might have been quite different from those intended. as in other post-colonial states, broadcast media were used in newly independent india in the management of identity. after india became independent in 1947, state-owned broadcast media were deployed to make vernacular languages and cultures serve the Unity in Diversity ideology

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of the indian nation state, if not to subsume sub-national, or regional identities to the homogenizing national narrative. The dissemination of Panjabi geet or song through India’s state-owned broadcasting channel All India Radio’s (AIR) regional channels was predicated on the cultural model of the assumed interdependence of india’s great national and Little regional or vernacular Traditions. The different arms of the state controlled cultural machine perpetuated this interdependence by supplementing the centre’s national/classical hindi mainstream programming with regional/folk vernacular inputs. Though AIR eventually turned its energies to the promotion of regional music in 1965, its policies were still governed by the state’s agenda of national integration. Marshall McLuhan, in Medium is the Message, had labelled radio as a tribal drum that restored the individualist visual human created by literacy and print to the collective tribal community of the past (McLuhan and Fiore 1967). Contrary to the expectations of the state, radio served to write a regional difference in the national collectivity produced by print and literacy by consolidating old tribal identities in Panjab, where pre-national Panjabi speech communities had survived political attempts to produce national print communities.3 The state directed air’s Unity in Diversity agenda was interrupted by radio’s popularization of Panjabi lokgeet or folksong. The state’s promotion of folk singers on AIR’s Panjabi channels catapulted folksingers like Surinder Kaur, Asa Singh Mastana and Kuldip Manak to cult status. Though Kaur’s magic was equally audible on the live circuits of mushairas, mehfils and melas as late as the 1970s, it was largely medium wave transmission in the 1950s and 1960s that consolidated the constituency of the 1940s singing sensation in post-independence Panjab.4 The unmatched popularity of Panjabi singers on regional radio enabled the re-absorption of their music into the folk corpus and their appropriation in the construction of a regional rather than national identity as desired by the state.5 Thus, radio’s role in constructing the folksinger’s voice as a site for the consolidation of Panjabi identity made it

Until the end of the nineteenth century, shahmukhi functioned as a shared Panjabi script. The rise of Islamic, Sikh and Hindu nationalism led to the fragmentation of the shared script into Urdu, Gurmukhi and Hindi respectively, which served to close the porous boundaries of pre-partition Panjab. 4 Mushaira is a meeting of poets, mehfil is an evening of entertainment, mainly musical, and mela is a fair. 5 The Kaur sisters were Panjabi folksingers who began their singing career in the 1940s in Lahore by recording with the gramophone Company of india Limited and all india radio and were already celebrities at the time of india’s independence. after the partition of india in 1947, surinder Kaur migrated to Mumbai and became the most popular Panjabi singer. after she met asa singh Mastana in the 1970s, they began to sing duets that proved to be equally popular. Kuldip Manak, who belongs to the traditional performing caste of mirasis, enjoys a legendary status in Panjab and is viewed by contemporary Bhangra singers as their role model. 3

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live up to its McLuhanian definition as the tribal drum rather than to function as a nationalist propaganda instrument. Peter Manuel’s Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India has shown how an inexpensive technology like that used in the audio cassette and the cassette recorder could bring about a transformation in popular culture in india (2001b). Manuel devotes an entire chapter (“Regional Music”) to the incursion of regional music in the indian popular cultural space and the evolution of a new regional music industry. The best example of this form of sonic democratization is the emergences of the genre of truck drivers’ songs mentioned by Manuel in his book, a risqué genre produced through the low cultural preferences of its workingclass consumers. The innuendoes and double entendre in the lyrics of these songs, particularly those of the 1980s legend Amar Singh Chamkila, are believed to capitulate to the tastes of the biggest consumers of Bhangra music – Sikh truck drivers – who listen to these songs on long distance routes.6 Diaspora theorists such as Arjun Appadurai have examined the link between cassette technologies in the cultural contact between the diaspora and the homeland and highlighted the importance of cassettes of films and music in disrupting the homogenous nation space with diasporic time and space. The circulation of audio cassettes in the diaspora has always helped to maintain informal circuits of communication between the two Panjabs and the homeland and diasporas. in the Panjabi diaspora, which displays a greater cultural retention than all other Indian diasporas, the link between the two Panjabs and homeland and diaspora was continually affirmed through the music recorded, bought, circulated and played. As in Amritsar, where bootlegged Pakistani cassettes and telenovellas were easily made available even after partition, Panjabi music continued to circulate across the border and between the Panjabi homeland and diasporas. Manuel’s point about the eventual evolution of Indian non-film music through cassette technologies is certainly corroborated by the influence of recorded cassettes on diasporic Bhangra artists, particularly those who might not have had access to live performance in Panjab. Diasporic Bhangra artists invariably acknowledge the impact of listening to the cassettes of legendary Panjabi singers like Lal Chand Yamla Jat, Kuldip Manak, Asa Singh Mastana and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan that their parents brought back from home. The best illustration of Bhangra’s travels through cassette technologies is the intertextual weaving of Bhangra cassettes with Panjabi lives removed by distance, class, sect and nation in three recent diaspora films: Monsoon wedding (2001), Bend it Like Beckham (2002) and Bollywood hollywood (2002). 6

The raw masculinity and bawdy humour of the truck drivers’ songs is embedded in their listening context, that is, the long routes cementing the bond between the truck driver and his male helper. If truck drivers’ songs reinforce class hierarchies, the wedding song, the other bestselling Bhangra cassette, bridges class difference. The playing of Bhangra cassettes at Panjabi weddings to substitute or supplement live singing puts cassette technologies in the service of the production of a shared panjabiyat crossing boundaries of class, caste, religion, nation and location.

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These diasporic networks formed through cassette cultures are seminal to the global digital networks through which Bhangra “returns back home”. The deployment of music noted in identity management by colonial governments was continued by successor governments in both India and Pakistan after partition (Qureshi 1987). The first step in the construction of a distinctive Indian national identity was the excision of the shared Persian islamic cultural heritage in the Persian Urdu language and the invention of a sanskritized Hindu nationalistic tradition through the promotion of a hindu classical tradition. given that indian musical traditions were eclectic and musical boundaries interpenetrating, a division of shared sonic history proved to be a far more formidable task than the drawing of geographical boundaries between the two nations. a centralized classical cultural tradition to which regional and vernacular folk traditions were coopted was now made to reflect the Unity in Diversity ethic of the independent Indian nation state. The link between music and power is demonstrated nowhere as strongly as in the state controlled channel’s banning and airing of certain kinds of music based on the preferences and tastes of certain groups with access to production and dissemination. Though the radio and television diversified the constituencies of music beyond the elite owners of gramophones by making it available to those with no purchasing power, the recording company and the broadcast media still continued to collaborate in exercising control over the listening community on matters of music. The Bhangra revival in india began on television with the live telecast of gurdas Mann’s performance in the new year’s eve programme on the state owned Doordarshan in 1980. Bhangra might have been aired earlier on national television occasionally as a filler between discussions on the rural Krishi Darshan programme meant for farmers, but the Bhangra performed on Doordarshan in 1980 was the first time it figured as popular entertainment on primetime television. Despite the official promotion of a Panjabi singer-dancer on national television, broadcasting in the 1980s was still harnessed for the task of nation-building. The appearance of a regional star on national television could be effectively used to establish the state’s commitment to the preservation of regional diversity. no decade would have been more appropriate for communication of the message of political integration than the 1980s, when Panjab was a seething cauldron of unrest and the 1984 anti-Sikh riots only a few years away. Mann was coopted in the programme for the management of political instability in Panjab through his articulation of the fun-loving Panjabi stereotype on national television. yet, as with all india radio, the state’s promotion of regional musical fare through Doordarshan is another example of identity management in which marginalized regional folk traditions were viewed as feeding the national Hindi mainstream. Bhangra was aired on national television as regional music that was still required to play second fiddle to classical and light classical genres favoured by the Urdu-hindi elite. While Bhangra was seen as conforming to the state’s perception of safsuthra or clean, healthy entertainment, it could not be accorded the status reserved for elite mainstream light classical genres such as ghazal or

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qawwali. Thus, while state sponsorship ensured a berth for Panjabi dance in the national sonic repertoire, it was subjected to the hierarchies constructed by dominant interests in Doordarshan. as with radio and gramophone, Doordarshan was more inclined to favour the urban professional than the traditional performer because the urban professional, familiar with the requirements of the new medium, adjusted performance to fit in with the new format. The urban professional was also better equipped to address the mainly urban viewer of Doordarshan. Therefore, while greats like Mohammed Siddique or Manohar Deepak continued to perform in relative obscurity, except in the odd film, a new breed of Bhangra performer from the educated middle class made its appearance on national television. Ganda (Hindi: dirty, soiled, polluted), a term that has historically been a part of the hindustani vernacular pornographic slang, acquired new connotations when it became the shared code to allude to “vulgar” imported television channels, mainly MTv.7 Apprehensive of their Westernizing influence on Indian youth, “ganda” channels were either excluded from the list of channels chosen by subscribers, aired late at night, or forbidden to young adults. Cultural gatekeepers’ attempts to protect Indian youth from the “corruptive” influences of alien Western cultures proved to be unnecessary as MTv asia (subsequently renamed MTv India), capitulating to the preferences of the Indian youth, came to disseminate anything but global american monoculture.8 after a few initial hiccups, MTv was forced to emulate the “think globally, act locally” philosophy followed by several transnational giants to capture third world markets that set off a number of unpredicted “media effects”. held as one of the prime culprits for the destruction of indigenous vernacular cultures at the time of its arrival, MTv has become an enthusiastic medium of indigenous popular musical dissemination. Edward Herman and Robert W. McChesney point out that “the crossborder flows of media inputs”, regarded as one of the central features of media globalization, put “competitive pressure on and threat to state-controlled broadcasting systems” (1997: 8). The “cross border flows of media inputs” explain the inclusion of vernacular difference in global media such as MTv. The promise that Brian Diamond, head of Programming at MTv, had made to record companies was selfproduction of an “amazing network” that can “pull footage back and forth across the world” (Frith 1993: 71). It was through MTV Asia that Bhangra “returned to India” in the mid-1990s in a completely new makeover that won it new constituencies while desacralizing it. Many of Bhangra’s international “stars” first made their appearance on the newly refurbished MTv. it introduced the British asian pioneer apache indian to india. Bally sagoo was a regular presenter on hindustani refers to colloquial hindi speech, which is a mix of hindi and Urdu. on 28 october 1996, MTv southeast asia was split into a third channel, MTv india, which is seen in Bangladesh, India, the Middle East, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. MTV India’s programming consists of a mix of 70 per cent Indian film and pop music, with the balance made up of international music videos. all three 24-hour services, MTv Mandarin, MTV Southeast Asia and MTV India, are uplinked from headquarters in Singapore. 7 8

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MTv india. Daler Mehndi’s popularity reached new heights with his appearance on MTv. Panjabi MC invaded the indian subcontinent through MTv india and the Rishi Rich project was launched on MTV. Bombay Rockers sang “ari ari ari” (in “Ari, Ari Part I”) on MTV and JoSH called out “josh nalon pao bhangra” (in “Josh Naal”).9 Bhangra’s appropriation, by the music industry that had in place a commercial structure for packaging and distributing entertainment internationally and MTv with a similar belief in music as the basis of an international sales strategy, removed it from its regional niche on national television and catapulted it into a global sonic universe. Panjabi music has received far greater visibility on MTV than it did on Doordarshan due to the cross border flows of Bhangra from Britain on MTv. Music television in the West, with youth as its preferred address, is produced with a youth appeal in mind. however, popular music in india in not produced exclusively for the consumption of youth but for a large cross-section of the indian population.10 The popularity of music-based games like antakshari, with each team singing a popular song beginning with the last letter of the opposing team’s song, illustrates the mixed constituencies of popular music in india.11 When he launched MTv in 1981, Bob Pittman saw himself as inventing a new sonic experiment that married stereo with visuals (Goodwin 1993: 50). But television and radio, the two genres that the music video amalgamates to earn it the title of visual radio, is not really new to india because the musical format of hindi cinema presented the possibilities of combining music with picture much before music video was conceived in the West. While the song and dance interludes in hindi cinema supplemented the meaning of the narrative in cinema, they could also be viewed alone. The musical genre of the Hindi cinema works through a logic in which song and dance enjoy an independent life and may pull viewers irrespective of the fate of a film at the box office. In the days before the VCR, it was not uncommon for viewers to watch a film several times for the sake of a single song. nearly two decades before MTv’s indian “invasion”, even before the advent of the video cassette, Indian television aired a weekly music programme addressing 9

apache indian, Bally sagoo, Panjabi MC and rishi rich are part of the British Asian Bhangra scene while Bombay Rockers is a Bhangra group from Denmark and JoSH is a Canadian Bhangra band. 10 Mary gillespie’s study of television viewing patterns in south asian homes has thrown fresh light on the impact they might have on the reception and content of television. The explicit sexuality of the music video, which was intended to be watched in privacy by youth, violated this fundamental viewing condition when it entered the indian living room through MTv. The fact that indian households are often single-Tv households with families sitting together to watch television made the often sexually explicit music video aired on MTv a taboo item on television. 11 since the highly popular, Zee Antakshari, that began in the 1990s, new variations of antakshari may be heard in new music shows such as Sa re Ga Ma Pa Challenge launched by Zee Tv in addition to others.

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the Indian love of song and dance. The weekly programme Chitrahaar, consisting of music clips from old and new film releases, enjoyed such popularity in the days of Doordarshan that all activity came to a standstill between 7.30 and 8.30 p.m. on Wednesday evenings when the programme was aired.12 MTv’s launch in india in 1991 is often cited as a case study of a failed launch as the decision on the part of its executives to wean indian youth away from local music and Bollywood culture by introducing them to new international genres badly misfired.13 MTv, a 24-hour music channel set up in 1981, was a novel concept in popular musical dissemination designed, in the words of Bob Pittman, to “mirror the issues of people moving from adolescence to adulthood” (qtd in Lewis 1990: 33). MTV Asia’s failure can be attributed to a number of misunderstandings about popular musical contexts and viewership on the indian subcontinent. MTV Asia failed initially not only because it overlooked family viewing contexts but also because it committed the cardinal mistake of confusing a small fraction of the indian youth population with the indian youth in general. MTv philosophy, shaped with the white american adolescent in mind, rests on a definition of adolescence that would barely fit one per cent of the Indian youth. MTv asia substituted the middle-class white male address of MTv in the United states with barely one per cent of the indian youth whom an indian media person has jocularly labelled “conventias” (Partho Sarkar. Personal communication 2003). “Conventias” is a corrupt hindi term, meaning “from the convent”, used to refer to a privileged elite section of indian society who attended english medium missionary schools set up during the British raj. MTv asia’s agenda of introducing Asian youth to international sounds definitely addressed “conventia” yearnings for the latest musical offerings in Western music. MTv’s regular international fare of rock, jazz and heavy metal was lapped up by this inconsequential percentage of elite urban youth who identified with Western popular music. “Conventias” got to sample, rap, reggae and hip-hop in addition to pop, rock and heavy metal in the first few years of MTV Asia, as MTV had already entered its third stage by the time it entered india. But the rest of the indian youth, after their initial curiosity about “hot” MTv visuals, switched over to the competing Channel v with its indianized content. it was only when its offerings were rejected by the indian audience that MTv india decided to reinvent itself in 1996 by localizing its content. “none of my friends watch MTv anymore”, confessed the same mediaperson who is regularly commissioned to prepare development films for Channel 4, “because it no longer 12

Wednesdays have been “dry dinner” (sandwiches, veggie burgers, etc.) days in many halls of residence in indian colleges and universities since the days of Chitrahaar because even the catering staff, who would normally have prepared proper cooked meals, were not willing to miss the weekly potpourri of song and dance. 13 “MTv got into india early by licensing a music channel designed for all of asia to star, which sold the ads, dealt with the cable wallahs, and shared the revenue with MTv. That was a low-risk strategy that backfired. When News Corp. bought Star in 1993, MTV decided to go it alone – it didn’t want to depend on Murdoch” (Gunther 2004: n.p.).

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airs selections of rock and jazz that one couldn’t hear anywhere else in India” (Partho Sarkar. Personal communication 2003). But if “conventias” like him are unhappy about being deprived of the global sonic innovations that indian viewers could access on MTv alone, the rest of the indian youth have begun to identify with music disseminated on MTv because of its excised “foreignness”. it is in this phase that sunil Lulla, vice President and general Manager of MTv india, could claim to have a made a connection with and to be the dhadkan (heartbeat) of the Indian youth (Sharma 1999: n.p.). Finally, its patronizing attitude made MTv asia underestimate the role indian audiences have traditionally played in determining musical production. Popular music in india is produced with a clear awareness of the power of the audience whose preferences, defying statistical predictions, can determine the fortunes of a music album and the career of a singer. Media experts have never been able to tell what made a Bollywood film’s music a hit or a flop, why Indipop worked with alisha Chinai but disappeared soon after, or why Daler Mehndi sold more than a million albums in Kerala. The strong likes and dislikes of Indian audiences, dictated not by rational logic but a gut response, have made market research an unreliable indicator of musical tastes in the indian context. erudite explanations of why an old song sung by transvestites should have become an instant hit as a Bollywood item number fail to account for the appeal of the Banti Aur Babli (2005) song “Kajrare” for a cross-section of the Indian audience. Nor can informed opinions on the suitability of a singing voice explain the near hysteria evoked by the nasal pitch of the playback singer Himesh Reshamiyya. Chastened by the viewership it had lost to Channel v, MTv tailored its content to suit the Indian context. Lisa A. Lewis, in “The Making of a Preferred Address”, comments on the close relationship between MTV and rock and roll music and argues that rock was the “ideological template” that governed the reasoning of its creator Bob Pittman (1990: 27). When MTV came to Asia, it was predictably expected to activate ideological assumptions about rock music and youth. In its initial years, the choice of music aired on MTv undoubtedly was underwritten by the rock ideology with rock being made to stand “as a higher form of popular music as the representative of art and artfulness” (Lewis 1990: 28). However, the inexplicable hold of the cinema over indians ensures that no popular genre can ever oust film music. Therefore, MTV diluted its “Western” staple of rock and jazz with large doses of “fillum” music in its new avatar, to the dismay of its elite youth viewers, and also tapped into young people’s passion for cricket and fashion. In 1996, MTV’s fare comprised of 70 per cent Indian film and popular music, and 30 per cent foreign, Western music (Dey 1999 qtd. in Juluri 2002: 384). Even after its recent repositioning, 70 per cent of MTv india is music of which Bollywood forms a considerable portion. As Hindi film accounts for the largest share of popular music in india, the majority of clips shown on MTv are today no different from the “filmi” song and dance sequences shown on other “desi” channels. as in the rest of the world, pragmatic agreements between major record labels and MTv stipulate that MTv air albums produced by one of the major recording companies.

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However, MTV did attempt to include non-filmi musical genres among the clips it regularly aired. In 1996, MTV India created 21 India specific music shows including interviews, live coverage of music concerts, Bollywood countdown shows, contest, request and talk shows. It hosted the world’s longest lasting dance party – 50 hours – making it into the Guinness Book of World Records. alex Kuruvilla, Managing Director, MTv india, and senior vice-President, MTV Networks Asia, believes that innovation is the key to MTV India’s success (Kuruvilla 2002: n.p.). Since its launch in 1996, the channel has won numerous awards at the indian as well as the international level for its unique humour and unmatched creativity. some of the popular MTv india programmes today include MTv Immies, MTv Music Summit for AIDS, Style Awards, MTv Youth Marketing Forum, MTv vJ hunt, MTv Youth Icon, MTv Ek, Do, Teen among others. MTv and honda came up with a show called roadies, loosely inspired by the Us MTv show road rules, that follows four boys and three girls who drive motorbikes across India. Another of MTV’s most popular shows is an Indian style Candid Camera called MTv Bakra (meaning goat), in which an MTV VJ, Cyrus Barocha, plays gags on unsuspecting people. With over 545,624 hyperactive users www.mtvindia.com continues to be the most popular youth hangout online. Whether it was its week-long programme for HIV AIDS awareness in December 2006 or the Lycra MTv style award in october 2005 whose proceeds went to Committed Communities Development Trust, MTv india proved that fun and entertainment could be compatible with serious causes and carved a unique identity for itself. But MTv india’s most extraordinary contribution has been the construction of a new brand of cultural nationalism that carries an intrinsic appeal for indian youth. MTv india followed Channel v in localizing its content but went a step further to give itself an indian identity that embodies Western traits by creating a logo that uses the tricolours of the Indian national flag. Kuruvilla jubilantly declared, “At heart we are desi. Even take the word ‘enjoy’ – the way we say it, ‘N-joi’, it is Indian. You know … the feeling of being Indian” (2002: n.p.).14 according to Kuruvilla, MTv’s desi avatar, instead of resulting in the dilution of MTv’s brand image, has catapulted it to new heights. The MTV format of 24-hour continuous flow, pastiche, intertextuality, dissolution of boundaries has been viewed as reflecting the postmodern ethic whereby MTv becomes a mirror of the postmodernist text. The Panjabi harvest dance, on the other hand, emerges from a non-modern agrarian context. The appearance of Bhangra on MTv set off an unparalleled dialogue between the postmodern and the non-modern, cosmopolitans and locals, english and Panjabi, the city and the country. While MTv’s postmodern format was incompatible with Bhangra’s non-modern antecedents, MTv’s arrival set the trend for a new love– hate affair between desi and vilayeti tunes facilitating Bhangra’s transmutation into dance music. 14

Kuruvilla claimed that MTV India reaches 25 million homes (Kuruvilla 2001: n.p.).

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Bhangra’s location on MTv also demonstrates the relationship between aesthetic form and hegemonic power. MTV’s 24-hour flow, seen as enacting the postmodern dissolution of boundaries, facilitates the juxtaposition of totally dissimilar musical contents, non-modern, modern and postmodern, which may be arranged in a seamless fashion. MTv’s presentation of one video after another in a constant “flow” contrasts with the discrete formatting employed by other television networks. Clips are repeated from time to time according to a light, medium, or heavy “rotation” schedule. In this respect, MTV is like Top 40 radio (it even has video jockeys, or VJs, similar to radio DJs). Its collage of images, pseudo-documentaries, hedonistic dating-scenario game shows, music videos and cutting-edge advertisements makes for a jumpy, stream-of-consciousness presentation in which anything may be randomly arranged with anything else. The postmodern “cross-over between: (1) the fine arts/avant-garde tradition, (2) the mass-media [e.g. TV program and commercial, fashion catwalk, film pastiche] (3) vernacular culture (or sub-cultures), (4) the new technologies (mainly electronic)” (Wollen 1986: 167–70) on MTV clears a space on mainstream television in which vernacular cultures may be articulated. MTv’s random arrangement allows the smooth juxtaposition of Panjabi harvest dance with Bollywood, rock and electronica. MTV viewers, accustomed to sharp cuts in mood, style, tone and genre, take the flow from Bhangra to Bollywood and rap in their stride. For instance, its viewers’ gaze moves uninterrupted from the Kaptan Laddi–apache indian collaboration to shubha Mudgal’s semi classical “Laga Chunri Men Daag” in Yash Chopra’s film of the same name and Daler Mehndi’s “Koi Dheere Dheere” before cutting sharply to T-Pain. MTV’s flow and forsaking of the opposition “between high and low culture”, between “established literary and filmic genres”, “between past, present and future” enables a non-hierarchical articulation of ethnic Panjabi music on MTv that was not possible on national television (Kaplan 1997: 237). The strict demarcation of high and low, classical, folk and popular, national and regional on national television allocated a marginalized space to ethnic musics, where they were made to play second fiddle to mainstream Hindi national music. Few programmes, other than the Krishi Darshan for farmers, the weekly regional Chitrahaar or the regional movie, permitted the articulation of regional voices.15 in the dichotomy between the national and the regional, with the national viewed as synonymous with modernity, regional cultures were represented as charming anachronisms arresting the modernizing and developmental mission of national television. Rustic ethnicity was represented as the pre-modern, backward, agrarian 15 “The project named Krishi Darshan was initiated on january 26, 1966 for communicating agricultural information to the farmers on experimental basis for the 80 selected villages of Union territory of Delhi through Community viewing of television and further discussions among themselves. experiment was successful and that there was substantial gain in the information regarding agricultural practices” (vyas, sharma and Kumar 2002: n.p.).

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past of the nation state that needed to be displaced by the industrial dream of development. gurdas Mann’s appeal for national television in the 1980s lay not in his representation of rustic authenticity, but in his articulation of a vernacular musical modernity. On the other hand, MTV’s flow that enabled the placement of Bhangra adjacent to Western popular and mainstream hindi music demolished the hierarchical arrangement in which ethnic musics were located in relation to the national culture. The confusion of time in the 24-hour flow, in which clips are repeated at regular intervals in a continuum, strikes at the televisual hierarchy enforced through temporal arrangement. no longer relegated to marginalized non-prime-time programmes such as Krishi Darshan, Bhangra is prominent in the MTV flow throughout the day. Similarly, the absence of descriptive categories indicating programme divisions that valorize certain forms over others in the flow makes way for an egalitarian contact between dissimilar musical genres. The view of american popular culture as a hub in which the world’s diverse cultures are received, repackaged and returned is true of Bhangra’s return on MTV. Its return to India on a transnational channel, repackaged as British Asian music, invested it with an aura of modernity and “Kool” that the West signifies to the Indian youth. Marginalized to the space of the “backward” ethnic vernaculars on Doordarshan, it gained new cultural capital when presented by British asians such as Apache Indian, Bally Sagoo and the Dubai-based Sukhbir. Packaged as the new asian sound in Britain were, in essence, traditional Bhangra bolis or songs with new beats and rhythms and english words thrown in. apache indian alone rapped on a few Panjabi words in jamaican patois. Bally sagoo remixed songs of hans Raj Hans and Malkit Singh highly popular among Panjabi speakers, and Sukhbir rendered the old “Balle Balle ve Tor Panjaban Di” in his distinctive style.16 But pure Panjabi, mixed with jamaican patois, never appeared more fashionable than when dressed in the youth subcultural styles of the West. The Bhangra video as well as the Bhangra performer incorporated the aesthetic conventions of the rock, rap and hip-hop video in order to reach out to its youthful global audience. if Bollywood was one major influence on the Bhangra video, the other was black and white youth subcultures. several Bhangra performers adopted global youth subcultural styles and modes of dress and affected the gestures and bodily movements of black musicians. For instance, Jazzy B, the youth Bhangra icon, borrows heavily from the black subcultural idiom that has now become completely integrated in Bhangra. Black hairstyles, accessories and dress popularized by Jazzy B have become so strong a part of Panjabi youth subculture that its black antecedents are almost forgotten. If Jazzy B borrows the imagery of black British youth subculture in the production of his music videos, Sukhbir displays a weakness for “Hood”style dressing, movement and mannerisms. even desi music videos produced in T-Series’ Noida studio routinely insert images of black youth cartwheeling in the Bhangra video. its MTv exposure, while giving Bhangra global visibility, has “blackened” Bhangra turning it “Kool”. 16

“Balle Balle Ve Tor” is a Panjabi folksong.

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When Asian youth in Britain, affecting the speech and mannerisms of black youth subcultures, began intoning traditional Bhangra bolis, Panjabi music was decoupled from the raw rusticity that it had signified in the past. Bhangra downloads were included in the music lists of metropolitan youth who played them at parties and other youth events. These youth, including “conventias”, could also be seen dancing to Malkit Singh’s “Gur Nalon Ishq Mitha” at India’s mushrooming nightclubs. having returned from vilayet or the UK, even Bhangrapop came to gain respectability among “conventias”. Daler Mehndi’s “Tunak Tunak”, which was released in 1998, was still on MTv india’s top 10 chart five years later. Not only Malkit Singh and Hans Raj Hans whose remixes by Bally Sagoo had set off the Bhangra revolution, but also the original Bhangra star, gurdas Mann, and even newcomer jasbir jassi, were allowed space on MTv. By the time Panjabi MC appeared in 2003, every self-respecting indian teenager had Bhangra booming from his PC. Rishi Rich, Bombay Rockers, Bohemia, RDB figured on the I-pods of the 16 to 19 segment even though they might not have been aware of their Bhangra connection. it is through MTv that Bhangra entered metropolitan clubs and parties and became a part of “conventia” youth culture. Its packaging on MTV earned for Bhangra a new Western/ized audience that was unfamiliar with indian musical traditions. The Bhangra artist appearing on the Westernized setup of MTv acquired immediate visibility among a larger, younger, cosmopolitan segment of the indian population than is possible on any other desi channel. it was MTv that played a large role in bringing rustic Panjabi music into the consciousness of the urban Westernized youth. Through the recognition they achieved on MTv, Bhangra artists became youth icons and entered youth subcultures. But the space for Bhangra provided on MTv is a cause for jubilation as well as concern. in contrast to Doordarshan’s modernist ethic, MTv set a trend for the romanticization of rustic ethnicity and non-technologized music characteristic of the postmodernist return to the past, which met diasporic nostalgia in the UK to make room for the non-modern. While MTV has provided Bhangra greater visibility, it has also decontextualized and defamiliarized it. in order to be transmitted on MTv, Bhangra was required to borrow the Western format that would be recognized by the global channel’s imagined viewer. But in the process of being cast in the music video grammar familiar to the Westernized MTv viewer, Bhangra had either to be disembedded from its traditional context or represented as an exoticized rusticity. Packaged as British Asian music, Bhangra was lumped together with alien Western products, an impression strengthened by MTv’s airing of albums produced in Britain or by metropolitan producers, who hybridized their music with black or Western beats. When transmitted on a global television channel that disseminates a global youth culture in a number of foreign languages, a large number of Westernized youth audience of MTv india confused Bhangra with Western music. in the process, even homegrown productions would be received through the same lens with which diasporic Bhangra was received. MTV returned Bhangra to India but repackaged it as the music of the other. In order to turn “Kool”, Panjabi folkdance had to first transmute into “new Asian

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dance music” (Sharma, Hutnyk and Sharma 1996: 32). To “conventias”, Panjabi was as foreign as the Babel of languages that they heard on MTv and Bhangra as danceable a tune. in the same way as they did not need to understand spanish, Greek or Arabic to dance to Ricky Martin, Macarena or Khaled’s “Didi”, the Westernized viewers of MTv did not need to follow Bhangra’s lyrical content to dance to the beat. With its nonsense rhymes and formulae, Bhangra was eminently suited to dance more than any other indian music. To the majority of its youth audience, it signified danceable non-Western beats with which it could identify and write a difference in the mainstream Western dance genres. With the hummable “Tootak Tootak Tootiyan” (Malkit Singh), “Aaja Nach Lai” (hans Raj Hans) or “Tunak Tunak” (Daler Mehndi), one can understand why Bhangra easily transited into dance music. The majority of MTv Bhangra plays on the simplest lyrics and includes nonsense loops that may be effortlessly repeated by non-Panjabi listeners. The surprise came with “Mundian To Bach Ke” (Panjabi MC) in which the complex Panjabi lyrics did not pose a barrier to its enjoyment. But the video for “Mundian To Bach Ke”, it must not be forgotten, provides a brief synopsis of the narrative situation to enable non-Panjabi viewers to guess the meanings of words used in the song. Its packaging as dance music on MTV earned for Bhangra a new Western/ized audience that was unfamiliar with indian musical traditions. as asian dance music, Bhangra acquired cultural capital that it never had as Panjabi dance but it did so only as the music of the other. While MTV’s flow might have demarginalized Panjabi with respect to the hindu-hindi hegemony of Doordarshan, it bound it in a complex relation of dependence with the English rock ideology. Though MTV allows the Panjabi voice to be heard, it comes mediated either through the english language, through English speaking VJs or through generic conventions regulating Western popular music. in diasporic productions, either english lyrics alternate with Panjabi or an english refrain functions as the lead into the song’s narrative. When a song is retained in pure Panjabi, English words are flashed on the screen, interpreting the narrative for the alien viewer. in translating Panjabi or the Panjabi context for the Western viewer, the diasporic performer becomes the mediator between the two worlds of English and Panjabi, rock and Bhangra, the Panjabi singer and the cosmopolitan listener. MTv vjs, either Westernized “conventias” or diasporic indians, introduce Bhangra albums in their accented hindi or Panjabi underlining Panjabi folk dance’s ideological distance from the MTV ideology. Even the music video format acts as a filter through which Panjabi is represented. The music video circulated on MTv begins what Bhangra critics consider a juvenalization of Bhangra through the transformation of a complex, rigorous dance genre to a sequence of wild meaningless movements. Through its appearance on a channel created for the rock culture, the Bhangra music video imbibed a loud, “rocking” ideology. In order to appeal to a youth population nurtured on rock, it attempted to orient Bhangra’s generic vigour and vitality to the energy associated with rock. Rhythm and movement became the prime components of MTV Bhangra

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to the detriment of the lyrical content, because to the Western/ized MTv viewer Panjabi signified, at best, an exotic foreignness. viewed through the pornographic gaze of the music video, Panjabi music is dressed to fulfil the Western diasporic desire for the natural other. Bhangra music albums often borrow the iconography of primitive art in the representation of Panjabi as the exotic other. The iconography of the music video works to establish a contrast between a corrupt urban and an idyllic village existence. The format of the country video that Bhangra borrows requires the packaging of rusticity in a glamorous visual image that strikes the Western/ized as an exotic curiosity. In dressing up rusticity for urban middle-class consumption, Bhangra also draws on colourful Bollywood representations of ethnic diversity. The Panjabi village, romanticized in Bollywood since Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995) and the Bhangra music video alike, blurs the boundaries between the film and video clips. The urbanized Bhangra performer, with whom the urban Western/ized audience can partially identify, assumes the role of the translator of vanishing traditional values for the youth. Whether in the metropolis, in the country or outside, the performer articulates a desire for the good life that only the countryside can offer. Picturized like a tourist vision, the performer is the reliable tour guide, leading the viewer through the lanes of Panjab. Andrew Goodwin remarks that MTV VJs were constructed in the image of the boy or girl next door with whom youth audience could easily identify and shows how their desultory chat about the everyday served to mediate the televisual and household flow (1993: 55). But the MTV VJs, who imitate the speech and mannerisms of their american counterparts, represent only a fraction of the indian youth, namely highly-Westernized urban youth. The effect of these Westernized youngsters introducing Bhangra videos or stars is to distance regional music and performers through the Western/ized youth’s identification with the VJ’s anglicized perspective. Thus, the visibility that the channel is forced to provide the Bhangra star through its commercial arrangements with recording companies does not prevent him from being othered on MTv. in the anglicized milieu of MTv, the Bhangra star either appears ill at ease or as an exotic curiosity under the scrutiny of the vj’s Westernized gaze. The vj’s presence orientalizes the music video by framing the life depicted therein through the urbanized metropolitan gaze of the slick city-dweller. Language poses a further disadvantage as the Bhangra stars respond to the VJ’s questions in a thickly accented English or Hindi. The urban sophisticate, even while attempting to put the rustic stars at ease, makes them doubly aware of their social distance that cannot be bridged despite the adulation they receive. Their foreignness, no longer an advantage but a reminder of their not belonging to the class or generation of their youth audience, disorients the performers. it might be argued that postmodernism’s opening of a space in which marginal voices may be heard might emancipate the marginalized. however, MTv proves that the visibility of the margin does not emancipate the subaltern because his voice is always mediated by the dominant metropolitan collaborator. The example

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of Labh janjua, the voice of the bestselling Bhangra album Mundian To Bach Ke, epitomizes the relation through which the subaltern voice is mediated in the global postmodern space. Though the music has catapulted Panjabi MC aka Rajinder Rai to worldwide popularity, the voice of the chartbusting album is effectively silenced. Though Labh janjua’s vocals are discretely mentioned on the album, Beware of the Boys is internationally known as Panjabi MC’s production. Labh Janjua is unable to speak on MTV or any other global media except through Panjabi MC’s mediation (Janjua 2007: quoted from memory).17 The relationship between janjua and Panjabi MC is replicated in a number of diasporic Panjabi collaborations in which the Panjabi is spoken for by the diasporic performer or producer. But more than anything else, Bhangra’s juxtaposition with Western popular texts suggests an intertextuality between Bhangra and white popular musical genres. Bhangra appears to be arranged on MTv in opposition to the generic conventions of rock rather than of Hindi classical or popular genres (Lewis 1990: 27). While MTv enabled Bhangra to challenge Doordarshan’s naturalization of a hindicentred set of practices, its signifying practices implicate it in the reproduction of Western practices as dominant and central. The space-clearing gesture made by MTV for Bhangra must therefore be read as a gradual expansion of a rock-centric space for heavy metal in its second phase and hip-hop and reggae in the third. on the MTV space that did not feature black music, Bhangra gets imbricated in a different ideological struggle over the meaning of culture in a space where white music has been central. since 1990, when satellite television came to india, indian viewers, through a modest monthly subscription to the neighbourhood cable operator, have been able to choose from among more than 90 channels that include a number of 24-hour music television channels. Apart from 24-hour music television channels like MTV, Channel V, B4U, Zee Muzik, ETC Hindi, Filmy and a number of regional music channels, music-based shows figure prominently on Star Plus, Zee TV, Sony Television, star one, sahara one and Zoom among others. With Channel v and MTv offering a fare no different from desi channels, film dominates the content of most music channels followed by indipop and Panjabipop, and the alleged “alien cultural invasion” either occurs selectively or late at night. With television emerging as a major means of selling music, most film and music companies reportedly provide music albums at a minimum cost or free to television channels. As a result, one is likely to find nearly identical music being aired on all channels. Hindi film music appears to be common to the Westernized youth channels like MTV and Channel V, Indian channels like Star Plus and Sony Television and regional musical channels like ETC Punjabi.

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in an interview conducted with the vocalist by eTC Channel Panjabi on 5 october 2007, Labh Janjua did not seem particularly perturbed about the insignificant royalty paid to him. But he expressed deep regrets about not being given a space on global media despite his voice being the most heard voice in several continents.

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Although it might feature on national music television channels like ETC Hindi, Zee Muzik, B4U, and countdown shows on Star Plus, Zee TV, Sony Television and Zoom, Bhangra is disseminated mainly by the global MTv and Channel v and the regional eTC Punjabi. in contrast to the youth oriented MTv and Channel v, national and regional channels are addressed to a generalized indian audience who play a major role in determining the music they play. national music channels, dominated by film music, are the least likely to play Bhangra unless the song is a big hit. On the other hand, MTV, with its mix of film and non-film music, is more likely to air Bhangra, particularly of the diasporic variety or by big indian Bhangra stars. The primary promotional channel for Bhangra, however, is a regional music television channel called eTC Punjabi with a transnational viewership that positions it as a “complete family entertainment channel” (ETC Punjabi official website 2008: n.p.). Though Bhangra might be circulated over a variety of channels, if forms the bulk of the musical input disseminated over eTC Punjabi and only a fraction of that on other music channels. While the regionalization of indian television had already started with the setting up of six Doordarshan centres in Mumbai, Chennai, Jallandar, Kolkata, Lucknow and Amritsar in the 1970s, which offered programming in regional languages, deregulation ushered in a new market-driven phase of regionalization. A number of regional channels emerged after market research revealed that Indian audiences, partial to a few shows on national television, preferred programming in their own languages. While some southern channels like Surya and ETV date back to the earliest years of privatization, the number of regional networks, many of which are owned by Zee TV, significantly increased in 2000. As subscribers to regional programmes include diasporic speakers of these languages, satellite transmission constructs a transnational regional televisual field that is different from that created by Doordarshan’s terrestrial regional channels in the 1970s. at least one fourth of the ninety odd channels provided by the neighbourhood cable operator in india are regional language channels, with the highest in the language spoken in the region. The transmission of Bhangra on ETC Punjabi may be examined against this distribution of the global, national and regional in the Indian televisual field. The indebtedness of 24-hour music channels in hindi and regional vernaculars to the MTV format of flow is immediately visible as one switches from MTV to eTC hindi or eTC Punjabi. They also imitate MTv by selecting vjs who present music within a narrative or provide a commentary that appears to imitate the empty chatter of MTV VJs. In fact, music clips flow uninterrupted on these channels reminiscent of the first phase of MTV. ETC Punjabi, a part of Zee Telefilms Network, was launched in 2000 as a religious channel after it won the exclusive rights to telecast the gurbani from the golden Temple at amritsar. over the years, it has diversified into entertainment, though gurbani still forms half its content. The majority of programmes of ETC Punjabi are cast in the pattern of the flow uninterrupted by mediating vj voices. But the juxtaposition of different genres of Panjabi music against one another on eTC Punjabi writes a difference in the

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MTV flow. Though its positioning as a family channel might partially influence the choice of music disseminated through eTC Punjabi, the same Bhangra albums that are being telecast on MTv might feature in some eTC Punjabi programmes. an album by gurdas Mann or hans raj hans that might be simultaneously aired on MTv and eTC Punjabi demonstrates the impact of context on individual composition. a gurdas Mann or Daler Mehndi promotional on MTv normally sandwiched between a Hindi film clip and a Western popular album would strike the Western viewer as an exotic curiosity sufficiently different from staple Hindi film fare and Western pop to grab attention. Juxtaposed with the high-tech effects of the Western pop album and Bollywood paraphernalia, a gurdas Mann song stands out as evocative of an antediluvian rusticity far removed from the urban metropolitan location of the MTv viewing context. similarly, Mann, lost among Bollywood hits on the all-hindiized format of eTC hindi, stands as a lone regional voice embodying stereotyped panjabiyat. The celebration of Panjabi values and culture in a Mann video must engage with stereotyped representations of Panjab in the mainstream hindi media. on eTC Punjabi, on the other hand, a gurdas Mann album, located in a haloed tradition of Panjabi song, must engage with all musical compositions that came before or follow. in the minds of Panjabi viewers of all ages, rural and urban, the Mann album would have to measure up to the talent of legendary Panjabi singers to pass muster. an arrangement in which a new gurdas Mann or Hans Raj Hans video is placed between a Kuldip Manak new release and a Kaptan Laddi–apache indian remix sets off a different dialogue between Panjabi performers than the one witnessed on MTV. Even though the flow format is intrinsically non-hierarchical, the viewer is forced to evaluate gurdas Mann’s talent against that of the legendary “Manaksaab” and Kaptan Laddi. Apache indian’s presence on Kaptan Laddi’s album inscribes Panjabi locality with a new international stamp. against the contestation between hindi and Panjabi on national television and its orientalization on MTv, eTC Punjabi presents an exciting competition between different generations of Panjabi performers in the articulation of a Panjabi identity whose meaning is continually deferred. Even though ETC Punjabi borrows the postmodern format of the flow, the channel is unambiguously designed as family entertainment rather than a youth channel and positions itself as the vehicle for the transmission of traditional Panjabi values: a complete family Punjabi entertainment channel, etc Channel Punjabi is a channel dedicated to the entire family across all age groups and socio-economic strata. The channel represents Punjabi culture and values – Dil apna Punjabi. (ETC Punjabi official website: n.p.)

in contrast to the ganda MTv, consciously positioned as safsuthra or a “complete family entertainment channel”, eTC Punjabi disengages music television from the youth on which the MTv ideology is based and proves that music and family entertainment can be quite compatible. The concept of “complete

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family entertainment”, eTC Punjabi’s professed philosophy, is predicated on the assumption of television viewing being a family activity in single-set indian households. as a family entertainment channel, eTC Punjabi differentiates itself from the youth-centric formatting and ideology of MTv offering something of interest to each generation. Its generic definition as a family entertainment channel imposes constraints on the kind of content that can be aired without causing offence, which means that explicitly sexual videos or those containing impermissible levels of nudity may not be screened. This automatically eliminates a number of diasporic productions conceived along Western popular music conventions and explains the preference for those conforming to Panjabi musical genres. Performance on eTC Punjabi, whether recorded or live, is always embedded in a family context, with younger performers addressing their elders in a deferential tone and the older members expressing paternal pride and affection while watching them perform. Though they might have performed on music videos with a faintly titillating content, the affirmation of family values and religiosity by Bhangra performers on eTC Punjabi exculpates them, as it were, from the video’s adult content. a Panjabi performer appearing on ETC Punjabi invariably begins with acknowledging the family’s contribution to his success and concludes by thanking the Sikh gurus. Vulgarity, if any, is laid at the door of the music company and market interests from which the performer dissociates himself. The choice of music and performers, the placement of music videos, the tone and attitude of the vjs, and the relation between performers, vjs and audience is oriented to family viewership. While eTC Punjabi carries a few slots exclusively for youth, the family context in which the music video is presented alters the nature and function of the music video. On ETC Punjabi, performers, VJs and audience must affirm their commitment to safsuthra family entertainment that families can enjoy watching together. eTC Punjabi domesticates MTv through a simple strategy of translation in which the lack of correspondence between the source and translated term adds a Panjabi inflection to the programme missing in the original. The majority of programmes on eTC Punjabi are Panjabi versions of popular MTv programmes that simply substitute english or hindi terms with Panjabi. Panjabi transliterations of popular MTV shows like Sada Top 10 and Apna Artist of the Month would appear to be incongruous with the context in which they are presented if not for eTC Punjabi’s improvisations. For instance, ridka, a programme modelled after roadies, turns out to be a talent hunt with youth in different towns in Panjab invited to sing the songs of a popular singer who is present to select the winners. Considering that a large number of Panjabi singers were selected through college competitions, ridka becomes an appropriate forum for ordinary Panjabi youth to appear on television. ridka’s travels extended as far as London defining the outer limits of eTC Punjabi. another programme, Dil Diyan Gallan (straight from the Heart), is a chat show in which an ETC Punjabi VJ visits a Bhangra singer for a chat. Like MTV, ETC Punjabi also telecasts live stage shows and recordings almost every month. The most awaited event on eTC Punjabi is the annual eTC Punjabi award Function, modelled after the MTv immies to honour the best in

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Panjabi music. however, the inclusion of a few new programmes clearly distinguishes eTC Punjabi from MTv. one is a children’s show called the Kaka Niki Time intended for the 5 to 15 generation, hosted by vjs in the same age group. The second is the live religious telecast from harmandir sahib in amritsar twice a day, which is one of the most viewed programmes on eTC Punjabi by older Panjabis. In addition to these, ETC Punjabi celebrates Panjabi festivals like lohri and baisakhi. Secondly, despite borrowing an imported format, ETC Punjabi defines the rules of conversation and performance in accordance with Panjabi cultural codes that construct a Panjabi performance space. The apparent dichotomy between pop cultural stage machinery, styles and mannerisms of Panjabi pop stars and the traditional Panjabi family viewing context is bridged through the performer’s stage behaviour when appearing on eTC Punjabi. This sensitivity to cultural codes is also visible in the tone, speech and behaviour of the young vjs who compere shows or interview Bhangra performers. While eTC Punjabi vjs imitate the style and mannerisms of their MTv counterparts, they appear to be rooted in Panjabi language and culture strongly enough so as not to make linguistic or behavioural slips that would transgress Panjabi family codes. The attitude of the eTC Punjab vj towards the performer and the audience is deferential and the tone respectful in contrast to the casual, flippant attitude appropriate to youth channels. For this reason, a chat between an ETC Punjabi VJ and a Panjabi performer takes on a totally different colour from that on MTv. in contrast to the MTv vjs, eTC Punjabi vjs, displaying a greater sensitivity to the age and gender divide, adjust their behaviour to Panjabi societal norms. While a Panjabi star like Malkit Singh might put up with youthful effervescence and irreverence on MTv, he would demand the respect that his age, seniority and reputation deserve when in conversation with a Panjabi teenager on eTC Punjabi. similarly, while an eTC Punjabi vj might dare to be playful with a younger performer, none would have the gumption to chatter in the presence of seniors like “Manaksaab” or “Gurdaspaaji”. in contrast to the eurocentric or hindi dominated universe of MTv and eTC hindi, eTC Punjabi inscribes a Panjab-centric universe. The centralization of Panjabi occurs through its privileging the preferences of its traditional Punjabi viewers in its selection of programmes, music and genres. eTC Punjabi devotes a larger proportion of airtime to Panjabi productions and performers. This hierarchy is visible in the conspicuous absence of the Bhangra performer Daler Mehndi, whose name is synonymous with Bhangra in the rest of india. secondly, the stock of Panjab-based singers in considerably higher than that of vilayeti or desi singers. While the biggest names in British asian music might be rejected by Panjabi viewers for their imperfect Panjabi pronunciation or meaningless lyrics, rustic hereditary performers might be consecrated as tradition bearers. For the same reason, traditional Panjabi music is accorded a higher status on eTC Punjabi as compared to hybrid productions. While these hybrid musical products might appeal to its youth audience, older members would tolerate

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them as interesting innovations on tradition at best. Finally, evaluation criteria are defined with respect to traditional conventions and expectations attached to specific genres. Both anglicized diasporic productions and Bollywoodized indian productions must measure up to traditional Panjabi standards to gain acceptability. irrespective of its popularity in the rest of india or the West, a music album must earn the approval of Panjabi viewers to figure on ETC Punjabi. In its marginalization of English and Hindi, ETC Punjabi makes vilayeti and desi Bhangra appear like poor imitations of traditional Bhangra. Through this rearrangement of Panjabi with english and hindi, eTC Punjabi revalorizes Panjabi and Punjabi culture. eTC Punjabi presents a performance space in which music and other cultural practices are coopted in the production of Panjabi tradition. Against MTV’s rock ideology and eTC’s Bollywood location, eTC Punjabi’s ideological template is that of Panjabi tradition. Musical production is underwritten with the “work hard, play harder” ideology long associated with the Panjabi community. Framed within the template of Panjabi tradition, Bhangra musical productions acquire altogether different significations. Even though Bhangra cannot be exculpated from auto exoticization, the romanticization of Panjabi agrarian structures here is not constructed as an alterity to the industrial West but as a reaffirmation of tradition. Unlike the MTV screen where Panjabi signals foreign nonsense, the romanticization of Panjabi culture and values in the verbal text underscores Bhangra’s implication in the consolidation of Panjabi. The best example of eTC Punjabi’s implication in the production of a new narrative of panjabiyat is a beauty contest called “Miss Panjaban” that valorizes familiarity with Panjabi cultural values in the selection of the beauty queen. Through the narcissistic gaze of eTC Punjabi, Bhangra, the “Kool” youth music of MTv, is reclaimed as the music of the self. The recall of Panjabi performative gestures even in modern Bhangra redeems it from the vulgarization it suffers on MTv. Though eTC Punjabi is complicit in Bhangra’s commercialization, it relocates Bhangra in its traditional context. While Bhangra may still be enjoyed as dance, its lyrical content is equally significant in the assertion of Panjabi pride and selfhood on ETC Punjabi. Unlike MTv, where Panjabi conveys an incomprehensible foreignness, lyrics provide as much enjoyment as rhythm, music and dance on eTC Punjabi and are coopted in the assertion of Panjabi pride and solidarity. nonsense lyrics and calls of MTv reveal themselves to be imbued with a strong verbal or symbolic meaning when heard on eTC Punjabi, ranging from Panjabi pride (“panjabiyan di shaan wakhri”), nostalgia (“apna Panjab hove”), Sufi sentiment (“ishq di mari”), jat values (“put jattan da sohniye”), Panjabi youth (“Panjabi munde”) and even the Panjabi clap. even the global hit “Mundian To Bach Ke” carries undercurrents of traditional Panjabi anxieties. Bhangra lyrics’ intertextual references to Panjabi legends of

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heer ranjha, Sasi Pannoo or Mirza Sahiban, Sufi spiritual legacy, and generic forms such as heer, jugni or dhola have an instant recall in the Panjabi viewers.18 The content and presentation of eTC Punjabi is clearly designed with an imagined Panjabi audience in mind. not only the inclusion of spiritual music but other aspects of interest to its Panjabi audience have been accommodated within the MTv format. The music videos on eTC Punjabi, for example, would include those of talented singers virtually unknown outside Panjab. Many of these albums are often crude and unprofessional and sit ill at ease with the technically superior albums of other artists. But the poor quality of the recording does not seem to deter Panjabi viewers from listening to the music. secondly, eTC Punjabi might also air music videos with a rustic content. Another specifically Panjabi genre that is special to eTC Punjabi is the humour show. variations on the commentary punctuating songs on MTV, the jokes and humorous anecdotes recounted by Bhagwant Mann and others are derived from Panjabi performance traditions in which it was customary for the bhand to fill up blank intervals between performance with humorous banter.19 The Bhagwant Mann brand of humour has proved to be so popular with the audience that it has been incorporated in indian entertainment and news channels in a case of reverse appropriation. The Panjabi frame of eTC Punjabi is reflected even in the promotions and commercials interrupting the flow. But the imagined Panjabi audience of ETC Punjabi is not a local locked in language and ethnicity but a global Panjabi subject returning to Panjab after a sojourn abroad. For the Panjabi subject at home, eTC Punjabi signals the extension of panjabiyat beyond Panjab’s boundaries. The programming of the channel is attuned to the preferences of the diasporic as well regional subject. For example, a youth programme aired on eTC Punjabi called Jas Bhangra, compered by a British asian vj called jas with several UK Bhangra practitioners, was clearly aimed at young diaspora Panjabis. Though the strong British accents of the host and guests on the show would have been incomprehensible to Panjabi viewers in Panjab, it served the purpose of introducing youth to Bhangra productions from the UK. eTC Punjabi frequently blurs the distance between Panjab and the Panjabi diasporas through the mixing of Panjabi productions with diasporic and the circulation of music and performers between Panjab and the diaspora. ETC Punjabi is as likely to telecast shows by a Panjabi singer overseas as the visit of a British asian artist to Panjab. On ETC Punjabi, Bally Sagoo and Sukhwinder might jostle for space with Kuldip Manak and Sabar Koti and might even be driven out if they fail to meet the expectation of Panjabi listeners. it is quite clear that the boundaries of eTC Punjabi embrace the whole of Panjab and its imagined subject is the Panjabi who converges on Bhangra as a transnational traditional Panjabi genre. The legends of heer ranjha, Sasi Pannoo, Mirzaan Sahiban belong to the Panjabi qissa tradition of performed narrative verse. heer, jugni and dhola are Panjabi musical genres. 19 Bhand is a category of performer belonging to the mirasis who entertains through slapstick humour and has a slightly derogatory connotation in Panjab. 18

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regional channels such as eTC Punjabi, designed as niche channels, have become deeply implicated in the struggle for representation. if the hindi-centred space of Doordarshan marginalized the regional, the Panjabi space can offer a means of reclaiming the self. Bhangra, transformed into new asian dance music on MTv, appears primarily as Panjabi music on eTC Punjabi, albeit a music altered through its contact with Western popular music as well as with Bollywood. in claiming to represent Panjabi identity authentically, eTC Punjabi replies to the representation of Panjab and Panjabi culture on global and national media. neither Doordarshan’s Hindi-Hindu ideology nor MTV’s English rock template, but a Panjabi Sikh ideological imperative is visible in the arrangement of Panjabi music on ETC Punjabi. Bhangra becomes the ethnocultural signifier of Panjabi rather than of asian youth. as Panjabi dance, it becomes a vehicle for the celebration of Panjabi ethnic identity that finds its spiritual expression through gurbani.

Chapter 7

Cool guys, Desi Boyz and Panjabi Munde Dance the Bhangra1 British culture studies, in which Bhangra has received considerable attention, has examined it largely through the lens of subcultural theory (Back 1996; Banerji and Bauman 1990). Though subcultural theory, as formulated by Cohen, Hebdige, Hall and others, was a useful tool in elucidating the postwar formation of British youth subcultures in depth, it has lately been critiqued for its limitations in explaining the contemporary cultures of globalization (Cohen 1997[1972]; Hebdige 1979; Hall and Jefferson 1975). Arguing that “a single determinant often cast in essentialist terms (class, ethnicity, age, gender)” cannot “exist as the overarching structuring principle of contemporary cultural practices, preferences and formations”, geoff Stahl believes that “a thicker description of the multiple forces and vectors” that shape cultural practices is required. Calling attention to the elisions in subcultural theory, he addresses the notion of “space” (1999: n.p.). Andy Bennett had earlier contended that “‘subculture’ is unworkable as an objective analytical tool in sociological work on youth, music and style” and revealed that contemporary youth cultures exemplify late modern lifestyles rather than issues of class (1999: 599). similarly, revealing the limitations of the prism of class in examining Bhangra, rajinder Dudrah has more recently shown that subcultural theory fails to account for the differences in local Bhangra scenes (2002c). The Britain-centric focus of Bhangra studies precludes the emergence of other Bhangra sites in the south asian diaspora and in india and Bhangra’s implication in transnational discourses exhibiting local differences. in contrast to British studies, inquiries into indian youth cultures, which have received media and academic attention only lately, take into account “the aleatory effects of globalization” (Stahl 1999: n.p.). Melissa Butcher’s when Star Tv Came to India and vamsee juluri’s Becoming a Global Audience are remarkable for the new direction they have provided to the field (Butcher 2003; Juluri 2004). Both Butcher and juluri have ascribed the invention of indian youth cultures to the advent of music television on the subcontinent in the wake of the globalization of the indian economy through liberalization and deregulation. shanti Kumar and Michael Curtin have also investigated indian youth cultures’ appropriation of pop versions of indian nationalism on music television to imagine alternatives to both national and transnational institutions of political and patriarchal power (2002). 1 Desi Boyz is the name of an all male indipop band. “Panjabi Munde Paan Bhangra” is a song by Sukhbir meaning “Panjabi boys dance the Bhangra”.

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neither subcultural nor countercultural theory can account for the imbrication of class with language, ethnicity, religion and region in the production of youth cultures on the indian subcontinent that are predicated on a non-Western construction of youth. in a different way from the class emphasis of subcultural theory, the polarized division posited between global youth and local others in the discourse of globalization fails to accommodate the multiple axes along which youth cultural differences on the subcontinent may be classified. This problem occurs because local others in india exhibit differences along several axes other than class, gender and ethnicity including region, religion and caste with the most important difference produced through language. This chapter borrows campus slang to contrast Bhangra’s signification in the cultures of anglicized Englishspeaking elite Indian youth with those of vernacular speakers of Hindi or other indian languages.2 in the prestigious indian institute of Technology Mumbai, a new argot has been formulated to distinguish elite Westernized youth from the unsophisticated speakers of vernacular languages. Pseuds, a derogatory term used to denote elite speakers of English, is inherently inscribed with inauthenticity but refers specifically to Westernized indian youth’s imitation of Western youth styles and manners. pseud: a derogatory term for anybody or anything that’s very heavily westernised or has pretensions to be very sophisticated. (IIT BHF and IITBAA 2007: n.p.)

Ghat is a Marathi word used to refer to the vernacular speakers of Marathi but has equivalents in other indian languages including Panjabi jats, hindi ganwars, or Bengali gaiyyans. ghat: someone from the state of Maharashtra. it’s origins probably lie in the Western Ghats, those being the mountains(?) on India’s West Coast. (IIT BHF and IITBAA 2007: n.p.)

Desi is a term coined by indian americans to refer to indian subcontinentals who are contrasted with non resident indians or nris. But here it will be used to refer to multilingual speakers who, while comfortable in English, are strongly rooted in local hindi or other vernaculars. each term is, in fact, a derogatory ascription given to the group by others. While pseuds are dismissed as inauthentic due to their “aping” of Western culture by desis and jats, they disparage desis and jats with cosmopolitan disdain. as pseuds, desis and jats might be distributed across castes and classes, their divisions can neither be tied to issues of social caste or class as in subcultural theory nor to the cosmopolitan/local divide of globalization. instead, language and culture may 2

Based on questionnaires, qualitative interviews and personal observation during the period january 2000 to December 2006 in Delhi, Chandigarh, Kharagpur, Chennai and Bangalore (see Appendix 1).

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be employed as reliable markers in differentiating the pseud citizens of india from the vernacular desi and jat subjects of Bharat. Though the youth cultural space might reveal many more divisions and subdivisions, this tripartite division sums up the much hyped divide between india and Bharat, the disparity between the two nations of the English-speaking elite and of the masses comprising the speakers of India’s many languages. Barkha Dutt, Managing Editor of NDTV, India’s largest Television company, succinctly summed up the india/Bharat divide: But within india, we still treat our own english as the great social decider. We laugh at regional accents, smirk at those who make grammatical errors and feel most at home with those who talk like us. Everyone else belongs on the other side of the english divide. and as it turns out, the other side of the class and caste divide as well. (Dutt 2006: n.p.)

This chapter traces the emergence of a Panjabi jat subculture in relation to Bhangra in the late 1980s, which is appropriated both in the elite countercultures of english speaking pseuds and the non-elite ones of multilingual desis. Pseud, desi and jat youth cultures, defined largely through their negotiation with Western modernity inscribed in english language and vernacular indian traditions, engage with the central problematic of the post-colonial indian nation through expressing their preference for a particular form of modernity or tradition. Defined by the way they locate themselves with respect to the West, each of these cultures coopts Bhangra to engage with the dialectic of tradition and modernity, which is the central problematic of parent cultures. Though it has recognized that youth cultures predated the postwar coinage of the formal category and has viewed them as a historic phenomenon, culture studies have overlooked their spatial dimension. Youth cultures are predicated on constructions of youth that differ from one culture to another. The Western concept of youth as a preparation for adulthood, in particular, differs from the indian varnashram philosophy that regards youth as a preparatory stage, brahmcharya, in the four-fold division of individual life (Glossary 2007: n.p.).3 emphasizing appropriateness rather than right or wrong, chaturvarga prescribes four “goods” that the individual may legitimately seek during each stage of life.4 Brahmcharya is regarded as the period of learning when an individual, normalized as male, is an individual’s life, according to varnashram philosophy, is divided into four stages, namely brahmcharya (youth), grihastha (householder), banprastha (forest-dweller) and sanyas (renunciation) and is regulated by chaturvarga or the pursuit of four goods appropriate to the different stages of life. Brahmcharya or student life, is when a boy lives with his teacher (Guru) and receives both religious and secular instruction. The youth is trained in self control, and acquires such virtues as chastity, truthfulness, faith and self surrender (Glossary 2007: n.p.). 4 The four goods are dharma (right living), artha (wealth), kama (pleasure), moksha (renunciation). 3

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expected to dedicate himself to the perfection of the body and the mind through acquiring knowledge and skills. While arts, music, painting, poetry and dancing are seen as forming an important component in the brahmchari’s learning or vidya, they are decoupled from pleasure through the notion of sadhana or singleminded practice. Sadhana also underwrites indian performative traditions with an aesthetic of abstinence that enables the spiritually pure performer to produce aesthetic pleasure in the mind of the rasik or connoisseur. indian youth cultures negotiate the ascetic ideal of the brahmchari enjoined upon them by parents with various degrees of approximation and denial ranging from the strict selfdisciplining observed in spiritualist countercultures to the unregulated depravity associated with lumpen subcultures. Matza and Sykes distinguished between official and subterranean values of societies and averred that societies provide institutionalized periods in which these subterranean values are allowed to emerge or take precedence (in Young 1997: 72). The abstract concept of youth as abstinence, however, can accommodate wide-ranging youth practices centred on fun regulated by time and place on the subcontinent. Yaari (friendship) is a phase as well as space in youth lives in which subterranean values of masti (play) take precedence over rules of workaday existence. The inconsistency between the strict formal construct of brahmcharya and the spirit of fun marking yaari fits in with the contrast between overt or official values of a society and subterranean values drawn by Matza and Sykes (in Young 1997: 72). The principle means through which youth negotiate the ascetic brahmcharya ideology is through the formation of yaari (friendship) gangs, which permit the articulation of youthful desires without challenging scriptural authority. Though yaari has not been theorized in social anthropology, yaari practice has coexisted with the formal construct of brahmcharya on the indian subcontinent for a long time. Like all local practices, yaari is difficult to define but may be comprehended through allusions made to it in the popular media. It is fitting that Cyrus Sahukar, the creative brain behind MTv india, should reappropriate yaari to define MTV india’s unique identity: We are not cold and lonely and we don’t kill ourselves with style. We are much more approachable, friendlier, much more dosti much more yari … much more Indian because we are like that. As an organisation, we hold each other’s hands even if we are boys. We like being close to each other on a personal level and otherwise. (interview with Cyrus Sahukar 2003: n.p.)

Sahukar’s use of the term to define the wider practice of male bonding prevalent among indian youth also recovers it from its appropriation in the formulation of an indian gay discourse.

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But it is Bollywood that has conventionally provided the template of yaari, inevitably attached to masti (play), which shapes and reflects youth practices. The quintessentially indian concept of yaari, celebrated in a number of Bollywood films ranging from Raj Kapoor’s Sangam (1964) to Karan Johar’s Kal ho Na ho (2004), has been immortalized through one of the songs in Ramesh Sippy’s classic Sholay (1976). i wouldn’t stop being friends with you Yeh dosti hum naheen chodenge todenge dum agar even when i am dead and gone tera sath na chodenge i shall be by your side (“yeh Dosti” from Sholay)

Masti, originally an Urdu word meaning “quiet, ecstatic surrender to the beauty around us, an infatuation with the world”, has been reinscribed by Bollywood as fun through its mapping of masti on the youth body (Bloch and Bijleveld 2003).5 While masti is traditionally tolerated as a transitional youthful attitude as a preparation for adult responsibilities, the Bollywood narrative closure fixes masti as lifelong fun. But Bollywood images of youthful masti have provided a template that has been adopted by several generations of indian youth in their translation of masti. since Dev anand sang “yaaro neelam karo susti, hamse udhar le lo masti” (Friends auction away sloth / borrow fun from me) in his film Prem Pujari (1970), every Bollywood hero has added his own meanings to the definition of masti with the result that masti has acquired multiple connotations of fun that the indian viewer recognizes immediately. Meanings of masti now range from susti or “lolling about lazily” to khel khel mein or “playing pranks” (Rishi Kapoor in Khel Khel Mein [1975]) and khayenge piyenge aish karenge or “eating, drinking, having fun” (amir Khan in Ghulam [1998]). With Sunidhi Chauhan singing the “Mast” song in the movie (1999) of the same name, masti was released from its gender specificity. The portrayal of college life in Bollywood as a period of masti has become so deeply etched on the desi imagination that college youth often perform masti in approximation to its Bollywood representations. But while masti forms the narrative as well as dramatic focus in the Bollywood film, yaari practices would be permitted only in limited spaces and time in real youth lives. The practices of yaari or friendship gangs, which are tolerated in the spirit of “boys will be boys”, serve to articulate youthful desires within the austere formalized philosophical framework of brahmcharya. While yaari practices might seem contradictory to the brahmcharya principle of abstinence, the normalization of the yaari gang as a legitimate youthful space proves that the permission of yaari in restricted time and space might have been used as a tactic for maintaining parental control in the workaday world. Traditionally a gendered practice that enabled young males to indulge in forbidden pleasures such as smoking, drinking and sexual 5 nusrat Fateh ali Khan’s song “Mast Mast” plays on these connotations of masti in Sufi verse.

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banter outside parental surveillance, yaari does not contradict the brahmcharya philosophy because male youth behaviour outside the gang is still controlled by patriarchal rules of propriety. Masti or play as a temporary phase also aligns it to a social structure in which hedonistic indulgence may be viewed as a preparation for the responsibilities and commitments that male youth are burdened with in adult life. The space of the yaari gang – the street or street corner or the neighbourhood park – makes it the ideal site for articulating emotions whose expression might be taboo in the intimate space of the home. The formalized relations between parent and child in the indian system prevent youth from experiencing these pleasures in the home space. The yaari gang in which youth might smoke, drink, use abusive or sexually-coloured language and tease young women serves as a male initiation into adulthood. The concept of yaari that enables temporary transgressions against the brahmcharya code of conduct without disrupting parental authority may be employed to understand contemporary indian youth practices in which Bhangra has been coopted. Jock Young critiques Matza and Sykes’s polarization of formal and subterranean values, arguing that subterranean values might be subsumed under the ethos of productivity in modern industrial societies (Young 1997). The reasoning that an individual is justified in expressing subterranean values only if he has earned the right to do so by working hard and being productive describes Panjabi societal norms in which hedonism has always been tied to productivity. in Bhangra, subterranean values of hedonism, expressivity, excitement and play have always been controlled through the formal value of productivity. however, the expression of subterranean values in contemporary Bhangra permanently splits play from work. it is generally accepted that youth cultures are a response to social, cultural or economic crises in parent cultures. indian youth cultures engage in different ways with the central problematic of post-colonial india – the choice between indian tradition and West-centric modernity. Due to the strong interweaving of the east– West dialectic in any form of resistance to tradition in india, even generational resistance articulated through yaari or friendship gangs assumes an east–West opposition. Any critique of tradition by youth is more than often mistaken for a choice for Western modernity and rejected. all indian youth cultures – pseud, desi and jat – are made to engage with the dialectic of tradition and modernity through their reinterpretation of the brahmcharya concept. Like British youth in postwar Europe, Indian youth experience has been completely altered by a recent crisis in parent society brought about by the advent of a global culture of consumerism that stands in sharp contradiction to the aesthetic of abstinence enshrined in the traditional philosophy of brahmcharya. indian youth cultures of the present have emerged in response to the crisis in society caused by the clash between traditional indian asceticism and global hedonism and have appropriated the aesthetic of “eat drink and be merry” undergirding Bhangra in the production of an indian modernity in consonance with tradition. Bhangra hedonism presents an attractive alternative to brahmchari austerity, which pseuds, desis and

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panjabi munde appropriate in diverse ways to challenge essentialist definitions of identity and redefine modernity. Though it might have come riding upon different media, Bhangra has invaded the cultures of pseuds, desis and jats in varying degrees. This ascension of a regional rustic music in different youth cultures has occurred through a readjustment of the relationship between pseuds, desis and jats that is reflected in recent popular cultural texts. Though the privileged status of english has been confirmed rather than challenged by globalization, the increasing purchasing power of rural landowners and urban mercantile classes has simultaneously made the popular cultural industry genuflect to their tastes, disrupting the undisputed cultural authority of pseuds. similarly, the disengagement of english with desis’ domination in technical fields like engineering, medicine and finance and jats’ ascension in non-traditional professions like sports or the performing arts has dislodged pseuds from their exalted socio-economic position. The elevation of desis and jats in the indian socio-economic space is so pronounced that it can afford to announce itself in Indian English or even in thick Panjabi accents. This readjustment of social positions is reflected in the recognition given to nonelite genres, speech and even styles in mainstream english media. While desis had always enjoyed a comfortable majority position in the indian socio-cultural space, the rise in vernacular power including that of jats is the most surprising development of the new millennium. The recognition of jats, the disowned country cousins of the English-speaking elite, by the English media as “sons of the soil” is a complete turnaround that may be illustrated by a recent event, namely the victorious return home of the Indian cricket team, described by the journalist Rajdeep Sardesai as “a Tier 2-3 town team”, “unburdened by metropolitan consciousness”, after winning the T20 World Cup (2007: n.p.). Star News, a leading television channel, provided a running commentary on the victory procession making its way to the Wankhade stadium in Mumbai to the accompaniment of a Bhangra song from the Bollywood blockbuster Chak De India (2007) as team members performed the Bhangra on the open bus that transported them to the stadium (Sardesai 2007: n.p.). When the former Captain of the indian team and Member of Parliament navjot sidhu hailed one of the players – yuvraj singh – as “the son of the nation” (hindustan da puttar), the star newsreader agreed wholeheartedly. similarly, the indian team captain, Mahendra singh Dhoni’s insistence on responding in hindi to questions put to him by the English cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle at the felicitation ceremony similarly signalled a rise in jat confidence following its success in fields dominated earlier by the elite.6 Considering this “an india which has been strangulated for 6 according to sardesai, “The 2007 team, by contrast, is very much a Tier 2-3 town team, unburdened by metropolitan consciousness. The winning 11 against Pakistan had only one player from Delhi, one from Mumbai and just one from Bangalore. The rest were from towns like Rae Bareli, Rohtak and Kochi, places with no cricketing history. Many of them come from lower-middle class families, having lived in one and two-room tenements for much of their lives. A majority of them defies the stereotype. Till the Pathan brothers

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years by the English-speaking metropolitan elite” for whom “playing cricket is a vehicle of social mobility, of finally unshackling an oppressive system where the public school tie appeared to matter more than ability”, rajdeep sardesai concludes that “cricket could do what few other fields of activity in this country provided: a chance to excel and be recognised, irrespective of one’s lineage” (2007: n.p.). However, expressions like Panjab da puttar (the son of Panjab) have their historical origin in a discourse centred on Panjabi visible since the mid-1980s in which panjabi munde or Panjabi boys have played a pivotal role. While BritishPanjabi youth subcultures have received considerable media and academic attention, the formulation of this transnational youth subculture, a subset of Sikh subculture, in the aftermath of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots has been largely ignored.7 This youth subculture responds to twin stereotypes – the brave warrior and the comic rustic – that dominate the representations of Sikhs/Panjabis in the Indian popular media, the first conforming to the colonial construction of Sikhs as a martial race and the second to the post-colonial mapping of rusticity on the Sikh/Panjabi body. it replies to these stereotypes by appropriating ascriptions of rusticity, materiality and joy in its self-definition, reinscribing, in the process, the youthful attribute of masti as a specifically Panjabi attribute. The hedonistic Panjabi body produced in Panjabi youth cultures during this period has overwritten the demonized Sikh image circulated over the indian media throughout the 1980s. It is in this Sikh subculture that Cohen’s idea of subcultures as “problemsolving” or as providing an “ideological solution” to “the contradictions which remain hidden or unresolved in the parent culture” may provide a lead into Sikh youth’s attempt to resolve by means of an “imaginary relation” the “real relation” to the condition of their existence (Cohen 1997: 23). Though Bhangra music strictly abstains from mentioning sikhi or Sikhism, its youth producers inherit the cultural orientations of the central “problematic” in parent culture – the alienation of the Sikh community from the Hindu mainstream following a number of incidents such as Operation Bluestar, the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 and the rise of Sikh militancy.8 While few Bhangra songs, except jazzy B’s “sardara” touched upon the impact stepped on to the scene, Vadodara cricket was shaped by the royal lineage of the Gaekwads. now, the sons of an imam in narendra Modi’s gujarat are the stars of the game. even rohit Sharma is not the typical Mumbai cricketer: he played his cricket not in the gymkhanas of South Mumbai or the maidans of Shivaji Park, but in the distant fields of Borivili” (2007: n.p.). 7 1984 is remembered as a defining moment in Sikh history when the assassination of the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi led to revenge killings of innocent Sikhs all over india. 8 Operation Bluestar was an operation of the Indian Army launched to flush out Sikh militants from the golden Temple Complex in amritsar where they were hiding under the protection of Sant Bhindranwale. This alienated the Sikh community from the nation state, which culminated in the assassination of Prime Minister indira gandhi, who had launched the Bluestar initiative, by her Sikh bodyguards. In retaliation for her killing, a large number of innocent Sikhs were killed in the anti-Sikh riots of 1984.

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of these poisoned relations on Panjabi youth, the group directly affected by the destabilization of the Panjab economy during the 1980s and the 1990s, the Sufi singer rabbi shergill recently summed up the contradictions concealed behind the ideology of pleasure underlying Bhangra in his reinvented jugni. jugni jaa wadi punjab jugni set off for Panjab jithe padhe likhe bekaar where educated remain unemployed bech zameenaa jaawen baahar selling their lands they go abroad uthe maaran jaadho When they starve there uthe gori lain vewha they marry a white woman peeche tabar take raah while the clan waits for them (Rabbi Shergill. “Jugni Dekhan Challi Desh”)

Caught between state and Sikh terrorism and deprived of opportunities for gainful employment in an economy in shambles, Panjabi youth attempted to realize an imaginary relation with educated middle-class youth through inventing hedonistic images of abundance. Bhangra was Panjabi youth’s tactic to transcend the real experience of terror, violence and unemployment through an imagined idyll of pleasure. in reinscribing youth as pleasure, Panjabi youth attempted to provide an ideological resolution to the contradiction between the middle-class ideal of ambition, conformity and scholastic achievement that has been defined in relation to the hindu chaturvarga philosophy and the exclusion of Panjabi youth from this ideal in the aftermath of militancy. Bhangra provided this youth a means to compensate for the denial they faced in the academic and professional world through the release of bodily pleasures. it is interesting to note how the tensions in parental discourse – the construction of a separatist Sikh discourse in opposition to hinduism – are resolved through youth leisure activities in the production of a unique identity that challenges the brahminical ideal of brahmcharya enjoined on middle-class youth. however, the accentuation of subterranean values in the excessive pleasures of the body in Bhangra interrogates formal Hindu as well as Sikh values. While Sikh youth subcultures form a subset of an emergent transnational Sikh subculture, they interrogate hegemonic Hindu as well as (non-hegemonic) Khalsa patriarchal structures. The decade of what has been euphemistically labelled “the Punjab problem” witnessed the “khalsaization” of Panjab that manifested, in addition to the conscription of Sikh youth in the movement for Khalistan, in Taliban-like injunctions on youth dress, speech and deportment. The rise of the Khalsa in the late 1970s points to the contentious history of Sikhism with multiple schisms between the Khalsa and the less orthodox Sikh narratives such as that of jat Sikhs of the cultivator caste. Panjabi youth protested against Panjab’s “talibanization” that enlisted Sikh militants in disciplining youth in accordance with an essentialist Khalsa writ on purity by producing hedonist cultures. Their resistance to both the dominant Hindu discourse and the (non)dominant Sikh discourse was articulated through musical production that celebrated the pleasures of the eating, drinking and

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dancing body.9 Bhangra produces an alternative construction of youth – a period of unbridled hedonism that stands in sharp contrast to the majority middle-class ideal of diligence and high achievement. The resurgence of jat values in Bhangra appears to be directly related to the privileging of the puritanical Khalistani element in Sikh fundamentalism that reverberates with the ideal of spiritual purity underlying the concept of brahmcharya. The narrative of Panjabi youth identity produced through Bhangra interrogates both the hegemonic Hindu and (non)hegemonic Sikh patriarchal constructions of youth as a period of abstinence. Challenging the hegemonic and (non)hegemonic prescription of pursuits deemed appropriate to brahmcharya becomes Panjabi youth’s tactic of resisting those patriarchal and political structures that deny them avenues for self improvement. Through this multipronged strategy, panjabi munde, or the Panjabi boys, could participate in the affirmation of Panjabi pride while rejecting the representation of a historic narrative of sikhi – of the Khalsa – as a definitive Sikh discourse. But Sikh youth subcultures, despite their interrogation of Khalsa, were still imbricated with the discourse of sikhi or Sikhism that was being mobilized after 1984, confirming Hall’s observation that subcultures are still too rooted in the experiences of the parent culture to be completely resistant. in order to articulate an ideology of pleasure that challenged Sikh puritanism, they borrowed the speech and expressive forms from parent cultures. Through proposing an alternative narrative of youth, Panjabi youth attempted to resolve on an ideological plane the contradictions in the system that failed to provide youth in disturbed Panjab the conditions within which the goal of perfection enjoined on youth in traditional thought systems could be accomplished. Panjabi youth defined itself as an alterity to the indian youth ideal of the abstinent brahmchari that was articulated through musical production. While the rest of the indian youth were being encouraged to attain intellectual perfection through a lopsided emphasis on scholastic achievement, Panjabi youth isolated the goal of physical fitness from the holistic ideal of bodily and mental perfection in indian thought systems. its focus on physical fitness through a culture of bodybuilding, sport, music and dance was in conformity with the corporeality ascribed to “the martial race” of Panjabis. But it also responded to the stereotyped representation of the Panjabi as “all brawn and no brain” through an excessive and exaggerated focus on the body and its pleasures. While middle-class indian youth were raised to believe that embellishment of the body was incompatible with their spiritual and intellectual pursuits, Panjabi youth flaunted both the perfect and the gross body and the pleasures of the body. While the body culture of Bhangra was embedded in the parent culture of materialism, its excessive pleasure threw into relief denials imposed by unemployment and religion. 9

One Panjabi singer who defied the Khalsa writ through his earthy, often bawdy songs laced with sexual humour and innuendos was the immensely talented Amar Singh Chamkila, who had to pay a heavy price when he was shot dead along with his consort amanjot during a stage performance, allegedly by Sikh militants (“Amar Singh Chamkila” 2010).

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however, its rejection of the ascetic brahmchari ideal through a corporeal culture produces the Panjabi as the other of the indian self, which overwrites the image of the demonized Sikh in the national media and of the tortured Sikh in the Sikh media. The 1980s were dominated by images of the demonized other when the bearded Sikh became the signifier of terror, violence and death in the nation’s imaginary. While the dancing image of the clean shaven Sikh Gurdas Mann had been competing in the national imaginary with those of demonized others all through the 1980s, the demonized others could be erased from the national imagination only after the superimposition of the image of the jolly Sikh Daler Mehndi in the 1990s. The 1990s witnessed a Panjabi media explosion where clean shaven and bearded Sikhs appear to be the most ubiquitous minorities in the popular cultural space. Whether one tunes in to a regional, national or global television channel, images of dancing Sikhs – men and now women – are transmitted only less frequently than those of Bollywood stars either dancing to their own songs or providing vocals for Bollywood stars. Without making it part of its political agenda, Sikh youth cultures have overwritten the image of the demonized other of “the Panjab problem” with the image of the hedonistic other. As Sikh discourse is internally differentiated and intersects with Hindu and Muslim Panjabi cultures, it can be classified neither along the grid of class nor that of religion. The Sikh identity narrative distances itself from an overt articulation of sikhi by converging on a linguistic rather than religious identity following the Sikh separatist tradition of couching the demand for a theological state as a linguistic demand. The couching of the separatist demand as a linguistic demand, however, opens it out to other Panjabi youth in addition to the Sikh. Since Sikh youth articulated it to a shared Panjabi cultural heritage rather than to sikhi, hindu Panjabi youth borrowed freely from Sikh youth subcultural practices in the production of a form of panjabiyat that is not exclusively Sikh. Bhangra texts became implicated in constructing a positive narrative of Panjabi identity centred on an aesthetic of pleasure through innocuous lyrics that celebrate routine leisure pursuits of the panjabi munde, which include forms of carousal inimical with the brahmchari goal of self-improvement. The implication of expressive forms in the politics of identity is reflected in the way the performance of rituals becomes an expression of identity. When Sukhbir intoned “Panjabi munde paan Bhangra” or hans raj hans called out “aaja nach lai”, they were providing lyrical self definitions that Panjabi youth used to constitute themselves. a distinctive Panjabi youth culture defined by styles, mannerisms, attitudes and tastes had been visible since the late 1980s but began to express itself with greater confidence in the 1990s. Confined largely to Sikh and working-class Hindu Panjabis in the beginning, this youth subculture has broken class barriers to construct Panjabi youth as a distinct youth category. Loud, noisy, aggressive but also strongly committed to family values and tradition, Panjabi youth culture translates Panjabi patriarchal values into a culture of machismo that other youth both detest and desire. in contrast to the attempts of elite Panjabi youth to tone down their panjabiyat to gain social acceptability in the past, an uninhibited allegiance of the present generation to their Panjabi

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roots speaks for the growing confidence of Panjabi and the emergence of a strong narrative of panjabiyat. Bhangra may be viewed as the most visible signifier of a revalorized panjabiyat that is manifested in many other forms. The cultural practices of Sikh youth produced in response to the community experience after 1984 become appropriated in the consolidation of a Panjabi identity, which is sometimes, but not always, synonymous with sikhi. The affirmation of Panjabi cultural values through Panjabi youth subcultures has revived the discourse of panjabiyat, signalling the ascendance of the region that puts into question the sovereign nation. Following the three decades of assimilation when displaced hindu Panjabis attempted to transform themselves from ethnolinguistic to citizen subjects, the 1980s witnessed a Panjabi revival triggered by satellite television reflecting the displaced community’s economic resurgence. having internalized the stereotyped representation of Panjabis as crude and panjabiyat as loud and having disowned their ethnocultural identity in their aspiration towards upward mobility, sophisticated Panjabis – particularly hindu Panjabis – reclaimed panjabiyat with a vengeance by recovering Panjabi cultural practices, if not speech. Thus, Bhangra, reinvented in the production of a Sikh youth subculture in the mid-1980s, was inscribed as the site for the production of transnational panjabiyat signalling a Panjabi revival not only in india but also in neighbouring Pakistan. The discourse of panjabiyat converging on music as defined through these youth cultures recovers a shared Panjabi cultural heritage buried under the palimpsest of Hindi in India and Urdu in Pakistan. The emergence of Panjabi youth subculture in a decade that witnessed several transformations in the indian socio-economic as well as cultural universe through globalization and liberation made it converge with the new ideology of consumerism. While the interrogation of traditional indian values through the conspicuous consumption ushered in by globalization has received considerable attention, its accentuation of subterranean values has not been read in relation to Bhangra. however, images in the indian media, celebrating the subterranean values of hedonism, freedom and expressivity in which leisure and consumption are tied to fetishistic productivity, are often mapped on the Bhangra body, particularly through their dissemination by Bollywood. If the figure of the half-naked ascetic Mahatma Gandhi provided Indian nationalism its iconic image, the flamboyantly clad corpulent figure of “the jolly Sikh” Daler Mehndi is emblematic of globalized India’s new zest for living. as a majority of ethnic indian cultures have been constructed in the image of the spiritual ideal embodied by Mahatma gandhi, stereotyped Panjabi materialism alone can be coalesced with the materialist ideology propounded by global consumerism. The reification of subcultural production by the commodity market and culture industry in the case of British youth subcultures like punk and hip-hop is well known. The narrative of panjabiyat visible in north indian cities has gradually entered regional and national non-elite desi and elite pseudo countercultures through its appropriation in the mainstream media, mainly Bollywood but also MTv, diffusing its resistance to Hindu and Sikh patriarchy. Through its resignification of

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the Panjabi other as the site of material pleasures legitimized by the new aesthetic of consumption, the culture industry reifies the resistivity of Panjabi youth cultures. While Bhangra’s dissolution of play and work is intended to call attention to the disturbance of normal relations between the two, play is completely disengaged from work in the representation of Bhangra in the popular cultural industry. While its subterranean hedonism was coopted in the interrogation of traditional discipline and self-restraint, Panjabi music comes to signify the repressed play of middleclass cultures to the exclusion of work in mediatized images. While its freedom from the constraints of the workaday world recalled the Panjabi ethic of labour disrupted through terrorism, the culture industry decontextualized Bhangra by representing it as untrammelled play that was contrasted with work. The mapping of play on the Panjabi body began in Bollywood in the mid 1990s and has become such a powerful iconic image of play in the national imaginary that even the sage presence of a Sikh Prime Minister cannot erase the Bollywood fantasy of the jolly Sikh. Bhangra has invaded desi youth cultures largely through its naturalization as Bollywood song and dance and pseud youth cultures through its return as British asian music on MTv and Channel v. While the difference between india and Bharat might be viewed as a solely linguistic divide, it also extends to the maps of meaning constructed through languages. It is common to speak of the elite English-speaking youth with their inherited anglicized frames of reference as far removed from the indian ground realities that non-elite speakers of Hindi and regional languages are equipped to deal with. With more desis acquiring linguistic competence in english, the divide has transformed from a linguistic to a psychological divide. Desi youth cultures, as much as Panjabi, are involved in producing a narrative of Bharat as opposed to that of India that emerges from English-speaking pseuds. Desi youth discourse is predicated on a conscious rejection of derivative structures constructed through english language and Western institutions even though they might legitimately be exploited to bring professional gains. This double vision of desis places them in a more privileged position than pseuds or jats and complicates the reductive binary of global youth and local others posited in globalization theory. Desi youth cultures combine elements from both india and Bharat to resolve the contradictions between the modern West and the traditional east by converging on popular culture that resolves the east–West dichotomy through an unproblematic assimilation of the West into the east. Celebrations of Bollywood eclecticism often overlook practical commercial considerations underlying Bollywood creativity. Bhangra’s incorporation in the Bollywood song and dance sequence epitomizes the Bollywood strategy of incorporating musics that threaten its monopoly in the music market. When Bhangra, mainly the albums of Daler Mehndi, offered stiff competition to Bollywood’s sonic monopoly, Bollywood followed its time-tested reflex of cooption. Bollywood has responded to Bhangra’s threat to cut into its market share in two ways – either by directly coopting Bhangra practitioners or by naturalizing Bhangra as Bollywood music. A number of films have roped in Bhangra artists, including the Bhangra

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king Daler Mehndi, to sing for them, and often these songs have been big hits irrespective of the films’ box office success. For example, Daler Mehndi’s “Na na na na re” number in Mrityudaata (1997) ushered in the Bhangra revival in Bollywood despite the film’s failure. Besides Daler, who has performed in a number of Bollywood films since 1995, other Bhangra singers like Gurdas Mann, Jazzy B, Juggy D, Mika and most notably Labh Janjua, have either performed in or done playback singing for Bollywood films. In addition, Bollywood has so assiduously developed its own panel of playback singers, led by the Panjabi speaking Sukhwinder Singh, who can mimic Panjabi accents, over the years that now almost every Bollywood playback singer can do a Panjabi-laced song. The production of Panjabi youth cultures has been reified as a saleable Bollywood formula through Panjabi’s displacement of Urdu as the new Bollywood idiom of romance or sensuality. In the process of its resignification as Bollywood celebratory dance, romantic song or club music, Bhangra is disengaged from its function in the production of panjabiyat. naturalized as Bollywood song and dance, Bhangra is coopted in the dominant hindi cultural discourse that it is ideologically committed to resist. instead of articulating Panjabi resistance to mainstream hindi, Bhangra’s Bollywood invasion transforms Panjabi into a new hindi. The Bhangra ideology of “khao piyo mauj luto” (eat, drink and be merry) is articulated to the Bollywood ethic of masti that results in the mapping of fun on the Panjabi language, body and dance. While masti is not a new motif in Bollywood, its inscription of masti on the Bhangra body resignifies Bhangra as the national signifier of youthful masti. The transformation of Bhangra as a national signifier of fun in Bollywood converts it from an ethnocultural signifier of Panjabi celebration to a shared national signifier of joy. Removed from its ethnic performance context to Bollywood’s national space enables Bhangra’s easy absorption into national youth idioms. in the process of its signification of a national youth ideology, Bhangra speaks directly to Hindu in addition to Sikh puritanism. Though Bollywood reifies Bhangra as a marketable popular culture following its popularity among youth, it also provides a national dance grammar to desi youth through which they can perform their difference from the brahminical ethic of self-restraint and the middle-class valorization of work and achievement. Desi youth cultures reappropriate Bhangra from its reification as Bollywood song and dance to interrogate Hindu asceticism by dancing a bit of the Panjabi other. Bollywood Bhangra’s celebration of the body-in-pleasure provides a powerful visual metaphor that recalls it’s absent other – the idealized spiritual body of the jogi venerated in indian tradition. it indicates a phase shift in Bollywood from the denial of bodily pleasure to an exultant celebration of the body through the display of the honed bodies of godlike Bollywood stars. Unlike Bollywood of the past, where sexual fantasies were subordinated to the affirmation of the dharmic ideal, the new Bollywood promotes a cult of the body of which Bhangra becomes the key signifier (Mishra 2002). Unlike the explicit sexuality of the Hollywood film or of the music video, familiar Bollywood images of corporeality may be appropriated

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by desi youth cultures to respond to the ascetic ideal of the brahmchari. The images of the dancing body-in-pleasure invoke the suppressed spiritual body of the nation. The perfect bodies of Bollywood actors performing Bhangra recall the immaculate body of the brahmchari attained through abstinence from pleasure. The dancing bodies of the youth icons compete for space with the emaciated bodies of spiritual heroes and saints venerated by parent cultures. To the desi youth, these immaculate bodies of Bollywood gods and goddesses create a desire for the body repressed through the stress on scholastic achievement in parental cultures to the exclusion of the body by a gross misinterpretation of the mind– body balance of Indian tradition. By making them aware of a lack in their lives, Bollywood Bhangra produces in the desi youth a desire for the body repressed due to the veneration of the mind. The conventional opposition of the material West with the spiritual east is complicated through the contest between the material and spiritual narratives of india. Bhangra becomes desi youth’s weapon in contesting essentialist constructions of indian culture as the spiritualist other of the materialist Western culture. Bollywood employs Panjabi dance to engage with the dialectic between denial and pleasure that has been brought into a crisis with the ideology of pleasure on which global consumerism is predicated. It is Bollywood texts that first resolve the tension between tradition and modernity by showing that commitment to traditional values is not necessarily antithetical to pleasure in which Bhangra plays an important role. The naturalization of Bhangra in Bollywood to signify fun legitimizes the aesthetic of pleasure excised from the body of the nation and inscribed on the Panjabi body. The Bhangra body-in-pleasure is not disowned as the Panjabi body but claimed as the national body signifying the ideological shift from self-abnegation to self fulfilment in the new Bollywood film. This materiality that derives from Panjabi materiality fits in with the materialistic ideal of global consumerism in the desi youth imaginary. The pleasures of the eating, drinking, dancing body signified by Bhangra and considered taboo, particularly during the brahmcharya phase, are viewed as conforming to the new hedonism of global consumerism. While desi youth cultures engage with a different problematic in parent culture from Sikh youth culture, they appear to converge to a certain extent because their response brings them into conflict with the brahmcharya ethic of parent cultures. Desi youth culture of the 1990s was formulated in an idiom quite different from that of yaari gangs and was a composite mix of diverse indian cultural traditions through which desi youth resolved the crisis in identity brought on by global consumerism. Divided between a puritanical parent culture that frowns upon pleasure and faceless global cultures that deny difference, desi youth construct an indigenous grammar composed of hinglish, Bollywood and indian cultural practices to confront the annihilating homogeneity of global monocultures. once again, youth cultures resolve a contradiction between the professed commitment to the traditional self-denying ethic and the attraction of global consumerist pleasures

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in parent cultures by turning to popular interpretations of tradition disseminated through Bollywood and television. Bollywood has always played a significant role in the constitution of desi youth cultures as an expressive form that is unquestionably indian but free from the puritanical strain in traditional indian practices. it enables desi youth to differentiate themselves from pseud imitators of Western modernity without having to regress to a classical indian past. Bollywood kitsch presents them with a narrative of indian modernity through which they may reject Western modernity outside the dialectic of eastern spirituality and Western materialism. instead of the stereotyped opposition between a haloed spiritual tradition and a disparaged Western materialism, Bollywood’s incorporation in the east–West battle opposes two contemporary forms of materialism. Bollywood enables the construction of a desi subjectivity that does not need to embed itself in essentialist narratives of indian antiquity. in contrast to the earlier phase of indian nationalism which invented an indian past to resist the pull of Western modernity, a new mediated form of cultural nationalism has been visible in india for some time that draws on commercialized formulae from popular culture to reply to the homogenizing impact of globalization. While the parental generation might find it difficult to associate kitschy images with nationalist sentiment, youth converge on advertising slogans such as India Shining or Lead India, film titles like Phir Bhi Dil hai hindustani (2000) and Chak De India (2007), or pop songs like “Chak De India” or “rang De Basanti” to produce a contemporary narrative of cultural nationalism. The strong inexplicable hold of popular culture in activating cultural nationalism may be illustrated by the renewed interest in the freedom movement and indian history among desi youth through films like rang De Basanti (2006) and Lage raho Munna Bhai (2006).10 Both films also brought home the point that in order to get youth to appreciate indigenous values, cultural forms would have to adopt themselves to youth idioms. Neither elite indigenous pastimes like sitar, bharatnatyam or rabindrasangeet nor Western rock, pop or heavy metal but a passion for specifically Indian cultural practices such as Bollywood film, Hindi music, cricket and politics knits the desi youth into a community. Through expressing their unambiguous preference for popular rather than formal narratives of indianness, desi youth cultures, too, expose the contradictions in parent cultures. Parent cultures’ ambivalent denigration of popular cultural narratives such as Bollywood or telesoaps as inauthentic, and its valorization of “mystical” classical indian cultural practices as authentic, is resolved in desi youth cultures in which desi youth converge on inauthentic versions of “indianness” to constitute themselves. in doing so, desi youth cultures call attention to the process of culture making that requires the privileging of a particular cultural narrative as authentic. They demonstrate that the signification of cultural symbols depends not 10

youth groups were reported to have adopted gandhian methods to protest against institutional corruption and maladministration after the film Lage raho Munna Bhai (2006) made gandhigiri a “cool” term among “desi” youth.

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on some intrinsic essence but the meanings attached to them by a culture. While the parent generation displays a dichotomy between its avowed commitment to a certain set of values while practising those different from them, desi youth cultures resolve the contradiction by imbuing everyday youth practices and pastimes with a particularly desi or indian meaning. For desi youth, everyday cultural practices like eating street food, hanging out doing nothing, listening to and singing Bollywood songs, watching Bollywood films and performing Indian rituals are as meaningful as “authentic” religious, philosophical and aesthetic narratives. By identifying with these “inauthentic” components of indianness, desi cultures make visible the multiple narratives of indian culture that were suppressed in the construction of a definitive Indian culture. Desi youth cultures therefore become the site for the construction of a new narrative of indian modernity, which is not synonymous with Westernization because it challenges Western modernity with a contemporary rather than a historical cultural form. The narrative reveals the limitations of the east–West binary in understanding the complex, vibrant, polysemous discourse of indian modernity that is produced through a cross-fertilization of the east and the West. in desi youth cultures, the contradiction between east and West, tradition and modernity is resolved through its selective borrowing from the material and spiritual aspects of both cultures. it is this complex absorption of diverse cultural strands that accounts for the uniqueness of a youth culture in which the switch from traditional ritual to Bollywood dance can be made without the least effort. Pseuds embody the problematic of Indian modernity in their identification with a Western modernity that disembeds them from indian tradition and dooms them to derivativeness. Their identification with all things Western – tastes, styles, food, music – through which they differentiate themselves from desis and jats, makes them an object of desire as well as ridicule. While their imitation of Western youth mannerisms, posture and attire might strike desis and jats as imitative, they also signify to them the “cool” West that comes with many privileges. Pseuds themselves produce themselves in opposition to “vernacs”, as they describe desis and jats, by distancing themselves from the indian tradition. Pseuds’ imitation of the West is based mainly on mediated images of the West transmitted by Hollywood films, MTV and the internet, though some pseuds might have direct experience of the Western world through visits abroad. Pseuds are products of elite educational institutions that not only introduce them to Western ideas but also make them see India through Western eyes. Identifying with Western habits and values, the pseuds’ Westernized gaze others desis and jats, whom they either disdain or exoticize. since pseuds speak English, the language of privilege, and are at home in Western cultural settings, they are accorded social and professional advantages denied their Hindi- or Panjabi-speaking peers. Unlike jats and desis, pseuds discovered Bhangra indirectly when it “returned” to india from the West. addicted to music produced in the West and intent on following the latest international trends in music, pseuds were raised to ridicule both commercial and folk Indian cultures. But with its repackaging as British Asian

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music, Bhangra acquires for them a value that it did not possess as Panjabi dance. For a large number of Bhangra’s pseud consumers, its ethnic origins are either hidden or confused with other multiple ethnicities appropriated in Western popular music. Panjabi signifies to them the same foreignness that it does to Bhangra’s gore (white) and kale (black) Western fans. Unlike its British Asian producers who consciously turn to their ethnic origins to articulate their identity crisis, pseuds’ incorporation of Bhangra in their culture depends on its “Western” connotations. For the same reason, pseuds would listen to vilayeti Bhangra, rather than desi or panjabibhangra, as a global sound that youth from New York to London are listening to. Pseud cultures valorize those forms of Bhangra that have been repackaged by the West eschewing traditional performers except for those who have been assimilated into vilayeti youth cultures. Bhangra enters pseud culture as the music of the West that comes from the West and epitomizes a particularly occidental sensibility. it is the pseuds who receive Bhangra through the orientalizing frame of MTv as the music of the other. From denigrating rustic and desi music as the backward music of “vernacs”, they now exoticize the same sound as “kool” in imitation of Bhangra’s vilayeti admirers. Bhangra transforms from its position as the music of the rustic other to that of the “kool” other. This is the reason why a distinction should be made between the performance of Bhangra in clubs in metropolitan London, Toronto and New York and the performance of Bhangra in Indian nightclubs. While Bhangra signifies to diaspora youth the music of the self, it carries for its pseud audience the attraction of an exoticized rusticity in the same way as it does for its white performers. Pseuds’ patronization of Bhangra is quite similar to the white middle-class appropriation of black youth subcultural sounds. Pseud youth culture seeks in the non-technologized sound of Bhangra the authenticity that Western cultures appear to have lost. however, pseuds do not turn to rusticity to escape from materialism like their Western counterparts, but out of a desire for the West. Through its insertion in British youth cultures and dissemination over the global media, pseuds view their own music through the Western gaze as the exoticized music of the other that valorizes the jat as the exotic other. Repackaged by the West, the denigrated rusticity of Bhangra is transformed into a positive narrative of rusticity. Locating themselves in the position of the Westernized viewer, pseuds review Bhangra as imbued with rustic authenticity that is lost to the West. But the orientalizing lens of the West divests Bhangra and Panjabi from its material base and recasts it in picture perfect images of rusticity that fit in with orientalist constructions of the East. In their identification with Bhangra’s Western viewers, pseuds behave like the ethnic viewers of Hollywood films who side with the white protagonist without realizing that they are the others orientalized by the camera. Pseuds thus become the native collaborators of the Western self in romanticizing the rustic other. Through dancing the Bhangra, pseuds attempt to connect with the glamorized images of rusticity mapped on Bhangra while disidentifying with experienced rurality. While pseuds identify with Western modernity in constituting themselves as different from indianized

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jats and desis, the relocation of tradition as a source of authenticity brings them into conflict with their desires. Pseuds’ identification with the Western subject of vilayeti Bhangra through which the jat is othered makes visible the polarities within the nation that separate elite pseuds from subaltern jats. Their identification with Western cultural forms and values produces a neo-orientalist discourse with elite pseuds displacing the white self in the opposition between the self and the other. The alienation of pseuds from jat others epitomizes the central problematic of indian modernity – the divide between Westernized india and native Bharat. Pseuds’ virtual inhabitation of the planet of the West excommunicates them from the Bharat of the people. With pseuds, Bhangra moves from harvest fields, college auditorium and neighbourhood streets into the exclusive Western/ized space of the nightclub inscribed by forbidden pleasures in the indian imaginary. as an antithesis of the gurukul, where youth were sent in the past to imbibe physical, ethical, aesthetic and intellectual education, the club represents the house of sin luring the brahmchari into indulgence in the forbidden sins of drinking and womanizing. Excluding the hoi polloi through their prohibitive cover charges, clubs in metropolitan indian cities, often located in luxury hotels, simulate the ambience of similar clubs in the West where elite indian youth imitate the speech, style and mannerisms of their Western counterparts in order to sample global modernity. In clubs like Elevate in Delhi or Tantra in Kolkata, vilayeti Bhangra imports enable global indian youth to bridge the distance from Delhi to London and New York while alienating them from local others hanging out in the streets right outside the clubs (Ferguson 2001: n.p.).11 it is Bhangra’s insertion in the club through which it becomes imbricated with Western promiscuity that lies behind puritan denunciations of Bhangra as vulgar music. Whether the house of sin, as the nightclub is inscribed on the indian mind, can be the site on which youth may converge to discover alternative identifications or not depends on its appropriation in the formation of yaari gangs. yet, the simplistic dismissal of the externally directed youth response to tradition as “aping the West” is predicated on the binary of the east and the West in which authenticity is invested in the east. Through aping Western imitations of Panjabi rustic music, pseuds participate in a postmodern play in which the difference between the original and copy has become irrelevant. Multiple levels of mimicry, which could be used to build a case for inauthenticity, interrogate 11 “a lot of clubs cater to a wide-ranging middle class”, says Mini Mathur, who hosts MTv india’s “MTv Classic” programme. “half of the people who go to clubs love hearing Punjabi bhangra and will just sit and sulk if you’re playing techno or rave music. And on the other hand, there’s the people who just have to hear trance music and the people who just want to go out and have a good time. so the crowds in the clubs are very diverse” (Ferguson 2001: n.p.). However, a DJ in Kolkata’s Park Hotel club Tantra informed me that they played “that kind of music” (Bhangra and Bollywood) only for the rich Marwari youth up to midnight after which the real (techno, trance, jazz) music began (DJ Shreya, personal communication 2006).

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essentializing narratives through which authenticity or inauthenticity is produced. The dichotomy between global youth and local others is flawed on account of its association of particular forms of experience with authenticity and denunciations of others as inauthentic. Their alienation from indigenous languages and cultural traditions, while underlining their cultural poverty, cannot be cited as the basis of pseuds’ inauthenticity because they embody the confusions and anxieties of post-colonial indian modernity. The polarization of privileged inauthenticity and deprived authenticity misrepresents youth differences because both jats and desis, while ridiculing pseuds, evince a desire of the pseuds if only to access privileges pseuds are believed to possess. Patrick Imbert borrows Girard’s appropriation mimesis to show that in the post-colonial or postmodern context mimesis is not necessarily negative. The appropriation mimesis, as defined by Girard, “refers to two groups or individuals in competition for an object” who act as doubles, “each imitating the other’s attempt to triumph and prevail” (Imbert 2007: n.p.). Pseuds’ desire for Western modernity is not autonomous but mediated through the desire of the other, who seems gratified with its possession. Though jats and desis disavow interest in the West, they have secret pseud aspirations for the pseud appears to be gratified with privileges they themselves desire. on the other hand, both the West and the diaspora desires a bit of the Panjabi other to have a taste of the authenticity that the West is perceived as lacking. Desire of the other that connects all youth cultures leads to a mutual appropriation in which the global and local music industry cannibalizes the jat but is in turn appropriated in jat, desi and pseud youth cultures. The appropriation mimesis complicates the relationship between Bhangra’s marginalized producers and elite consumers because consuming Bhangra can be as central to the production of indian youth cultures as its production. The cultural production of Panjabi youth is appropriated by all youth cultures to engage with the dialectic of tradition and modernity through the multiple significations produced by Bhangra. Though Bhangra is still produced by marginalized Panjabi youth, their implication in the culture industry and Bollywood commerce partially absolves its consumers of the guilt in its enjoyment. rather, desis, jats and pseuds are equally complicit in the appropriation of Panjabi harvest music to their own agendas. in contrast to Bhangra’s resistance in British asian youth cultures, Bhangra participation in indian youth cultural politics occurs without an overt resistivity except in Panjabi subcultural interrogation of the hindi-hindu hegemony. even Panjabi subcultural resistance is appropriated in Bhangra’s naturalization as Bollywood music or dance music in which Bhangra producers are equally complicit. But Bhangra resistance occurs through the very mechanisms of the cannibalizing music industry as its mainstreaming poses a serious threat to the hindi-Urdu hegemony in the popular cultural space. Considering that national identity has been represented in popular culture largely as hindi-hindu, the Panjabi incursion opens a room for the negotiation of regional identities with hindi domination. Unable to compete with pseuds and desis in the space of production in which linguistic competence is still articulated with a social and cultural, if not economic

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capital, jats gain control of the space of leisure and consumption. even though this space is conditioned by stereotyped representations of jats, its articulation of masti and fun on the Panjabi body permits the regional voice to be heard in the contested popular cultural space. The contentious space of youth cultures where jats, desis and pseuds negotiate the meanings of national identity that has been conventionally represented by dominant elite groups addresses “the language problematic” of the indian nation. Panjabi music’s mainstreaming interrogates multiple linguistic and cultural hegemonies – of the elite speakers of English, as well as of the Hindi-Urdu cultural elite and upper caste Panjabi speakers that intersected in the production of Indian modernity after independence. Though the hindi-Urdu narrative of popular culture reproduced these hegemonies differently from those of the sanskritized official media, the idealized nationalist subject of indian popular culture, particularly in the Hindi film, was Hindi-Hindu. Bhangra’s displacement of the Urdu ghazal in Hindi film and popular music symbolically enacted the rise of Panjabi power in popular culture that was symptomatic of new equations between hindi and indian vernaculars through the resurgence of regional politics. similarly, its invasion of global popular culture provides it with the visibility through which it can confront elite pseud cultures. Panjabi’s mainstreaming in indian popular music and incursion in global popular cultures deflates pseud pretensions to global citizenship and hindi’s domination of the national public sphere while pointing to alternative narratives of indian modernity that are not predicated on colonial english or post-colonial hindi. Bhangra’s consumption by jat, desi and pseud cultures also illustrates how new global cultures are inserted into historical struggles over the meaning of modernity in post-colonial nations. While consuming Bhangra, each engages with the dialectic of tradition and modernity in the post-colonial nation. Bhangra, in its signification of an ideology of masti or fun, becomes the site for the contestation of the representation of indian tradition as ascetical and Western modernity as hedonist. The production of an idealized spiritual indian self in opposition to a materialist Western other in indian nationalism is revealed as contradicting the balance between the spiritual and the material, the body and the mind in indian ontological systems through the excessive pleasure signified by Bhangra. The consuming body of Bhangra is juxtaposed against the emaciated body of the ascetic to interrogate essentialist representations of india. The body of the Panjabi other in Bhangra emancipates the indian youth from the underpinnings of brahmcharya in the high achievement focus of middle-class cultures. however, the restriction of Bhangra consumption to spaces of leisure and consumption rearticulates brahmcharya with the yaari gang through which it has traditionally been negotiated. Though its production in Sikh youth subcultures questioned the high achievement ethic of middle-class culture, Bhangra is integrated within middle-class ambition through its use as release from the stress of a highly competitive academic and corporate world. Performed at a time and space demarcated from the workaday world, Bhangra is resignified as play

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and restored to the traditional moonlit performance at the end of a day’s hard work. Though its space might have shifted to the nightclub or the open ground, Bhangra’s performance in secluded places allows the retention of parental authority in all other spheres in the same way as the yaari gang does. While indian youth might still continue to be guided by the ascetic brahmchari ideal in the workaday world, the pursuit of pleasure might be permitted in the formation of yaari gangs converging on Bhangra. Dance may be viewed as a metaphorical release from the restriction and strictures that continue to regulate youth conduct in indian society. While the individual is still required to submit to strict societal norms with respect to mixing and dating, dancing offers a temporary reprieve from those repressive structures and disciplinary regimes, which have been designed to regiment youth behaviour. While youth might still be required to observe those norms during the brief interval of dance, these structures are temporarily relaxed if not suspended. But dance, more than providing a space to youth where they might express themselves free from parental control, enacts the dialectic of the material and the spiritual that has thrown indian society into a deep crisis through the dissemination of highly attractive images of materialist consumption through the global media. youth cultures resolve thorough the space of performance the desire for the repressed body denied in the spiritualist narratives of the indian self. Through dance, it articulates its resistance to the disciplinary apparatus through which the youth body is controlled and oriented towards goals set by the parental generation. Desi youth dances its difference from those essential narratives of indianness dedicated to the attainment of intangible pleasures in the name of tradition. Through dancing the Bhangra, it emancipates the repressed body from the spiritual weight of tradition.

Chapter 8

Performing the Panjabi Body recent cultural theory has emphasized the continuity between aesthetic and social performance. The cultural politics of performance that has now been normalized in music and dance studies began with richard schechner’s revelation of the flows between “social drama” and “aesthetic drama” (1977). Victor Turner’s complex elaboration of van gennep’s concept of the liminal is particularly useful in understanding how the “anti-structure” of liminal activities corroborates Milton Singer’s view of performance as affirming cultural traditions (Turner 2004: 84). But Turner also coined the notion of the liminoid to describe the activities of modern industrialized societies, which do not offer the kind of general cultural affirmation possible in the liminal activities of pre-industrial communities. Liminoid activities differ from the liminal in marking sites where conventional structure is no longer honoured and, being more playful, has the subversive potential of introducing structures that may develop into real alternatives to the status quo. Turner’s notion of ritual performance as anti-structure, as well as his view of liminoid activities as “the seedbeds of cultural creativity”, was underwritten with its potential for subversiveness (Carlson 2004: 19). While performances that Turner termed liminal challenge conventional structures, they do so ultimately to reaffirm these structures thus inverting the established order without subverting it. on the other hand, his notion of the liminoid incorporates sutton-smith’s idea of the disorderly quality of liminal activities, which may involve more than “letting off steam” from “an overdose of order” as they could be undertaken “because we have something to learn through being disorderly” (Carlson 2004: 19). Along with Turner’s liminal and liminoid, geertz’s distinction between “deep play” and “shallow play” in performance can help us understand Bhangra’s performance of communitas in the way Johann Huizenga defined it. Geertz believed that only performances involving the participants in “deep play” were likely to seriously engage with fundamental cultural codes and ideas (Carlson 2004: 20). But Bruce Kapferer disagreed with him by arguing that since both performers and audience were so involved in the activity in “deep play” that reflection could not occur, the distanced experience of “shallow play” should be seen as allowing cultural reflection full play (Carlson 2004: 20). Though Johann Huizenga’s conservative view of play laid an emphasis on the solidifying role of cultural performance that resulted in the strengthening of cultural assumptions, the reinforcement of a community spirit of consciousness or communitas that he regarded as the basic feature of play can also be produced through the subversive play of the liminoid (Carlson 2004: 22). randy Martin’s brilliant study, Critical Moves, that probes the relationship between dance, politics and cultural theory offers concrete examples and

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methodologies for investigating the link between embodied practice and cultural politics (1998). Of particular interest is Martin’s notion of mobilization or “the reflexive mobilization of the body”, which displays, “in the very ways that bodies are placed in motion, traces of the forces of contestation that can be found in society at large” (1998: 6). Martin proposes “a conception of the body not as a stable presence already available for appropriation but as a composite entity mediated across a conflicted space of the imaginary (the representational domain where images appear) and the performative (the practical means through which imaginary forms are enacted)” (1998:109). He argues that “dance both appears in the conjuncture of the imaginary and performative spaces and puts the constitutive features of a composite body on display” and believes that these two dimensions of bodily composition are on display in hip-hop (1998: 109). Martin proceeds to explore though corporeality the linkage between nationalism and multiculturalism in the United States. Through an examination of Ice Cube’s music video “Wicked” and his own experience in an aerobics class that employed hip-hop moves, he proposes an alternative model of multiculturalism and its relationship to cultural difference. i borrow Martin’s idea of the composite body of dance to propose Bhangra body as a composite body mediated in the space of the imaginary and the performative in order to rethink its imagining of communitas.1 as imaginary, the media provide a virtual space in which bodily identities can circulate. as performative, it eludes any simple representation or appropriation. A similar linkage between the image and the referent, the virtual and the real, the imaginary and the performative may be seen on display in Bhangra. ever since the formation of the nation state, multiple voices repressed by the rashtriya ekta (Unity in Diversity) narrative of the Indian nation state have been struggling to be heard to insert the polysemy that constitutes indian multiculturalism. at different points in the nation’s history, their simmering discontent has violently erupted in secessionist movements interrogating the Unity in Diversity ideal. among this, “the Panjab problem”, as it has been euphemistically named, in which ethnic difference is imbricated with religion, has become the test case for the kind of societal belonging that was imagined in the formation of the nation state. it is from this socio-political context that Bhangra emerged as national music in the 1980s and, therefore, illustrates, more than any other dance, the linkage between the social and the aesthetic. The composite body of Bhangra is mediated between virtual images and Bhangra performances. Before moving on to examine the signification of the body of Bhangra in contemporary culture, i want to indicate the national geography of ethnicity that the 1 Turner speaks of two models for human relatedness one which is a “structured, differentiated, and often hierarchal system of politico-legal-economic positions with many types of evaluation and the second of society as “an unstructured or rudimentarily unstructured and relatively undifferentiated comitatus, community or even communal of equal individuals who submit together to the general authority of the ritual elders” and uses the Latin term “communitas” to describe this modality of social relationship (Turner 2004: 80).

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body of Bhangra must engage with. nowhere is the overlap between the biological and the social in the production of the body as evident as in the Panjabi warrior or vir body.2 Embodiment has been historically central to Panjabi self-definition since the production of the khalsa body during the Mughul period and that of the martial races in British imperialism.3 Whether the hardiness of the Panjabi body is attributed to Panjab’s invasion geography and the aryan invasion theory or to the construction of the warrior in imperial histories, the idealized Panjabi body, both in its inscription as “the sword of hindus” in the Mughul era and as “the martial race” in the British empire, is unambiguously that of the vir, or of the brave warrior. The mobilization of the vir body and its kinesics in the rigorous expressive form of Bhangra needs to be examined in relation to the centrality of embodiment in Panjabi self-constitution and ascription. Foucault’s examination of the body of the soldier in Discipline and Punish uncovered how the body was disciplined through regimens and routines (2003). While Foucault’s point is to prove how the posture and movement of the soldier were overwritten by his interpellation by the state, he also shows that the soldier bore certain signs: “the natural signs of his strength and his courage; the marks, too, of his pride; his body was the blazon of his strength” and “his attitude belonged for the most part to a bodily rhetoric of honour” (Foucault 2003: 135). The body of the soldier or the vir has historically been mapped on the Panjabi body. Brian Keith Axel’s incisive examination of the centrality of the body in Sikh subjectivity, which foregrounds visible signifiers of the five Ks, misses the invisible markers that define not only the Sikh but also Hindu and Muslim Panjabi bodies (Axel 2001). since this body often intersects with that of the rajput sardar or warrior and that of the jat landowner, its disengagement from the Sikh body and distribution over other Panjabi castes and sects has produced the idealized body of the vir, the body of the warrior or kshatriya corrupted to khatri 4 in Panjab.5 The Panjabi contempt for the ill-nourished, spare body of the Brahmin intersected with imperial politics in the naturalization of the vir ideal of the lamba uchcha gabru (tall and well vir (Panjabi: brave, brother) is also used as a qualifier for the warrior. Khalsa (pure) is a particular movement in Sikh history when Sikhs were produced as a warrior community by the Sikh Guru to resist Muslim invasion. The visible signifiers of the Sikh body, including the five Ks, date back to the formation of the khalsa. 4 in Panjab, the khatri (adaptation of the Sanskrit Kshatriya – members of the hindu military order assigned with protecting dharma and serving humanity) caste enjoys a higher status than all other castes. 5 in Punjab Castes, sir Denzil ibbetson wrote: “… the original rajput and the original jat entered india at different times in its history. But if they do originally represent two separate waves of immigration, it is at least exceedingly probable, both from their almost identical physique and facial character and from the close communion which has always existed between them, that they belong to one and the same ethnic stock; and it is almost certain that the joint Jat Rajput stock contains not a few tribes of aboriginal descent, though it is probably in the main Aryo-Scythian, if Scythian be not Aryan” (1981). 2 3

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built young man) emerging from the Vedic physiological division of the rajasik body of the kshatriya. The idealized body of the kshatriya collapses into that of the soldier in the construction of Panjabis as one of “the martial races”. Though British administrators tampered with traditional caste hierarchies by creating a class of khatri shopkeepers in Panjab, which it separated from the “martial race” of Sikh soldiers, the trace of the vir body is still visible in both hindu and Muslim warrior castes of khatris. Contradicting the spare, supple, agile, almost feminine form of the ardhnareeshwar naturalized as the male dancer’s body in classical indian traditions such as bharatanatyam and kathak, the Bhangra body and movements exude a robust masculinity.6 The Bollywood actor Nargis’s hailing Balbir Singh Sekhon’s dance as a “mardon jaisa naach” or a “dance befitting men” after watching him perform in the Republic Day Parade in 1954 evokes Bhangra’s generic masculinity (Pammi Bai, personal communication 2006). The folksinger Pammi Bai pointed out to me that the body’s masculinity, measured as height and build, was the prime determinant in the selection of youth trained to perform Bhangra at the first Republic Day Parade by the first official Bhangra ustad Bhanna ram sunami (Pammi Bai, personal communication 2006). One of the grounds on which Bhangra ustads contemptuously dismiss contemporary body movements masquerading as Bhangra is that the dance’s vigorous movements require extraordinary strength, physical fitness and stamina. Not all Bhangra practitioners may conform to the idealized body type of the vir. But it is not accidental that the dancers among them, like Gurdas Mann and Pammi Bai, should be products of the Sports Departments of two of Panjab’s well-known universities. Similarly, though the burly Daler Mehndi or the diminutive jazzy B hardly conform to the vir image, they are reputed to be indefatigable and radiate tremendous energy, if not strength, on the stage. My examination of a Bhangra dancer as the iconic figure of Panjabi masculinity would certainly not meet Panjabi approval for two reasons. Dancing and singing were traditionally labelled feminine pursuits and delegated to performer castes of mirasis. The contempt for performing bhands in Panjab is linked to Panjabis’ association of dancing and singing with femininity, which seems to have coloured rural Panjabi audiences’ response to gurdas Mann: “woh toh auraton jaise nachta hai” (He dances like a woman) (Atul Sharma, personal communication 2006). however, Peter Manuel in Cassette Culture makes the important point that it was Mann who broke away from the feminine, nasal style preferred by Panjabi folk legends like Asa Singh Mastana (2001b). Considering that Bhangra is a male dance and that Mann essays moves of a particular Bhangra genre, elderly rustics’ dismissal of his performance as feminine relates to Bhangra etiquette rather than to Mann’s moves. Though the first step to decouple Bhangra from mirasis had already been taken in Bollywood with Manohar Deepak performing in Naya Daur (1964), Mann was viewed as violating Bhangra etiquette by performing in front of 6 Ardhnareeshwara (half man, half woman) is a form of the dancing god Shiva in hindu mythology.

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an audience like a mirasi. But Mann’s performance, live and mediated, has become imbricated with the masculinity that has been mapped on the Bhangra body. While the Bhangra body is as Hindu and Muslim as it is Sikh, it is imbricated with the Sikh body in the Indian national imaginary and, as a result, becomes the site for the mapping of Sikh identity. An examination of popular cultural iconography reveals the successive mapping of rusticity and “jollity”, in addition to vitality, strength and terror, on the Sikh body in the Indian media.7 The images that predominate the representation of the Sikh subject in the Indian media are those of the “brave Sikh”, the “jolly Sikh”, the “simple rustic” and “the terrorist”, disseminated through “sardarji jokes” but largely through their visual representation in Bollywood and other media. Barring a few Bollywood texts such as those dealing with the themes of patriotism, which included the brave Sikh soldier, Bollywood invented visual equivalents of “sardarji jokes” to provide comic relief. it was television, however, which provided a real life counterpart for “the jolly Sikh” of Bollywood, in the inimitable figure of Jaspal Bhatti. The anchor of the humour show ulta Palta, jaspal Bhatti employed the earthy humour of “sardarji jokes” for social and political satire for the first time, and has spawned several clones.8 We can trace a history of the representation of the Sikh body on the nation’s map in which the fighting and laughing Sikh body turned into the bleeding body post 1984 and returned as the dancing Bhangra body in the 1990s. Through tracing this trajectory, we might be able to measure the sanguinity of the indian democracy as well as contestations over embodiment in which the Bhangra body has been made to participate. We begin with polarized representations of the brave and the jolly Sikh and their circulation in the Indian media. If the image of the brave Sikh was inherited from the hindu construction of the warrior caste and the British ascription of the martial race, the jolly Sikh was created through the mapping of rusticity on the Sikh body. These images, in circulation well before the switch to the new media, were excised during the decade long “Punjab problem” when images of the tortured body elided “sardarji jokes”. Post 1984, the image of “the jolly Sikh” was superimposed by that of the Sikh terrorist, who was cast in the likeness of the two Sikh assassins of the former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.9 7 “Most people seem to have some notion of the general outlook and behavior to be expected of Sikhs. If one is asked to describe a Sikh, the description will exclusively include beards, turbans, and possibly swords; a description of Sikh attitudes and behavior will have something to say about militant ideals and a willingness to perform violent deeds” (McLeod 1989). 8 jaspal Bhatti played the role of jolly good singh in the recent Bollywood hit Fanaa (2006). The ex-cricketer turned television anchor Navjot Sidhu plays on the stereotype of the jolly Sikh and is, in turn, parodied by the animated character of Pidhu on MTV. 9 These images of the violent Sikh, the world needs to be reminded, were in circulation for more than five years in the national media, contradicting the Sikh circulated images of the tortured body. They remained strongly etched on public memory despite attempts

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It is against this background that a new Sikh iconography, disengaged from the five Ks, emerged in the figure of the clean-shaven or mona Sikh Gurdas Mann. While the shorn hair and beard were as much a necessity as choice in the decade when visible Sikh signifiers invited suspicion if not surveillance, the Sikh body acquired a new visible self-image free of the five Ks in Mann. This new iconography, of the dancing mona Sikh, not only intersected with the vir ideal of the lamba chauda gora chitta gabru (tall, fair, handsome male) but also paved the path for the jolly Sikh in the following years. With the emergence of Daler Mehndi, whose corpulent body packed tremendous energy, the jolly Sikh was back with a vengeance in the 1990s. The media was saturated with positive images of the Sikh – dancing, joking, brave – that displaced the horrifying images of the terrorist. Today, with the images of the devout, brave and the jolly Sikh dominating the media, the Sikh becomes the site of transparency and positive rusticity that the urban indian is alleged to have lost. These mediatized images are confronted with a new ubiquitous image of the Sikh intellectual in the face of India’s Sikh Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. I shall investigate the images of the dancing Panjabi body emerging in the indian media in the 1980s that reinscribe the ethnic stereotype constructed by the national media. i shall also demonstrate how Panjabis perform panjabiyat and the nation performs an aesthetic of embodiment inscribed on the Panjabi body by reenacting its kinesics. Two iconic images of panjabiyat competed for space in the national imaginary in the 1990s – the immaculate body of sportsman-singer-dancer gurdas Mann and the grotesque body of Bhangrapop pioneer Daler Mehndi – on which was superimposed the smiling countenance of the “frequent-flier” Malkit Singh, shuttling between Ludhiana and Birmingham. The three Ms – Mann, Malkit, Mehndi – together ushered in a Panjabi dance revolution on Doordarshan, MTv and Bollywood that taught the nation and the world to dance to Panjabi tunes. Three images have remained frozen in the national imaginary – the young Mann holding a dhapli, Daler Mehndi in his characteristic leap and Malkit Singh with his trademark smile – and have shaped the Bhangra Nation’s dance etiquette.10 Though these have lately intersected with youth subcultural iconography of diasporic Panjabis and Bollywood choreography, Bhangra in india cannot be separated from the three Ms. Mann’s shoulder swings, Mehndi’s leaps, Malkit’s arm sways have even been incorporated in Bollywood choreography to produce a new dance style that goes by the name of Bhangra. From vilayet or england are beamed more images of Panjabi youth thrusting their shoulders and torsos forward, backward and sideways to create a new Bhangra mix.

by sensitive filmmakers to deconstruct the violent Sikh in films like Maachis (1996) and A Train to Pakistan (1997). As the noted journalist and author of A Train to Pakistan, Khushwant Singh noted, this was a sad period in Indian national history because few risked telling sardarji jokes. 10 Dhapli is a musical instrument used in folk performance.

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Let us examine one of Mann’s best known songs, “Apna Panjab Hove”, to understand the mapping of Panjabi masculinity on the vir body, specifically in the figure of the soldier that Mann personifies in the music video. The trope of the soldier returning home recurs throughout Panjabi folksong and is borrowed in Bhangra albums, including in Pammi Bai’s “Fauji”. The nationalist mapping of the independence ideal of jai jawan jai kisan (long live the soldier, long live the farmer) on the Panjabi body has a history in the construction of the “the martial race” and land reforms during the British empire when younger sons were encouraged to enlist in the army to ease pressure on land. The music video depicts Mann driving in an open army jeep to his home village, recalling similar Bollywood images of the soldier in post-independence national allegories such as haqeeqat (1964) and upkar (1967) and the more recent Soldier (1998) and Sarfarosh (1998). Mann, clad in military outfit, personifies the lamba chauda gora chitta jawan (tall, broad, fair youth) naturalized through the Bollywood Panjabi hero. However, unlike Bollywood images, where the soldier is caught on the front and can only feel nostalgic about the Panjabi village, the music video has the camera following the soldier back home. Mann, seated in an open jeep, and flanked by fellow soldiers, is seen speeding home in anticipation of the joy that awaits him. it is after his arrival in the home village and at the sight of familiar rustic pleasures that he breaks into Bhangra. As the camera trails Mann enjoying a drink with friends, lying on a string cot, enjoying a meal cooked by the loving grandmother, chewing sugarcane by the village, we see him in action. Through its framing Mann against “the green, green fields” of Panjab, his body transforms into the icon of a positively inflected rusticity that has become a familiar trope in subsequent Bhangra albums. This Panjabi iconicity inscribed on Mann’s tall frame was appropriated in the Bollywood blockbuster veer Zaara (2004) in which Veer’s (Shah Rukh Khan) tourist-guide tour through his Panjab home village has him engage with Mann, dressed in full Bhangra regalia, in Mann’s characteristic shoulder lock. Though his donning of ghungroos or anklets might not conform to his Panjabi audience’s norms of masculine etiquette, Mann plays up the virile vitality represented by the soldier figure even in his live performances. Mann also makes an attempt to preserve Bhangra’s male origins by performing either alone or with male dancers. Watching Mann perform “apna Panjab hove” on the stage is an experiential instance of the performance of Panjabi hedonism through bodily kinesics. Combining Bhangra moves with mime and acting, Mann enacts the urnarrative of the peasant soldier returning home in the music video on stage even though he performs in traditional lungi kurta. What struck me immediately in Mann’s live performance was the contrast between his masculine frame and moves and his sartorial flamboyance. But even when Mann stretched out a ghungroo clad foot, his masculinity, rather than femininity, was accentuated. While Mann embodied the idealized image of the peasant soldier, it was the happy-face, corpulent kesdhari sardar Daler Mehndi who turned out to be a national and a global phenomenon. In sharp contrast with Mann’s brave warrior figure, Mehndi enacts the jolly Sikh stereotype. Against Mann’s immaculate physique

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that embodies the vir, Daler Mehndi personifies the grotesque body of hasya rasa and exudes the carnivalesque flavour of Bhangra performance.11 if anything, Daler accentuates the carnivalesque through his playful gestures and movements and rarely allows his ample girth to get in the way. His performance signifies the body-in-pleasure even if it be the grotesque body abandoning itself to gross bodily pleasures. Mehndi seems to possess an inherent understanding of the exploitation of space and his performances exude irrepressible vigour and energy despite the handicap of his weight. Mehndi is only too aware of his personal limitations to attempt traditional Bhangra and invents trademark Mehndi hand gestures and leg hops, which he repeats with predictable consistency. Blacklisted in Panjab as a pretender, it is Mehndi and the Mehndi act that has become synonymous with Bhangra in the nation’s imaginary. india, but not Panjab, has accepted Mehndi’s tapna or “prancing about” as Bhangra so seriously that to the average indian Bhangra signifies jumping about in a wild fashion. Throwing one’s limbs about in wild abandon to the beat of loud music, the Bhangra body signifies to the nation a release from the stress of everyday routine. Bhangra it might not be in the pure sense but both the performer and audience accept it as such, fulfilling Dell Hymes definition of performance (Carlson 2004: 12). In true carnivalesque fashion, the world is turned topsy-turvy; there is mirth and laughter at the upturning of order. Mehndi’s performance breaks free of all rules, overturns all taboos and invites the body to break free of the established order by doing its own thing. Daler himself resembles the carnivalesque “lord of misrule” whose presence itself is an invitation to break all boundaries and do one’s own thing. Mehndi, more than Mann, incorporates anti-structure and his performances offer more scope for overturning the traditional order in a burst of creative energy that seems to flow from the body of the performer to those of the audience. in fact, Daler’s leaps and swings add to the traditional repertoire through his audience’s acceptance of his movements as Bhangra, even though purists might deny them the status of dance. The Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan has contributed significantly to improving the nation’s Bhangra literacy through his inclusion of at least one Bhangra “item number” in all his films. An excellent dancer, Bachchan appears to be in his element performing Bhangra numbers in all his movies from Mrityudaata (1995) to veer Zaara (2004). Bollywood choreographers have invented a new Bhangra choreography for Bachchan befitting his age and health to which he 11 according to the rasa theory, based on Bharata’s ancient text Natya Shastra (fourth century CE) on Indian aesthetics, the objective of art is to produce rasa or appropriate emotions in the mind of the listener, reader or viewer. all art is an expression of one of the nine rasas. hasya rasa refers to the emotion of happiness. “When rasa is applied to art and aesthetic experiences, the word signifies a state of heightened delight or anand, the kind of bliss that can be experienced only by the spirit. Rasa experience is not the physical understanding of a creation, but the emotion, or empathy – as opposed to sympathy. The artist creates a situation that the viewer enters – a world of illusion, Maya, –that leads the viewer to a state of empathic bliss” (Pande 2007).

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adds a memorable personal twist. Whether it is “na na na re” in Mrityudaata, “Makhna” in Bade Miyaan Chote Miyaan (1998) or “Shava Shava” in Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (2001), the Big B, as Bachchan is affectionately called, exudes an aura of raw masculinity attached to Bhangra in all his screen performances. Despite his poor health, Bachchan’s screen persona epitomizes the lusty energy of Panjabi baabe or elders that gurdas Mann’s 2005 hit “Baabe Bhangra Pounde ne” celebrates. The superstar’s popularity has introduced the Bhangra iconography, albeit Bollywoodized, even to the viewer unfamiliar with Bhangra’s Panjabi location. These Bollywood images, along with those circulated on MTv, have been etched so deeply in the nation’s imaginary as to facilitate the construction of the Bhangra nation. In addition to these homegrown images that circulate over the Indian skies that inflect not only Bollywood’s Bhangra grammar but also percolate to Bhangra albums produced in Panjab are those of British asian youth culture largely due to the popularity of vilayeti artistes like Sukhbir, Bally Sagoo and Jazzy B.12 British asian Bhangra travels from Birmingham to both Bombay and Bhatinda with such amazing speed that Indian youth may be seen mimicking the moves of British asian Bhangra stars from amritsar to Tiruvanthapuram. a comparison of homegrown music albums recorded by desi companies with those produced overseas offer a study in kinemic difference. Music albums of vilayeti artists Sukhbir, Bally Sagoo, Bombay Rockers, Bohemia and Panjabi MC may be easily identified by their predominant employment of black styles and kinemic codes. Their black kinesics and kinemes, including the inclination of the head and the torso, and facial expressions sit oddly both with traces of Panjabi kinemes and Panjabi beats and lyrics. Panjabi beats, overlaid with black youth subcultural styles and movements, are transmitted globally in Bhangra. as with desi genres, they cannot be disqualified as performance because they are performed and accepted as such by both performers and spectators. Considering that the black youth subcultural idiom of rap and reggae that Bhangra borrows is also inflected with virility, vitality and vigour, vilayeti music idioms exhibit a conflict between two masculine grammars. The masculine gestures of Panjabi yaari gang are overwritten here with those of the “Hood” and other black and Asian gangs. Yet desi and vilayeti intersect in their production of the universal emotion of energy irrespective of the slouch of the black body or the swagger of the Panjabi. Despite their generic preferences and the ranges they traverse between the pure and the hybrid, all Bhangra practitioners draw upon a specifically Panjabi kinemic repertoire that they manipulate in relation to other cultural kinemes to exude a particular level of energy that has come to be recognized as Bhangra.13 vilayet referred to england in the past but now it may be used to refer to other parts of the West with a white majority including the United states, Canada, europe and australia. 13 For example, jazzy B, the youth icon in Panjab, substitutes traditional movements with his own derived from a Panjabi kinemic idiom, which he lays over with a pop cultural gestural vocabulary. Like Mehndi, Jazzy, too, concentrates on a few basic hand gestures 12

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While Daler Mehndi’s presence in the Bhangra in Mrityudaata conformed its signification of the Sikh other, the gradual disengagement of the song and dance from the body of the jolly Sikh and its articulation to the Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan did not require the Sikh, or even the Panjabi male body, to signify pleasure. Instead, Bhangra and Panjabi have been resignified in Bollywood as a generic formula for portraying the body-in-pleasure by mimicking the sounds and movements of the Panjabi other. Though its romanticization of Panjabi hedonism and materiality misrepresents panjabiyat in a fashion similar to older stereotypes of Sikhs/Panjabis, Bollywood positions the Panjabi as the other through which the Bollywood subject may be constituted. Through its becoming one with the absent hedonist other who is a reminder of the lack in the self, can the Bollywood subject become whole? The incorporation of the fun-loving other in the self marks a new phase in Bollywood since the mid-1990s that necessitates an adjustment of its dharmic code. But the stereotyped association of Panjabi/ Sikh with hypermasculinity in the Indian imaginary also produces the Panjabi as the desire of the phallic other. Both as the small and as the big other, Panjabi song and dance signifies a new Bollywood ideology of pleasure to which diverse Bollywood audiences are articulated. The eroticization of the male body in hindi cinema has been viewed within the framework of homoerotic desire or a reversal of the gaze in which the well-toned bodies of Bollywood gods are exposed for the pleasure of the female voyeur. But Bollywood’s fetishization of the clothed body of the Bhangra dancer opens up a new rhetoric of the image outside gender politics. Bhangra in Bollywood, unlike the other song and dance sequences that fetishize the female body, also fetishizes the male bodies through a distribution of the gaze through which the males may gaze at females but also be gazed at.14 While a large number of Bhangra bolis leave the female object of adoration no position other than that of consenting to its objectification, an early Bhangra, picturized on Bachchan in Bade Miyaan, Chote Miyaan, verbally echoes the reversal of the gaze through which the male is fixed as the object of female desire:

and body movements, which have been adopted in Panjab youthful vocabulary along with Jazzy’s dress and hair styles. Jazzy’s small frame lacks the characteristic strength of the vir body but he makes up for it through agility and energy. Jazzy, too, performs a hybrid version of Bhangra but has been accepted as the signifier of youth identity in Panjab whereas Mehndi has not. 14 surprisingly, this fetishization of the fully clothed male body differs from the cult of the beautiful male body inserted in later Bollywood films as a feast for the female voyeur. While the display of the male body, particularly during Shah Rukh Khan’s dance, displaying his fabulous “six-pack abs”, to “Dard-e-Disco” in om Shanti om (2007), has been appropriated in queer readings of Bollywood, the male dancer’s body may also be viewed as the site of the desire of the repressed middle-class subject for the untrammelled other.

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mere pyar ka ras zara chakhna Taste the nectar of my love hoye makhna hoye makhna hoye Makhna hoye Makhna aise to chura ab ankh na Don’t avoid my gaze hoye makhna hoye makhna hoye Makhna hoye Makhna hum to tere kaayal hain i am enamoured of you teri chaahat mein ghaayal hain wounded by my desire for you na aise hum ko chhod ke ja … Don’t leave me unfulfilled … (“Makhna” from Bade Miyaan, Chote Miyaan)

Film theorists such as Prasad, Mishra and vasudevan have located the male fetishization of the male actor through their elucidation of the cinematic gaze in indian cinema in relation to the hindu practice of darsana that permits the devotee to both look at the image of the deity and also to be looked at (Prasad 1998; Mishra 2002; Vasudevan 2000). The frontal address of Hindi cinema, isolated by these scholars, also differentiates audience identification from the oedipal identification of the male viewer with the male characters in the film. The picturization of several of the Bhangra songs on amitabh Bachchan, who plays the father and is also nicknamed “God” in the film industry, reveals a slippage between the oedipal desire of psychoanalytic theory with the concept of darsana outlined by Indian film theorists. While oedipal desire is explained through the secondary identification with the father in old fashioned Freudian analysis, Bachchan’s christening as the “Big B” has faint echoes of the Lacanian big other through whose recognition the subject seeks to complete himself. While the ideological underpinnings of the Hindi film have been examined with relation to its hindu, even north indian subject position, it has not engaged with how its heterogeneous spectators are sutured into these subject positions. Considering that the popularity of Hindi films is not affected by ethnic location, what are the conventions through which the audience is forced to occupy fixed subject positions? alternatively, how do its heterogeneous spectators resist their suturing to north indian subject positions? how does the Panjab-centricism of the new Bollywood interpellate North Indians as Panjabis? Javed Akhtar’s view of the Hindi film as neither North nor South Indian but a different world is not altogether true because the indian or hindu subtext underpinning the Bollywood film is overwhelmingly Hindi, or now Panjabi (Kabir 2006). How do Bollywood spectators of diverse ethnicities negotiate these positions to which they have been articulated? The imagining of the Panjabi diaspora as the imagined viewer of Bollywood or the moulding of Panjabi marriage rituals into the great Bollywood Wedding does not explain why Bollywood’s heterogeneous audience should identify with that subject position or reproduce it in the performance of their festivities. an irate blogger, who calls himself “Muzzy”, comments on the Panjabification of Bollywood in a blog evocatively titled “Bollywood is not in Punjab” after being forced to view the film Baabul (2006):

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another disgruntled post by a blogger on Chennai Metblogs captures the ideological construction of the subject of the Bollywood film as Panjabi and the ambivalent identification and resistance by its non-Panjabi spectators. While the blog does not cite the reason for the youth wanting to be a mix of Panjabi/Western, it implicates mediated culture in ushering in “the marauding culture of the Panjabi diaspora in dress, food and TV serials” and in making Indian youth think “behaving like a Punjabi is cool” through the exoticization of this culture not only in Bollywood but also in Tamil movies. As he put it “Much of the contemporary South is being overtaken by rampant consumerism and the marauding culture of the Punjabi diaspora in dress, food and TV serials.” I think he has hit the nail on the head with this even though the southern states are progressing we are selling of our souls to get here. The youth of india generally is not at all concerned about being indian they more want to be Western or a mix of Punjabi/Western. Look at Chennai where the official language is ridiculed and alien languages are more accepted here. Why are we seeing Punjabi culture being shown in Tamil movies this is not our culture so why show it? I don’t see Punjabis trying to be Tamilian yet many of us think behaving like a Punjabi is cool. Punjabis are ridiculed in the west like Tamilians are in India people make fun of them at every chance they get and we want to be like them???? The south has sold it self out to MNC’s and will continue to do so unless people wake up and see the cultural loss that is occurring in India. (Ramesh 2007: n.p.)

Luhmann (1995) attacks the notion of text-subject relation in film studies and its positing of the subject-in-general. he proposes the idea of interdiscourse, which means that the subject, in addition to the text, is also constructed by a number of discursive practices and social relations that might contradict the position of the subject articulated by the text. The second important point that he makes is that subjects of texts are not homogeneous but heterogeneous and come into being in a multiplicity of discourses, which they bring into their meaning of texts. Therefore, there cannot be a single reading of texts or a single subject position but a multiplicity of subject positions when the text is received by subjects constructed by diverse discourses. Unlike the imagined Panjabi subject who might identify with the romanticized Bhangra dancers and enact their collective memory of Panjab by

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performing Bhangra, other indian ethnicities’ enjoyment of Bollywood Bhangra would be mediated by stereotyped perceptions of Panjabi from which they would normally dissociate themselves. The Tamil or Bengali viewers would bring to their decoding of these images a cultural knowledge of the other community through which the text is mediated. Their pleasure in the images of hedonist abandon would have to be balanced by injunctions against crass corporeal pleasures in their own cultures, which means that their identification with the filmic situation would have to be preceded by a jettisoning of their concrete social identities. The non-Panjabi identification with Bhangra performance in Bollywood film requires a simultaneous dis-identification, a schizophrenic split that might be interpreted against the stereotyped representation of panjabiyat in other indian imaginaries. The non-Panjabi spectator identification with the imagined Panjabi subject of the contemporary Bollywood film requires that the spectator recognize himself in the Panjabi other. The desire for the idealized full-bodied Panjabi male constructed as the Bollywood subject is nullified by the revulsion for the stereotyped depiction of Panjabi as peasant. The ambivalence in Bhangra’s appropriation by non-Panjabi ethnicities in the construction of a romanticized indianness comes from their distancing from Panjabi “crassness” while identifying with family-orientedness articulated through Bollywood Bhangra. Unlike Panjabis, when Tamilians, gujaratis, Bengalis or rajasthanis dance the Bhangra, they are impersonating the Panjabi other who is both desired and disavowed. The seduction of the bodyin-pleasure signified through Bollywood Bhangra cannot be ascribed to a secret diabolical design on the part of Bollywood’s Panjabi directors to interpellate the subject as Panjabi, for its heterogeneous audience decode these images against their own socio-cultural milieu. While Bollywood Bhangra is dismissed by Bhangra scholars as mimicry, Bollywood viewers’ mimicking of Bhangra enables them to perform the Panjabi other, so different from the self. vijay Mishra has related the inclusion of the music clip in new Bollywood films to address the diasporic nostalgia for marriage song and traditional festivities (2002). One could add that the music clip is also included in deference to the format of MTV on which Hindi film music is now circulated. While both Mishra and Uberoi (1998) provide a logical explanation of the naturalization of the wedding song to accommodate diasporic nostalgia or middle-class realism, neither cares to elaborate why Panjabi song and dance should be naturalized as wedding song or be deployed to stage festivity. a former editor of the popular indian women’s magazine, Femina, similarly expresses her surprise at “The great Bollywood Wedding” replacing “South Indian kalyanams, Maharashtrian lagnas, Punjabi shaadis, Bengali vivahas or rajasthani lagans”, but does not realize that the ceremonies that she names as constituting the great Bollywood Wedding have a specifically Panjabi resonance (Patil 2004: n.p.). The naturalization of Panjabi wedding as the great Bollywood Wedding accounts for Bhangra’s naturalization as Bollywood festive dance and its performance at festivities by all ethnic groups. The dance revival at family weddings in india can singularly be attributed to Bhangra’s nationalization via Bollywood.

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not only weddings but all festivities in the nation – sacred or secular – are marked with Bhangra-style dancing, disengaging Bhangra from its specific Panjabi location in the process. Through its Bollywoodization, Bhangra has crossed cultural and linguistic barriers, invading the ritual space of other ethnicities. inherently resistant to adopting ethnic modes, other than their own, diverse indian ethnicities have received and accepted Panjabi music as Bollywood song as readily as modern indian women have accepted Panjabi salwaar kameez as the national workwear. In spite of elders’ approval of what they term “crass” Panjabi culture, youngsters of other ethnic groups have adopted Bhangra-style dancing and singing in their own rituals and celebrations. Like at the other wedding rituals named by Patil, Bhangra dancing is as likely to be performed today at a Bihari wedding as at the Maharashtrian ganapati festival or at the gujarati navaratri celebration, supplementing other forms of singing and dancing in approximation to The great Bollywood Wedding or celebration (2004). Thus, Bhangra’s Bollywoodization, a cause for great concern to Panjabis, makes it function as a shared code that enables various indian ethnicities to construct indian tradition with which it meets or replies to a globalized modernity (Rajadhyaksha 2003). In this reincorporation of Bollywood Bhangra into traditional ritual for the purpose of performing family values and togetherness, i see another instance of Bollywood’s mediating impact at work whereby the Indian subject once again reinscribes Indian modernity as family values in spite of and within the idiom of the market. Bhangra’s complementing or substitution of song and melody with the fast beats and high energy body language of dance also facilitates its induction as indian dance music in india’s growing club culture. While Bhangra might perform traditional ritual in community functions and festivals, it performs modernity as indian dance music. indian youth may be seen dancing to Bollywood Bhangra numbers in the various discotheques and nightclubs that have mushroomed in indian metro cities and at parties. a different aspect of Bhangra, namely the rhythm and the dance, gets appropriated in the performance of indian youth identities. as background music in clubs and parties, Bollywood Bhangra is disengaged both from its film and real contexts by youth in constructing youth subcultures. Indian youth have discovered in Bollywoodized Bhangra an essentialized indian beat, which they employ to resist global youth culture. here, too, diasporic youth proved to be the catalysts in helping elevate Bhangra as the signifier of Indian difference in a homogenized global musical universe. To what extent does the virtual impinge on the real? What happens when the virtual martial or hedonistic body disseminated through the Bollywood film or music video comes into contact with bodies in real space? To answer this question we might want to explore how the ethnicized images of the Panjabi circulated through the media are reversed by the music video and their impact on Bhangra performances in real settings. i am interested in revealing the corporeality of the tensions between terror and pleasure mapped on the Bhangra body in the dialogue between different voices and bodies that Bhangra enables on the dance floor. How does the dissemination of virtual bodies in digital space modulate the kinesthetic

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and acoustic of the nation, compelling real bodies to perform/enter the other by mimicking the other’s posture and movement? How does it release the body from its workday stress and articulate it with the body-in-pleasure of Bhangra? Bhangra performance is a culmination of formulaic rituals performed in a set sequence. The interweaving of song, music, dance and ritual in traditional Bhangra contexts is visible in the celebration of festivals such as the annual lohri festival on the 13th of January every year (Khushwant Singh 2004 n.p.).15 The eminent Sikh journalist, Khushwant singh’s memories reconstruct traditional lohri performance in Panjab. Singh recalls that by the end of the first week of January small groups of boys would ring his doorbell and “start chanting some kind of doggerel with each line ending in Ho” (Singh 2004: n.p.). sister-in-law has slippers on her feet saalee paireen juttee jeevey Sahib dee kuttee Long may live the sahib’s bitch. kuttee no nikalya phoraa The bitch developed a sore jeevey Sahib da ghora Long live the sahib’s horse. ghorey uttay kaathee The horse has a saddle jeevey Sahib da haathee Long live the sahib’s elephant. hathee maarya padd The elephant let out a loud fart dey maaee daanya da chajj it gave the old woman a start (Singh 2004: n.p.)

singh points out that the boys would never be sent away empty-handed as “turning them away is considered inauspicious”. however, if their demands were not fulfilled, they would curse the owner of the house, describing him “as a close-fisted miser with ho, ho appended to the curses for good measure” (2004: n.p.).16 Like all traditional rituals, the celebration of lohri is sanctified through an origin myth and an accompanying song. The lohri tale may be traced back to Dulla Bhatti, a

“Lohri marks the end of winter on the last day of Paush, and beginning of Magha (around 12th and 13th January), when the sun changes its course. It is associated with the worship of the sun and fire and is observed by all communities: Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Christians. To the best of my knowledge, it is an exclusively Panjabi festival. Ceremonies that go with it usually comprise making a small image of the Lohri goddess with gobar (cattle dung), decorating it, kindling a fire beneath it and chanting its praises. The final ceremony is to light a large bonfire at sunset, toss sesame seeds, gur, sugar-candy and rewaries in it, sit round it, and sing and dance till the fire dies out. People take dying embers of the fire to their homes. In Panjabi village homes, fire is kept going round the clock by use of cow-dung cakes” (Khushwant Singh 2004: n.p.). 16 Singh adds that while these boys would have been satisfied with gifts of crystal sugar, sesame seeds or gur in his home village, they would expect to be paid money in Delhi (Khushwant Singh 2004: n.p.). 15

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Robin Hood-like character who robbed the rich to pay for the dowries for the daughters of the poor.17 Lohri Song (1) The Boys song (the “ho”s are in chorus): Sunder mundriye ho! sunder mundriye ho! Who do you have tera kaun vicaharaa ho! The groom with the tandoor dullah bhatti walla ho! The groom’s daughter got married dullhe di dhee vyayae ho! He gave 1 kg sugar! ser shakkar payee ho! The girl is wearing a red suit! kudi da laal pathaka ho! But her shawl is torn! kudi da saalu paatta ho! Who will stitch her shawl?! salu kaun samete! The uncle made choori! chache choori kutti! The landlords ate it! zamidara lutti! he made the landlords eat a lot! zamindaar sudhaye! bade bhole aaye! Lots of innocent guys came ek bhola reh gaya! one innocent boy got left behind sipahee pakad ke lai gaya! The police arrested him! sipahee ne mari eet! The policeman hit him with a brick! sanoo de de lohri te teri jeeve jodi! (give us lohri. long live your jodi! (Cry or howl!) [Cry or howl!])18 pahenve ro te pahannve pit!

*** on 13 january and 13 april every year, the sardar-owned, open-air restaurant sahara, in the indian institute of Technology Kharagpur, screens off a generous space for the celebration of lohri and baisakhi, the covered space serving as the DJ console and the dance floor. Chairs are arranged in a circular fashion around 17 “apparently the central character of most Lohri songs is Dulla Bhatti, a Muslim highway robber who lived in Panjab during the reign of Emperor Akbar. Besides robbing the rich, he rescued Hindu girls being forcibly taken to be sold in the slave market of the Middle east. he arranged their marriages to hindu boys with hindu rituals and provided them with dowry. Understandably, though a bandit, he became a hero of all Panjabis. so every other Lohri song has words to express gratitude to Dulla Bhatti” (Khushwant singh 2004: n.p.). 18 The following interpretation of the song is as given by Dr harbhajan singh, former head of Panjabi Studies, University of Delhi. I would like to thank Arvind Kalia for bringing these versions of the lohri song to my notice. “sundari was an orphan. her chacha was a zamindar. Badshah Akbar was to pass through that area so the zamindars decided that they will make a present of Sundari to the Emperor. Now ‘which vecharaa’ in the village would defend this beautiful (‘lal patakha’) and poor (the one with a torn ‘saalu’/shawl) girl’s honour? This news reached Dulla Bhatti. He quickly arranged her marriage as if she

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a huge pile of logs and a bamboo screen conceals the revellers from the rest of the diners. High speed PCs with high-powered speakers are smuggled from halls of residence hours in advance to prepare the music for the celebration. harpreet narang, a diminutive blonde-haired sardar from the UK, is officially appointed as the Dj because he is reputed to have the largest collection of Panjabi music. as the evening wears on, the fire is lit; hostel gangs trickle in and settle in the student area of the circle. Faculty, staff and their wives occupy the opposite end with Panjabi matrons stoutly guarding teenage daughters while the faculty affect dignified academic postures. All eyes are seeking the female students, the rarest species in the iiTs. half a dozen female engineering undergraduates, when they arrive, are unrecognizable in their Panjabi finery. All revellers stand in a circle around the fire as ritual prayers and libations are offered to lohri (Figure 8.1). Libations of cereals and nuts are first tossed into the lohri, or the ceremonial fire, to the chanting of a formulaic prayer and then passed around in the circle around the fire. Gals and guys help matrons pass around trays of the lohri prasad of phulle (popcorn), moongphali (peanuts) and revadi (a sesame candy), as revellers return to their places. The compere, Harjeet, calls out the first boli, inviting one and all to respond: “lathe di chaadar / ute saleti rang mayia” (coarse linen dyed grey, my love).

Figure 8.1

Lohri fire

This year it is an intrepid male, an ex-colonel turned security officer, who responds with “teri maan ne chadiyan sevian / asi mangiyan te pidan pai gayian” (your mother cooked vermicelli/ when I asked for some she had a heart failure). The colonel is trespassing, however, on feminine territory. The women take over from him clapping and chanting a litany of sithanhi complaints against the entire were his own daughter. But because of the hurry, they could not make proper arrangements. They performed the ‘shagun’ of marriage with only one ‘ser’ of sugar. But he did give a good thrashing to the zamindars who exploit the poor people.”

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clan of the husband except the favoured devar or husband’s younger brother.19 young unmarried girls sportingly join in the singing as preparation for the familiar rite of passage. The rest participate with “the Panjabi clap” (Figure 8.2), celebrated by Sukhshinder Shinda in his song, but I can sense them squirming in their chairs throwing impatient glances at harpreet. all harpreet needs is a signal from Mrs singh to roll out the Bhangra! as he plays the warm-up song and the compere urges the group to start dancing, only a few dare to step forward and perform some perfunctory, self-conscious motions. With each successive number, however, more and more boys enter the circle of dancers. others must be propelled by the entry of the half a dozen girls who had been standing demurely in a corner so far. initially segregated in their separate enclosure, they permit a few close friends to break into their exclusive circle but, before long, they are ready for a kinesthetic duel with their male classmates. shubhdeep, a strapping computer scientist who rarely needs an invitation to dance, is in his element by now. Prabhjot, a plump and pretty chemical engineer, challenges him and meets him step for step, even in the male ankle lock until he whirls her round and round in a kikali.20 This year a bold medical postgraduate demands that faculty wives observing from the wings should also join in the dancing.

Figure 8.2 The Panjabi clap

“hear, chhand parage – spontaneous, short verses of call and retort. Sithanhi – Playful insults used by the bride’s side to cut-down the groom’s family to soften the tension of their unequal status” (Schreffler 2004b: 200). 20 “game songs: Kikali – To accompany a whirling dance-game performed by girls” (Schreffler 2004b: 200). 19

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Mrs verma gives her consent on the condition that the Dj play Panjabi MC’s “Mundiyan To Bach Ke”. swaying and gyrating to the fast chartbuster, despite her enormous girth, Mrs verma is a Bhangra natural. other “madams” do not let their similar size come in the way of their pleasure in dancing the giddha.21 Their spouses, who had furtively slipped out, return in high spirits courtesy the forbidden drinks served by the owner Tikku, and are now game to throw professorial caution to the winds and do some quick, high jigs. This is the moment that Jassi chooses to preview his cousin juggy D’s unreleased “Tere naal nachna”. The buffet is announced but most leave reluctantly even after the conclusive railgaddi aayi (the train has arrived). Shubhdeep and Prabhjot are the last to leave with Shubhdeep’s shirt clinging to his back and hair plastered and Prabhjot’s silk salwar kameez soaked. The party is not yet over. as guests ready to leave, after-dinner volunteers arrive demanding lohri, singing the lohri song “sundar Mundriye”.22 *** Later, I reflect upon the evening in the light of everything I have read about Bhangra performance. The participants today have been Panjabi mainly and Bhangra, despite its consumption by non-Panjabis, appears to play the role of cementing Panjabi blood far away from “home”. The participants did not all dance the Bhangra in a specific Panjabi way but, regardless of how they were dancing it, it appeared to signify Panjab to all of them and therefore brought them closer, invoking a home that few of them may even be attached to, physically. Bhangra’s descent into the profane popular culture space may have desacralized the Panjabi harvest dance by removing it from its communal, participatory context into a culture of global consumption, but it is this hybrid that perhaps signified “Panjab” to those in far away Kharagpur. If Bhangra only betokens consumption, could its consumption itself not produce meaning for migrating Panjabis with different cultural trajectories and does this not salvage Bhangra from the logic of pure commerce?

21 “Giddha is in a unique position since, unlike most other dances, its practice was not significantly disrupted by the partition, and it still enjoys a place in rural events much like it did in the past. However, the process of nationalization that happened in the modern bhangra phenomenon has also affected women’s giddha. ignoring the fact that the historic regions of bhangra and giddha did not overlap, as well as ignoring the existence of what may be called men’s giddha, national programs in india have set up Bhangra as the ‘men’s’ dance and giddha as the ‘women’s’ dance of the Panjabi people” (Schreffler 2004b: 209). 22 Based on personal observation of Lohri celebration on 13 january 2004 at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. I thank all members of the Panjabi Society at iiT Kharagpur.

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“Bhangra nights”, held every Thursday in a lounge bar in metropolitan Bangalore, seemed like an ideal site for investigating the affect of the intersection of the composite body of Bhangra with other bodies because behind Bangalore, India’s global digital city, looms the kannada brahminical aesthetic of nammu bengaluru (our Bangalore). The collision of apna panjab (our Panjab) with nammu bengaluru (our Bangalore) and other Indian ethnicities unshackles the polysemy of voices and bodies contained by the indian national ideology of Unity in Diversity, or ek anek. i share here my observations of the play of the polyvocal dialogicity of the multiple bodies performing a different form of multiculturalism in Zero B, a newly opened lounge bar in the global city Bangalore that danced a difference in the conception of the nation in the ek anek narrative of Unity in Diversity.23 it is the Muslim assistant Manager and Christian Manager of the lounge bar who took the initiative to organize “Bhangra Nights” every Thursday in the bar located on the rooftop of a multiplex office complex on Residency Road. The location of the bar in the heart of the Bangalore nightclub circuit, between Brigade road and residency road, situates it in the discourse of free time that has been theorized in cultural studies. in a city, where panjabiyat is read either in the visible signifiers of the Sikh turban and beard or intersects with visible signifiers of the local Muslim constituency, my passing as Muslim earns me the filial support of the Assistant Manager, who not only whisks me through the crush of the club’s regulars but also helps me break the ice with diners. The Bhangra Night is conceived as an integrated culinary as well as cultural production of panjabiyat in downtown Bangalore. Panjabi favourites such as kadi chaul are on the list of chef’s specials followed by tandoori kukkad and dal makhani, and local Tamilian mridangam players have been called in to play the dhol.24 While this production of Panjabi locality occurs within the instrumental logic of the hospitality industry that has been quick to read profit margins in the influx of diverse Indian ethnolinguistic “techies” to the welfare city, it also releases a different dialogicity among the different ethnicities assembled there on their night out. The majority of guests are, in fact, software professionals of different ages, genders and ethnicities out to have a good time with friends, partners, colleagues, clients, associates and even family. There is a gaggle of gori tourists of all nationalities who met in Bangalore and decided to “chill out” and a handful of gore expatriates or overseas clients. My arrival almost an hour before the dancing begins gives me ample time to check out the ethnic identifications of the guests. Though there are a few young Panjabi couples among them, the guests consist mainly of single young urban professionals from different parts of the country relaxing after work with friends. 23 Bhasha anek / Dharma anek / rajya anek / Par ham sab ek (many languages / many religions / many states / but we are all one). Based on personal communications and observations at Zero B Bangalore every Thursday night from january to May 2005. 24 Kadi chaul is rice and dumplings, tandoori kukkad is tandoori chicken, dal makhani is black gram. The mridangam is a percussion instrument used in Carnatic music and is similar to the dhol.

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My inquiries into their musical preferences draw a lukewarm response at every table with one musically inclined individual deputed to answer my questions while others continue to eat or converse. But my persistence pays off and i get a gujarati, Maharashtrian and even a Tamilian to, at least, own up that they have heard Bhangra even if they might not enjoy it particularly. a young Tamilian surprises me by his knowledge of Panjabi hits but I am even more surprised by his middleaged client’s awareness of Panjabi music. at another table, i interrupt an after sale party to check out if Bengali bankers have a taste for Bhangra. The Kolkata Bengali pretends not to have heard it ever but the Mumbai Bengali honestly replies that he has heard some Bhangra but has stopped following it up. The final word is their boss’s: “I love Bhangra in moments like this”, he tells me twirling the stem of his glass. The goris prove to be most Bhangra literate. They have heard it and like it; one of them, from France, volunteers to translate for the entire group. as the drum beat begins, the French gori takes four long strides and leaps over the divider to break into Bhangra. Others tourists who follow her might not be able to do the Bhangra steps but are dancing away madly. The young couple i had spoken to earlier takes the lead to dance on another section of the rooftop lounge bar. More and more diners join in until the dining area spills over into the dancing. By midnight, not even an inch of space is left on the cramped rooftop as more guests pour in – an airhostess off-duty with a local student, three middle-aged south indian gentlemen accompanied by a gora colleague or client and many, many young couples who have streamed in while i chatted with diners. While families, older couples and middle-aged gentleman merely sway with drinks in hand, younger couples have moved indoors where all the action seems to be. it is on the dance floor that bodies – Bengali, Gujarati, Maharashtrian, Kannada, Tamilian, Malayali and so on, literate in Bhangra grammar, begin to contact and converse in Malkit Singh’s familiar ditty. The DJ begins tentatively with Sukhbir’s “Ishq Tera Tadpaye” and follows it up with a few more well-known songs to get the dancers in the Bhangra mode. A slim, dusky girl in a short dress is dancing by herself in the centre of the floor. The DJ compliments her and exhorts others to follow her. a few warm ups later, the audience is ready. They recognize the year’s international chartbuster “Mundian To Bach Ke” but attempt the steps gingerly. It is now that the DJ jogs their memory with Malkit’s “Kudi Patole Wargi”. Not only Gujarati but also Maharashtrian and local Kannadigas are swinging to Malkit singh’s praise song for the lass from gujarat. Boyfriends, lovers, spouses are still hugging the shadows while the girls dance away. Just then, Malkit Singh calls out “tootak tootak tootiyan” and the entire hall replies with arms raised upwards and forwards “hey jamalo”. As Malkit continues the boli, the responses grow louder and prompter until the entire floor bursts out in “hey jamalo tootak tootak tootiyan” as the song comes to a close. “gur nalon ishq Mitha” requires no prompting from Malkit because the crowd knows the pause when they must shout “aye haye” and the one when they must repeat “oye hoye”. just when it seems as if the roof would come down with the deafening shouts and cries, Daler Mehndi booms “gadde te na chaddi gadee te na chaddi” and the crowd booms back “bolo tara rara”.

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Not a single body on the floor remains standing and all are driven almost against their will to abandon themselves to the beat. Men and women of all ages, but mainly youths, are imitating Daler versions of Panjabi Bhangra, shouting, jumping and throwing their arms about. Daler’s high powered performance makes way for the Bhangra number from Dhoom (2004). As Tata Young exhorts one and all to “dhoom macha le”, Bollywood gestures displace those of the podgy sardar. as the noise reaches a crescendo, bodies seem to move almost without violation in wild abandon and the hall is a blur of shaking and swaying limbs and torsos. In unveiling the bacchanalian release through a working of the image of the composite body of Bhangra in the actual practice of dance in a nightclub, i might be rightly guilty of misrepresentation. But in this activity, which might seem to be no more than “letting off steam”, more is involved than physical release. The Bhangra body-in-pleasure must engage with the ascetic bodies of the jogis or “the athletes of self-restraint”, normalized in orientalist representations of the spiritual narrative of modern india through the emaciated body of “the father of the nation”, Mahatma gandhi. The dancing Bhangra body comes to signify to the nation a hedonist philosophy that is in conflict with the professed ascetic ideal constructed through the mind–body opposition in indian thought and culture. While most traditional cultures have placed the body and mind in a hierarchical relationship, the balance between the material and spiritual in indian thought was translated in orientalism as a privileging of the spiritual over the material. in the new imperial division, Panjabi became the sign of the body while the rest of the nation arrogated the spiritual description of the orient.25 The dichotomy of the satvik and the tamasik in the modern indian imagination essentially introduced a disbalance through the removal of temporality and vocation that contained the use of pleasure in traditional practice particularly through the chaturvarga philosophy.26 While the ideal of renunciation through the denial of pleasure might have been enjoined upon the jogi, the grihasth or the householder was allowed indulgence in pleasure, albeit in moderation. in the popular representation of the Panjabi body as hedonistic or epicurean, and its articulation in the khao piyo mauj luto mitro ethic underlining 25 Though this model of self-restraint is equally embodied in the “immaculate” body of the Buddha or Vivekananda, Gandhi invented a new corporeal semiotic in which the contours of the baniya body arrogated the signification attached to the brahmin’s body – abnegation and self-control. it is this body that dominates the representation of india as spiritual in post-colonial self-representations. 26 rajasik, tamasik and satwik are the three gunas that individuals are encouraged to cultivate in moderation in indian philosophy. Sattwa represents light, rajas dynamism and tamas lethargy or inertia. according to the Bhagwatgita: “Men of sattvik disposition worship the gods, those of rajasik disposition worship yakshas and lower gods, and even demons. While persons of tamasik nature worship spirits and ghosts.” Sattwik refers to a person with moderate appetites, devoted to the attainment of spiritual goals and one who radiates the light of knowledge. rajasik is the trait associated with royals who are fond of high living and possess tremendous dynamism and energy. Tamasik is used to define lethargic persons given to carnal pleasures (Gita for the Beginners 2007).

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Bhangra, one observes a polarization of the satvik and the rajasik strains in indian conceptions of the vir and the jogi that culminates in the idealization of the ascetic body. Further, the dichotomy is dislocated from its individual or caste location and inscribed in ethnolinguistic terms so that certain ethnic groups come to be classified as ascetic and others as hedonist. The naturalization of certain traits as constituting a community’s self-definition invariably reflects the relations of power obtaining between different castes. another misrepresentation created in popular cultural images of lusty Panjabis dancing the Bhangra with scantily clad women is the isolation of sexuality form virility in the vir body and its inscription with excess that belongs to the grotesque body. To put Panjabi epicureanism celebrated in Bhangra in perspective, the grecoroman framing of sexuality in a general constitution of the self is more helpful than the Christian separation of sexuality. Foucault, in “The Moral Problematization of Pleasures”, points out there is no equivalent of sexuality in Greek but the word “aphrodasia” encompasses “things”, “pleasures of love” and “sensual pleasure” (Foucault 1990: 35) to denote “the acts, gestures and contacts that produce a certain form of pleasure” (Foucault 1990: 40). Aristotle distinguished aphrodasia from akolasia or self-indulgence and the noble pleasures experienced on the surface of the body and held that “act, desire and experience formed an ensemble” (Foucault 1990: 42) in aphrodasia. secondly, self-indulgence was constituted not by prescriptions on what one should delight in or not delight in but through excess. And finally, sexual pleasure, one of a piece with other pleasures such as eating and drinking foods and wines, constituted analogous ethical material that had to be mastered by moderation. Though Bhangra participates in the bacchanalian ethic of excess and has a carnivalesque function, sexuality is isolated from eating and drinking and Panjabi aphrodasia in the popular cultural circulation of images of Bhangra reads like a gross indulgence of appetites. Through this fragmentation of pleasures, the Panjabi body comes to be represented as the immoderate body-inpleasure and opposed to the controlled ascetic body. The contest of the two bodies, ascetic and hedonistic is at play on the dance floor where men and women of all ethnicities, particularly youth, affect Panjabi kinesics to break free of constraints imposed by the moral regimes of regulation. in this manner, Panjabi bodily gestures and movements become the site for the construction of indian modernity. The battle between the hedonai and epithumai within the soul is now split into that between the hedonist Panjabi and the restrained brahmin body. For the same reason, when the “spiritual” aesthetic demands a re-examination, the Panjabi body-in-pleasure becomes the site for releasing the body of the nation from the soul. The return of the repressed body is what the dance boom in india in the 1980s and 1990s heralded. The press of bodies on the dance floor makes the body of the jogi collide with the body of the vir as well as with that of the “lord of misrule”. as the satvik national body contacts the rajasik and tamasik bodies signified by contemporary Bhangra, there is a breaking free of the restraints and prohibitions that inhibit the body’s movements and pleasures. as the rajasik kshatriya and tamasic mirasi body are made to couple with the idealized satvik

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body of abstinence, difference makes contact in this bacchanalian release of the body-in-pleasure guided by Bhangra sounds and images. it is as if by imitating the gestures and sounds of Panjabi dance, gujarati, Maharashtrian, Bengali and Kannada difference can enter the Panjabi body, which seems to promise infinite pleasure. Through the contact of these bodies with Panjabi sound and gesture, the repressed body breaks free of all taboos. Signifying infinite pleasure forbidden by law, the Bhangra body presents to the self the joy it excised in the process of the body–soul division and the naturalization of the soul. The repressed body returns in the image of the Bhangra dancer carrying the promise of all corporeal pleasures including eating, drinking and sexuality. Through its identification with the leaping, jumping shouting body, the self attempts to repossess the body and the pleasures it promises. The “aesthetic of embodiment” is restored in the house of illicit pleasures, in the culture of eating, drinking and mixed dancing forbidden by law. Dancers in the nightclub perform the aesthetic of embodiment by throwing their limbs and torsos about wildly in crude simulations of the Bhangra body-in-pleasure. The notion of the subject as divided is crucial in order to understand Bhangra’s role in the performance of indian modernity today. The deconstruction of the idea of the spiritual indian self always suggests its missing other, the material. in the repression of the material, the aesthetic of embodiment, the other comes to represent a lack in the self. That embodiment should have been ascribed on the Panjabi self in the polarized mind and body binary of the brainy Tamilian and the brawny Panjabi in the popular imagination is natural, but the Panjabi subject is inscribed with pleasure that has been excised from the self in the process. Forbidden by law to pursue pleasure, the self seeks to identify with the other in an attempt to compensate for the lack. The Panjabi hedonist other becomes the site for the play of the desires of the self to seek those forbidden pleasures that have been inscribed on the Panjabi body. images of the Panjabi body-in-pleasure disseminated over the national media produce in the spiritual self a strong awareness of its lack of jouissance and a desire of the hedonist other. Through mimicking the corporeal kinesics of the body-in-pleasure, the self attempts to appropriate pleasures that the body promises, and to make itself whole through identification with the hedonist other. Through its insertion in popular culture and the sinful nightclub, Bhangra is inscribed by excessive pleasure forbidden by law. yet it is the suggestion of excess that is required for the repressed body to be released from the injunction of the law. Through being like the other, dancing like the other, and feeling the other, the self desires to overcome its primal fragmentation.

Chapter 9

Bhangra nation Performing Panjbiyat through Bhangra Bolis Bhangra nation is the name of a dance school based in Mississauga, ontario, which organizes an annual Bhangra competition in which teams from Canada, the United States, the UK, and even India, take part.1 A Panjabi folk dance competition conducted in a Canadian suburban town, with the participation of groups from the homeland and the diaspora, might well serve as a metaphor for the collectivities converging on Bhangra performance in real and virtual places in the new millennium. Bhangra, in the process of its transmutation into global dance music, has expanded its traditional Panjabi constituency to embrace a wide crosssection of the national and global taste groups. as new Bhangra mutants perform multiple Panjabi and non-Panjabi identity spaces simultaneously, i have isolated three real and virtual identity spaces in which Bhangra acquires a social centrality, namely vilayeti (diasporic), desi (national) and Panjabi (regional) (Roy 2001). These identity spaces cross national, linguistic, regional, sectarian, class, caste, gender and ethnic boundaries to construct new ethnicities but also affirm traditional cultural knowledge and values. In crossing boundaries, the contemporary Bhangra map recovers the traces of undivided Panjab in language and culture superscripted by national cartographies in the construction of a Bhangra nation whose citizenship is open to new global communities. This chapter examines the new global imaginings of panjabiyat and the Panjabi nation to propose an ethnocultural and ethnospatial definition of the Panjabi nation by examining the new meanings of panjabiyat and communities produced in relation to Bhangra performance. Bhangra Nation is similar to the Sikh Nation in being a deterritorialized transnational topos of community that invokes primordialist objects to interrogate nationalist cartographies. But it is an inclusive narrative, which not only erases 1 “Bhangra nation is a Panjabi arts and cultural organization dedicated to showcasing the dance of Bhangra to the local community and educating others about the culture of Panjab, a northern state of india. The organization began eleven years ago when the founder, ranvir rai, hosted a competitive dance show for Bhangra and giddha teams at his undergraduate university. Today, Bhangra nation has grown into an internationally recognized, non-profit organization which holds an annual Bhangra competition in Toronto, Canada. The competition involves dance teams from around the world. Bhangra nation also provides the Mississauga community with professionally instructed Bhangra dance classes at its dance studio and continues to expand its mission in other areas” (Bhangra Nation 2007).

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but also extends boundaries to transform the meaning of panjabiyat in the global village. My contention is that the self-fashionings in Bhangra nation cross national, linguistic and religious boundaries to converge on cultural contiguity. at the same time, they point to future elective identities where commonality of concerns and interests rather than birth will be community producing. Through an examination of the lyrics and kinemes used in Bhangra, the chapter will demonstrate how Bhangra can include as well as exclude. it shows that while dance and music invite non-Panjabi communities to join the Bhangra Nation, Panjabi lyrics and kinemes reconstruct a boundary-crossing post-national Panjabi imaginary that recovers the memory of undivided Panjab. nonsense lyrics and formulae conventionally used in Bhangra performance play on a taken-forgranted knowledge shared by Panjabi speakers, which effectively shuts out the ghair stranger (Brah 2000). Though Bhangra’s generic lyrical marginalization enables its crossover, it locks Panjabi difference in untranslatable nonsense syllables, formulae and taken-for-granted knowledge of the rules of performance, which include as well as exclude by inviting non-Panjabi strangers to participate in the global dance music while shutting them out of the Panjabi place constructed by Bhangra’s ritual performance. Walter j. ong’s seminal study of orality and literacy might provide us with some useful categories for analysing Bhangra composition, though Bhangra can also be seen to deconstruct several of Ong’s distinctions (2002). Bhangra is part of an “agonistically-programmed” oral culture in which name callings, tongue lashings and their opposite, praise poems, illustrate the agonistic dynamics of oral thought processes. Traditional Bhangra performance is a rigorous ring dance performed to dhol beats with minimal lyrics fitted in the pauses in the form of bolian, a string of nonsense formulae improvised on the spot to respond to an immediate situation, which literally translates as “call and response”.2 The performance begins with dancers positioning themselves in a circle or circle-like formation, and one of them moving to the centre where the dholi or the drummer stands with the dhol or the drum.3 he introduces a boli and the dholi starts the next rhythm. The dancer initiates the moves on that beat and returns to the circle. Dancers dance to the new rhythm until another dancer steps out of the circle to the centre and changes the boli and the rhythm. The best known bolian formula is the one employed to begin a Bhangra performance. 2

“Boli – A “one line” verse, often linked together with others into longer sets, and capable of expressing much in a short space. Dhola – a West Panjabi form, of variable length, often expressing sentiments of great longing and romance. Mahia – a ‘three line’ verse containing one line primarily for the purposes of rhyme followed by two lines addressing a beloved” (Schreffler 2004b: 201). 3 “Dholi (incl. Bhrain, Jogi, Mirasi, Bazigar): An occupational category including professional players of dhol (barrel drum) that cuts across a few ethnic communities. Bhrain, the traditional village drummers, are primarily found in Pakistan. Dholis in india receive much of their income from accompanying dance performances” (Schreffler 2004b: 203).

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i was away for a dozen long years What did I bring back home?

The group responds by naming an object at random on which the lead singer improvises a couplet, and the dialogue between the lead performer and his circle of dancers continues as a simple question and answer sequence. The bolian format can accommodate several antinomical variations. it could be a simple call and response between the individual and the group or between different groups of performers, or it could be expressed in a dialogic verbal content. Though the formulae are fixed to particular occasions or celebrations, they yield ample room for creativity and innovation through their absorption of new themes and ideas. This ability to accommodate change and originality, which it shares with folksong, accounts for Bhangra’s contemporary popularity. Panjabi speakers, particularly of the Mastana–Kaur generation, believe that Bhangra’s popularity has silenced Panjabi song or geet.4 Poet artists like Gurdas Mann have, therefore, attempted to defend Bhangra lyrics against the allegations of frivolity and vulgarity by packing profound content into their highly original compositions.5 But their sincere intention to safeguard Panjabi tradition makes them overlook the fact that Bhangra lyrics are conventionally fluffy, nonsense formulae tinged with verbal irony, play and an earthy humour typical of folk compositions. Their impact comes from the audience’s recognition of stock formulae and the twist given them by individual performers in their delivery and employment in particular contexts. Though its lyrical content has been subordinated to the visual and acoustic components of Bhangra performance in new Bhangra mutants, it must not be forgotten that verbal content forms only a small part in the construction of meaning in any performance genre. Traditional Bhangra, as a beat or rhythm applied across narrative, lyrical and performative Bhangra genres, invariably privileges visual, acoustic and kinesic features over verbal.6 For lyrical depth, complexity and originality, one must turn to Panjabi geet and for stronger spiritual 4

Panjabi legends like Asa Singh Mastana and Surinder Kaur, who are erroneously classified as old Bhangra legends on Bhangra websites, are the best known practitioners of the Panjabi lokgeet or folksong, which they raised to great lyrical heights. But they also altered the psychodynamics of Panjabi orality by introducing the literacy parameters of originality, individuality and novelty. Their folklorization through their individual compositions in the folk repertoire testifies to the resilience of Panjabi folk. 5 “Vulgar lyrics were in vogue when I began singing. People often advised me to take another singer, preferably a ladki [girl], along. But I never compromised”, Mann proudly announces (qtd. in Sawant 1998: n.p.). 6 The 12 traditional dance genres are split among performative, narrative and lyrical. For example, sammi, a genre performed by females, is narrative. Dankara consists of sword play using minimal lyrics. Bhangra, jhummar, luddi, julli, dankara, malwai gidda and dhamal are male folk dances of Panjab. On the other hand, sammi, giddha, jaago and kikli are among the main female folk dances of Panjab.

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content, to shabad or Sikh spiritual verse because Bhangra is less geet (song) than nritta (dance) performed as ritual. The marginalization of lyrical to other content might also be contextualized against Bhangra’s ritual performance context in which the lines between ritual, song and dance are difficult to demarcate. The lightness, play and even bawdiness of Bhangra lyrics falls in place when they are viewed against their folk origins. Contemporary Bhangra mutants, notwithstanding their valorization of lyrical originality, continue to be governed by the rules of oral, formulaic composition by their retention of stock Panjabi formulae and nonsense words and coining of new ones. Though not all contemporary Bhangra artists might employ bolian, they retain Bhangra’s formulaic composition and participate in the call-and-response tactics by including repeatable loops. An examination of some well known Bhangra texts would suffice to illustrate how contemporary Bhangra mutants imitate traditional formulaic composition. Both pure and hybrid Bhangra texts deal with stock themes like love, friendship, separation, the beauty of the beloved or an object representing her, patriotism and so on. Bhangra songs are primarily paeans to the beloved, fetishizing her beauty in formulaic expressions: • • •

Balle balle te tor punjaaban di (Oh, the Panjabi belle’s walk!) (Sukhbir) Naag saambh le zulfan de (Gather your snake like tresses together) (Jazzy B) Ni sohniye, manmohniye (Oh beautiful one! Oh enchantress!) (Malkit Singh)

alternatively, fetishization is metonymically transferred to an object adorned by the beloved: • • •

Kaali teri gut te paranda tera laal ni (your raven braid and red paranda) (Asa Singh Mastana) Tera laal gharara (Your red skirt) (Hans Raj Hans) Koka koka koka (Your nose pin)

The object of adoration is usually showered with praise generally reserved for a deity, underlining Bhangra’s intersection with the Sufi tradition: • •

Kinna sohna tanu rab ne banaya (How beautiful the Lord has made you!) (Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan) Tu mannne ya na mannen asaan te tanu rab manya (Whether you agree or not I look upon you as God) (Wadali brothers)

romantic love is traditionally the most favoured theme in the harvest ritual, which displays strong undercurrents of courtship and mating:

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Gud naalon ishq mitha (Love is sweeter than jaggery) (Malkit Singh) Ishq tera tarpaye ho (My love for you tortures me so) (Sukhbir) Ishq da rog hai wallah / jindri noon laa naa baitheen (Don’t ever get struck by lovesickness) (Harbhajan and Gursevak Mann) Kareen naal kisi naal pyar / mundiaan ton bach ke raheen (Don’t you dare fall in love / beware of the boys!) (Panjabi MC)

romantic love is invariably expressed in hyperbolic sentiments in true bolian paana or praise song tradition: • • •

Dil chori sada ho gaya / ki kariye ki kariye (My heart has been stolen, what should I do?) (Hans Raj Hans) Don’t break my heart (Stereo Nation) Asi mar gaye (I will die) (Jasbir Jassi)

invitation to dance is another common theme: • • •

Aaja nach lai (Come and dance with me) (Hans Raj Hans) Munde bhangra pande te kudiyaan giddha pawan (The boys dance the Bhangra and the girls the giddha) (Sukhbir) Tannu nachdi wekh te kare ne mera ji (Watching you dance I too feel like joining in) (Kamal Heer)

However, Gurdas Mann’s rich lyrics avoid the beaten love track to explore another Bhangra motif, namely the love of the homeland: • •

Apna Punjab hove (I wish I were in our Panjab) Pind diyaan gali wich (In the lanes of the village)

The new Bhangra albums of Daler Mehndi and hans raj hans have them turning to virah, traditionally considered a feminine sentiment:7 • •

Dil naiyyon lagda mera (I am lost without you) (Gunjan) Nit khair manga sohnya (I pray for your wellbeing daily) (Hans Raj Hans)

Formulaic dependence, repetition, redundancy and plagiarism noted in Bhangra are governed by the contingencies of oral composition. The necessity for composing lyrics on the spot, at the performative moment, does not permit lyrical complexity or originality. Bhangra lyrics, by nature, proceed through a repetitive play on the same phrase or boli, substituting a single item in each succeeding line. Yet stock phrases or nonsense formulae, strung together to fit a particular rhythm or beat, 7 “Lamentation songs: Kirana/vainh – a wail performed by a woman solo. Alahaunhi – a breast-beating dirge by a group of women, led by a Mirasan or Nain” (Schreffler 2004b: 200).

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offer ample room for individual creativity and originality in several ways. The pleasure of Bhangra lyrics issues not from using different words to say different things but from saying the same word to say the same thing differently. The composer of Bhangra lyrics takes delight, not in verbal originality, but in the play on nonsense syllables and phrases. even if a verbatim translation of nonsense verse were possible, it would foreclose the verbal play based on improvisation, punning, innuendo and ambiguity that contributes to the enjoyment of Bhangra lyrics. The most common play in Bhangra occurs by introducing variations on stock formulae. Let us look at some well known samples of the formula mar gaye (I will die). • • •

hai ni main mar javaan gud kha ke (I will die eating jaggery) (Malkit Singh) Asi mar gaye (I will die) (Jasbir Jassi) Tera roop vekh ke asi mar gaye (I will die gazing at your beauty) (Jazzy B)

While formulaic dependence might strike non-Panjabis as evidence of lyrical poverty, the Panjabi listener is alert to individual improvisations on stock formulae. The borrowing and play on stock formulae sets off an intertextual chain between various Bhangra texts where each individual artist might be seen participating in a community dialogue. For instance, the Panjabi listener would recognize in Panjabi MC’s “mundian ton bach ke raheen”, a twist on the familiar praise formula, which voices a father’s anxiety about his adolescent daughter’s devastating beauty. Bhangra’s dialogicity is evident even in the release and airplay of different albums. The electronic sphere reconstructs an agonistic context of live Bhangra performance, where an individual Bhangra artist is invited to offer his or her version of a chosen theme. As a result, the Bhangra market is flooded with the simultaneous launch of several competing albums playing on the same theme, or even on the same formula at a given period. This sets off a sparring match between different players, who seem to challenge contenders to respond to their boli. Bhangra lyrics permit the easy absorption of “modern” items or language such as “madam teri lovely lovely chaal” (Hans Raj Hans) or “hai hello” (Daler Mehndi). however, update and contemporization must occur without violating the felicity condition of aural play as in the improvisation on traditional jugni cited below:8 Jugnee ja varee school, jugnee set off for her school Pichae pae gaye Desi Fools, Followed by desi fools oh kandee (says) “only Gaurav is cool, she says “only gaurav is cool oh karda mere heart nu rule” he is the one my who my heart shall rule” veer mereha oh jugneee. oh my brother, oh jugnee. (Nagpal 2001a: n.p.)

8 Jugni, now confused with a girl, originally referred to a taveez (talisman) given by a pir or mendicant.

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But the verbal play in Bhangra lyrics is largely sound dependent, occuring mainly through the pun on the final sound. Random selections of nonsense words work perfectly when a nonsense syllable finds an equally nonsensical fit. The humour in punning comes from stock associations of objects and places as in the boli below: Ambarsare diyan — ve maen khaani haan Tu — — te maen sehni haan

i eat (khaani) the — of Amritsar, You — — and I put up with it (sehni haan)

The song develops through the substitution of rhyming items inserted in the same place in the boli: Ambarsare diyan vardiyan ve maen khaani haan Tu karenda ardiyan te maen sehni han Ambarsare diyan chole ve maen khaani haan Tu tarda-tar bole te maen sehni han Ambarsare diyan papard ve maen khaani haan Tu karenda aakard te maen sehni han

vardiyan (special Amritsar dish: ball of spices) karenda ardiyan (get stubborn) chole (chickpeas) tara-tar bole (yell loudly, speak [bole] sharply [taratar]) papard (thin fried wafer) karenda aakard (get arrogant)

(Nagpal 2001b: n.p.)

Bhangra lyrics also capitalize on Panjabi tonality. Panjabi language allows infinite tonal play even on monosyllables, which may be packed with a wealth of attitudes, moods and emotions. The semantic content of a word, syllable or exclamation might be infinitely altered through tonal variation or delivery. Qualifiers like sohniye, heeriye, makhna, offer scope for infinite vocal and tonal variation through which an individual performer can personalize a stock phrase or formula. The full impact of a nonsense syllable may be experienced through its delivery as in the example provided by Radhika Nagpal, who maintains the MIT Bhangra website. Nagpal, therefore, makes a point to remind Bhangra fans that the nonsense word tana tanak must be delivered in a particular way. Chorus Tana tanak Teri bodi mere hath Meri gutt tere hath Maeno rakhna e rakh Maeno kadna e kad! Maeyon tere naal vasiyan te hor koi vase vi na Maeyon tere naal kattiyan te hor koi kate ve na

Tana Tanak (suddenly) i’ve got you by the hair (bodi) (hath = hand) you’ve got me by the braid (gutt) If you want to keep (rakhna) me, then keep me if you want to throw me out (kadna) then do it ... but let me tell you i’m the only one who would live with you (vasna = live), no one else (hor koi) would i’m the only one who can endure you (kattiyan = put up with, endure), nobody else (hor koi) would

(Nagpal 2001c: n.p.)

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Finally, the simplest of Panjabi words and epithets have a deep resonance in Panjabi listeners. For example, as terms like jatt, jatti, jugni and bania have a particular connotation in the Panjabi caste hierarchy and work culture, the Panjabi listener would immediately recognize in Daler Mehndi’s “Kudiyaan shair Diyaan” (from the film Arjun Pandit, 1999) shades of the traditional jugni or respond to the assertion of jat pride in a number of Bhangra songs. David W. hughes examines “oral mnemonic systems for transmitting or representing melodies in several diverse music cultures to demonstrate that certain acoustic-phonetic features of vowels and consonants lead to similar systems of mnemonics existing independently in widely separated cultures” (2000: 95). This is corroborated through Venkat Rao’s study of Indic systems (2005). Nonsense verse by nature poses a problem in translation because its play is based on a particular arrangement of sounds. anyone who has attempted to translate nonsense verse is confronted with the rather daunting task of capturing the humour, world play and wit of the original in a foreign language. even if one were to succeed in capturing the verbal essence of the verse in another language, it would be impossible to transfer its cultural content. nonsense verse, which might connote a meaningless combination of words to outsiders, strikes a chord in insiders. Rukmini Bhaya Nair’s translation of a popular Bengali doggerel about the Us bombing of and victory over the japanese in the Second World War shows how significant moments of cultural history might be captured through trivia (Nair 2002: 82). Like the Bengali doggerel cited by Bhaya nair, the recurrent Bhangra motif of the male warrior leaving and returning home documents the history of large-scale recruitment of Panjabi, mainly Sikh, soldiers into the imperial British army. similarly, jazzy B’s lament “mitran vich khadak payi sardara” (There is disharmony between friends) painfully repeats the Sikh fracture of Panjabi identity in 1984, renewing the earlier memory of the fratricidal war in 1947. if one song locates Multan as the centre of cheent (print) production documenting the textile history of Panjab, another claims amritsar as the centre of vadiyaan (dried lentil balls) processing to recover its spice history. in addition to history, nonsense lyrics renew Panjab’s cultural geography, erasing the borderlines of national cartography. Bhangra bolians, alluding to the originary sites of Panjabi dance genres such as Sialkot, Gurdaspur, Gujranwalla, Gujarat and Malwa reinforce the violence in the overwriting of Panjab’s bioregional memory, built on the rapids of its five rivers and their doabe (deltas), through Panjab’s partition. Memories of traditional centres and peripheries of undivided Panjab – Lahore and amritsar as cultural capitals, Patiala for its legendary beauties, Multan for its textile dyeing preeminence and so on – are also recalled. nonsense syllables, inscribing the community’s cultural history, geography and priorities, have a strong nostalgia value for members whose repetition of formulae delights through their re-enactment of a shared memory. Nonsense verse also inscribes traditional kinship structures, offers ways of sublimating interpersonal conflict and serves as a shared cultural grammar to

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prescribe right action and behaviour. For example, this playful song makes the cowife the target of tongue lashing: hulle hulare asi ganga chale shava or hulle sas sora chale jeth jathani chale dyor darani chale pairi shaunkan chali hulle hulare asi ganga pohnche shava or hulle sas sora pohnche jeth jathani pohnche dyor darani pohnche pairi shaunkan pohnchi hulle hulare asi ganga nahte shava or hulle sar sora nahte jeth jathani nahte dyor darani nahte pairi shaunkan nahtii hulle hulare shaunkan paili pauri shava or hulle shaunkan duji pauri shaunkan tiji pauri maiti dhakka ditta shaukan vichhe rud gayi hulle hulare sas sora ron shava or hulle jeth jathani ron dyor darani ron paira oh wi rove main kya tusi kyon ronde tvade jogi main batheri mainu dyo badhaiyaan ji shaukan rod aayi ni

hulle hullare We set off to have a holy dip in the ganges Shava or hulle Mother and father-in-law tagged along elder brother and sister-in-law tagged along younger brother and sister-in-law tagged along But that bitch my co-wife too latched on hulle hulare We reached the bank of the Ganges Shava or hulle Mother and father-in-law landed up elder brother and sister-in-law landed up younger brother and sister-in-law landed up But that bitch my co-wife too landed up hulle hulare We bathed in the ganges Mother and father-in-law had a bath elder brother and sister-in-law had a bath younger brother and sister-in-law had a bath But that bitch my co-wife too had a bath hulle hulare Co-wife climbed the first step Shava or hulle Co-wife climbed the second step Co-wife reached the third step i gave her a shove Co-wife drowned in the stream hulle hulare Mother and father-in-law wail Shava or hulle elder brother and sister-in-law wail younger brother and sister-in-law wail But that bastard also wailed I asked him why do you wail i am good enough for you Congratulate me i have returned having drowned my co-wife

Bhangra’s formulaic openings and loops situate them in the oral participatory context, blurring the performer–audience divide and articulating its group dynamics. They construct a text where individual creativity is enabled and contained within

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communal expressivity. The formulaic opening is repeated by the entire group, leaving gaps for individuals to fill in the collective composition. While constrained by sound and rhythm, individuals might exercise freedom and creativity in their interpretation of stock themes. Panjabi listeners not only respond to the verbal play within a particular text but also to individual improvisations on stock formulae and well known themes. What may be said, where, when, how and to whom is dictated by unwritten rules of performance internalized by Panjabi speakers. This intuitive knowledge of the rules of composition and reception that is dependent on fluency in Panjabi enables Panjabi speakers to perform a collective Panjabi memory through Bhangra performance, from which the non-Panjabi stranger – brown, black or white – is effectively shut out. The consumption of Bhangra texts by non-Panjabi ethnicities is altogether different from the Panjabi participation in the reconstruction of a shared tradition that reaffirms a collective Panjabi memory. The pleasure predicated on word play in Bhangra’s nonsense lyrics is not available to outsiders. non-Panjabi viewers receive Bhangra as dance and music but are effectively shut out from the Panjabi space cordoned off by language. non-Panjabis are also excluded from the space of participation, which begins with the recognition of formulae and a shared knowledge of the rules governing composition and participation native to Panjabi speakers. The artist who intuitively recognized that the route to non-Panjabi hearts lay in linguistic simplicity was Daler Mehndi. His album, the first regional album to break into the national circuit by selling a mind-boggling million copies in Malayalam-speaking Kerala, illustrated his uncanny ability to feel the pulse of the indian nation. Daler Mehndi may also be cited as a virtuoso practitioner of nonsense verse and the best exponent of desibhangra or Bhangra targeted at a pan-Indian market. The reason why the nation danced happily to Daler’s tunes is because his nonsense lyrics and hummable loops enabled non-Panjabis to participate in Bhangra’s call-and-response poetics. The privileging of sound and visuals over lyrics is also a feature of vilayetibhangra, Bhangra produced in the diaspora. Unlike Daler Mehndi, second and third generation British asian Bhangra practitioners in the UK and the United states prefer simple lyrics that would enable them to crossover into the British popular mainstream. But Panjabi lyrics in Bhangra texts, even the complex lyrics of folk remixes, write Panjabi difference into the non-Panjabi cultural scene. Paradoxically, Panjabi foreignness appears to be the source of Bhangra’s appeal, which is exploited in its marketing that proceeds by way of racialization. Though apache indian borrows the familiar jamaican patois, he peppers it with foreign Panjabi to create an exotic appeal.9

9

Though songs like “Chok There” and “Arranged Marriage” became such hits, South Asian languages were treated more or less like cacophonic gibberish in the West. Apache claims, however, that he was able to experiment with the language in that way because he wasn’t targeting a huge mainstream audience in the first place.

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Me wan gal fe me Don rani Me wan gal dress up in a sari Me wan gal say soorni logthi Me wan gal sweet like jelebee Me wan gal from jullunder City Me wan gal say a soorni curi Me wan gal mon to look after me Me wan gal to mek me roti (Apache Indian. “Arranged Marriage”)

however, Panjabi’s foreignness does not appear to have affected Bhangra’s crossover into the indian or British mainstream. Though one could argue that apache indian’s use of the familiar patois or Panjabi’s similarity to hindi might have played a role in Bhangra’s acceptance by non-Panjabi communities in the UK or India respectively, the cult status enjoyed by Panjabi folksinger Malkit singh among non-Panjabi listeners disproves the thesis that foreign Panjabi can be a barrier to international visibility. The subordination of lyrical content to the sound and music smoothes Bhangra’s crossover because non-Panjabis receive and decode Panjabi lyrics as a nonsensical combination of sounds even though their repetition of Panjabi sounds sans meaning may write them out of the song’s semantic sphere. This may be illustrated by the international Bhangra hit whose lyrics are being globally shared on multiple websites on the internet. in the example cited below, joe Caps’ transcription of “Mundian To Bach Ke” (“Beware of the Boys”), which appears to be a speech-to-text translation, foregrounds Panjabi as a foreignness eluding the anglo-american speech text’s memory.10 The meaningless transcription of presumably Panjabi sounds accentuates their foreignness, a foreignness that is claimed as speech in the anonymous transcription. recognizing the impossibility of conveying the meaning of the foreign Panjabi lyrics intuitively, jay Z rapped on Panjabi MC’s “Mundian To Bach Ke”, steering free of transliteration. jay Z’s rap on Panjabi MC’s hit places the two linguistic and cultural traditions in a differend, foregrounding the foreignness of languages: (Panjabi MC) Nimya tu kuch der pa ke rakh le Pale vitch mukhra luiska ke rai (Jay-Z) yes, live from the United states Brooklyn New York its ya boy, Young (Panjabi MC) Nimya tu kuch der pa ke rakh lr 10 see appendix 4 for the complete lyrics, as submitted to a lyrics website by joe Caps, and the translated version, as submitted to another lyrics website by Tufan.

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BhANGrA MovES Pale vitch mukhra luiska ke rai (Jay-Z) The neptunes is in the house (Panjabi MC) Aave kari na kise de naal pyar Mundiya to bach ke rahi (Jay-Z) as soon as the beat drop We got the streets locked over sees at Pudjabi MC and the roc i came to see the mamis in the spot On the count of three drop your body like it’s hot One, young, Two, you, want, to, Three, young hovs a snake charmer Move your body like a snake mama Make me wanna put the snake on you i’m on my 8th summer still hot young’s the 8th wonder All I do is get bread, yeah I take wonder I take one of your chics straight from under your arm pit The black Brad Pitt I mack ’til six in the AM All day I’m P-I-M-P I am simply attached to the track like a symphony It’s simply good young hov infinitely it’s the roc in the building Calib, ramel, Tarrell in the house It’s simply good young hov infinitely (Panjabi MC) mundian ton bach ke raheen Be careful of the boys you’ve only just grown up. it’s not your fault that you’ve got beautiful eyes once you’ve realized this, you will become shy Look after your youth (Jay Z) This time won’t come again. We rebellious, we back home screamin “Leave iraq alone” young hova rhymes over a sample of the theme from the “Knight rider” Tv show. For all my soldiers in the field i will wish you safe return But only love kills war When will they learn? (Panjabi MC feat. Jay Z. “Mundian To Bach Ke” / “Beware of the Boys”. [Joe Caps 2004: n.p.])

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jay Z places Panjabi in a difference, which is exoticized and eroticized so as to enable him to rap a message that contradicts the meaning of the original Panjabi text. he writes Us anti-war sentiment over the song’s original theme of a father’s anxieties about his young daughter reaching puberty and attracting male attention. The sexual innuendo in “putting the snake”, contradicts the puritanical Panjabi voice warning the teenager precisely against such a risk. Panjabiness services the orientalist myth of the fabled India of snakecharmers and firewalkers in “Beware of the Boys”. Jay Z’s Brooklyn braggadocio coopts Panjabi MC’s beat for the assertion of afro-american vitality and sexuality as well as for the articulation of the American “Make love, not war” slogan. Though the British born Rajinder Rai, Panjabi MC, might easily have found english equivalents of the original Panjabi, the difference between repressed Panjabi sexuality and explicit black sexuality cannot be bridged so easily. Both Panjabi MC and jay Z, instead of attempting to bridge the divide between the two languages, let Panjabi difference be, which, refusing to be contained in American slang, breaks forth like an incomprehensible noise teasing the limits of the self. Despite the american’s attempt to naturalize Panjabi difference, Labh janjua’s booming vocals articulated in foreign Panjabi wrest a place for Panjabi. The foreignness of Panjabi, disengaged from meaning, places Panjabi difference on the fringes of the self: loud, undecipherable but difficult to ignore. Labh Janjua does not yield an inch of space allotted to him, continuing to do his own thing in Panjabi, and speaking to those who can follow the lyric’s semantic content. The punctuation of Panjabi lyrics with english phrases or sentences in Bhangra remixes similarly accentuates the difference between the two calling attention to the intrinsic foreignness of languages. apache’s patois in “independent girl” must not be mistaken for a transliteration of Malkit Singh’s formulaic paean to female beauty. Apache undoubtedly creates a space for the folk artist and allows him to speak and takes great care not to trespass into his personal space. Even so, apache’s hybrid patois accents the foreignness of pure Panjabi in jamaica. gurdas Mann’s voice, lyrics and music are transcoded in the rap remix of “apna Panjab hove” as foreign “roots”, which the non-Panjabi is at a loss to decode. For the same reason, Maxi Priest’s knowledge of Panjabi enables him to enter the intimate linguistic zone.11 In each, the Panjabi lyrics lock in a space from which the outsider is effectively excluded. Paul Gilroy mentions that “the spaces in which cultural consumption takes place provide locations in which racial politics can be erased” (2002: 211). youth subcultures appear to be carnivalesque grounds on which ancient pollution taboos on interdining and intermixing, if not intermarrying, might be successfully flouted. Bhangra’s hybridization with black music takes place in border zones where diasporic indian subjectivities construct themselves in relation to a ritually 11

Ben Rampton’s research findings reveal that instances of crossing are quite common among British teenagers and that Afro-Caribbean and white teens often pick up Panjabi words in the playground (1997: 5).

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forbidden liaison. i view this profaning transgression of diasporic indian youth as potentially emancipatory in that it can release the meaning of subjectivity and culture from reified categories of caste, class, nation, religion, gender and ethnicity. The global Bhangra revolution ushered in by British Panjabis has redefined Bhangra genres by disengaging them from their roots in the Panjabi homeland and inserting them in the Panjabi diaspora’s routes on which different musical traditions intersect. virinder Kalra et al. place anti-racist British Bhangra in line with a revolutionary Asian tradition beginning with the Indian Workers Association in the 1960s (Kalra, Hutnyk and Sharma 1996: 137–45). Finding favourable allies in the Rock against Racism movement and anti-racist punk, the new political Asian Bhangra grows out of a tradition of political music culture. The rhetoric of brown–black brotherhood underwriting the Bhangra–reggae marriage buries the ambivalence of the kala dukawalah (black shopkeeper) history of Asian–African relations in which mutual desire is balanced by suspicion. This history might colour the perception of the filial act as dukawalah craftiness. But British asian Bhangra artists have made politically correct statements about closing the race, colour, class and generation gap and commitment to the identity politics of multicultural, multiethnic Britain. While conceding the shared call-and-response poetics and participatory character of afro-Caribbean and Panjabi music, i argue that the collaborative moment of black–brown fusion accentuates cultural difference rather than similarity. although the shared orality of the african and the indian musicians holds immense dialogic scope, their embeddedness in specific local traditions hammers home the difference between the drum and the dhol. While Panjabi and black cultures share a vibrant orality and a celebratory corporeality, black corporeality is differently inflected from the wheatish. Bodily difference, not merely the sharp spectroscopic contrast of black against brown, makes the mingling of black and brown bodies on the dance floor dangerously significant. In spite of the elision between physical vitality, virility and labour in the inscription of both black and Panjabi male bodies, Panjabi free labour has been spared the reification of black slave labour. Similarly, though the Panjabi harvest ritual has shades of african mating dances, indian cultural puritanism straitjackets Panjabi sexuality. Notwithstanding the similarity between the dhol and the drum rhythms, celebratory narratives of black–brown sonic encounter simplify the complex undercurrents audible backstage. Though the carnivalesque space of the dance floor enables brown bodies to mingle freely with black, they must return to the sanctified exclusivity of their ethnic enclaves. The music video captures these segregational politics in its iconography. Apache Indian’s song video “Lovin’” serves well as an example. The mellifluous Hindi melody punctuating Apache’s Bhangra reggae act shocks through its being displaced from its original context just as the veiled indian fantasy appears grossly overdressed after the generous display of black bodies in motion. Apache Indian’s hybrid figure crosses over with consummate ease from the uninhibited, gyrating black bodies to the shy, shrinking Indian woman. Apache inhabits both spaces without letting either cross into the other. The violent juxtaposition of the wildly

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“breaking” black bodies against the gentle swaying of the veiled woman heightens the cultural gap that neither apache nor the video attempt to bridge. While the brown woman is shielded from the black male gaze, the black woman’s body is undressed for the brown man’s pleasure. Despite the utopian images of cross-cultural sonic fusions and positive hybridity talk, the music album’s spatial organization segregates. While racial barriers might be crossed in the “dancing” public sphere, the purity of sacred spaces is protected from alien encroachments. While brown bodies might freely (w)rap with black and white on the dance floor, the self’s hidden spaces remain impregnable. The segregated space is gendered by permitting male bodies to collaborate in Bhangra dance and music to perform hybridity while the female body becomes the site for the play of the politics of pollution. Despite the declaration of black–brown brotherhood voiced through sonic collaborations and patois, the hybrid Bhangra cordons off a secret space locked in Panjabi language and the Panjabi female’s veiled body to protect it from the stranger’s profane gaze, including the urban indian’s. The cross-cultural encounter – auditory and visual – clicks by its articulation of cultural shock rather than cultural meeting through the violent yoking of Panjabi folk with black pop, of Panjabi lyrics with English, the dhol with drums and synthesizers. Though the music, sound and movement might still offer avenues for dialogue, the Panjabi lyrics and the veiled female body resist penetration. Bhangra albums construct these segregated spaces by alternating between Panjabi and english, dhol and drum, and dance floor and home/village setting. In each case the displacement of the item from its original home, while enhancing its appeal, drums aloud its foreignness and untranslatability. More than the audio clip, the music video’s visual imagery violently, sharply silhouettes corporeal difference. The audio replicates the shocking juxtaposition of the veiled Panjabi female and semi-clad black bodies in the unexpected glide from Panjabi to English lyrics and alternation of black and brown beats. The visual and vocal arrangement suggests that crosscultural contact can occur only in the in-between space of hyphenated identities, while certain cultural spaces must remain locked in language and in the body. The gap between Panjabi and english booms cultural incommensurability, which must be respected even as one is invited to enter the Panjabi space through the repeatable loop. nonsense syllables are extremely effective as loops that nonPanjabi speakers can repeat effortlessly. However, the play on traditional formulae is the prerogative of the Panjabi speaker alone. The knowledge of the rules and regulations governing speaking in a Bhangra performance distinguishes the Panjabi speaker, the wheatish, from the non-Panjabi, white, black, or brown.12 in the process, the hybrid sonic space of the music cassette and video can be seen to articulate three distinct identity spaces – vilayeti (diasporic), desi (Indian) and panjabi – enabling cultural contact at the borderlines while protecting cultural interiority. While shutting them out of the lyrical landscape, the pre-verbal appeal of the vocal cries of “oye hoye”, “shava shava”, “balle balle” and “hadipa” invites non12

Wheatish is an Indian English word used to describe the average Panjabi skin colour.

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Panjabi participation in Bhangra performance through producing in them the primary emotion of hasya or fun. a similar emotion is produced through vigorous movements of the body including jumping, leaping and stamping about. But while Bhangra produces the universal emotion of joy in non-Panjabi performers, the understanding of culture-specific kinemes laid over the performance elude them as they imitate Bhangra movements. Unlike the “deep play” of ritual Bhangra performance and its affirmation of communitas, the “shallow play” of secular Bhangra performance is an irreverent enactment of Panjabi difference in a spirit of fun that challenges rather than affirms conventional codes and values (Carlson 2004: 20). There is no denying that Bhangra’s moves emerge from the Panjabi lebenswelt. But its cultural exclusivity must be emphasized without the essentialism underlying definitions of panjabiyat and dance because Bhangra essays a “universal language” of “basic emotions” that accounts both for its successive hybridizations and its subsequent incorporation of non-Panjabi bodies (Ekman in Schechner 1997: 37). Eugenio Barba’s insistence on the similarity of “the socio-cultural and physiological behavior” of the performer across cultures explains Bhangra’s universal appeal across linguistic and cultural barriers (Carlson 2004: 27). This transcultural “physiology”, independent of traditional culture and involving features such as balance, opposition and energy, has to be predicated on the general principles of pre-expressivity. But Barba’s contention that the spectator responds to performance because of a pre-cultural set of universal “physiological responses” does not hold completely true with respect to Bhangra performance because operations of the cultural “frame” are as much in evidence here as physiology. The nonverbal “universal language of emotions [that includes facial displays, vocal cries, body postures and movements (stamping, rushing, crouching)])” that Bhangra embodies as both dance and music is written over with multiple culturespecific kinemes derived from Panjabi, Bollywood and Western popular culture (Birdwhistell in Schechner 1997: 29). How does one reconcile this with the view that kinemes are culturally specific? The way out of this problem is offered by the agreement that “universals of performance” and behaviour are written over by culture-specific kinemes. A performance works best when the performer and the audience succeed in manipulating the relationship between the two corresponding systems, the universal and the culture-specific. The dual character of behaviour to incorporate cultural specificity with universality may be applied to Bhangra’s scope for performing panjabiyat while opening itself out to new ethnicities. Imagining a New Nation arjun appadurai, in Sovereignty without Territory, examines new nationalisms in relation to the problematic of sovereignty and territory and concludes that “territory is still vital to the national imaginary of diasporic populations and stateless people of many sorts” (1999). It is interesting that Appadurai should cite Khalistan as an example of the “new post-national cartography” of the post-Westphalian model,

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which borrows the spatial discourses of the nation. This view of the Sikh nation as a “deterritorialized” nation without a state is shared by verne a. Dusenbery, who maintains that the Sikhs, in managing to maintain a collective ethnoreligious identity without a sovereign homeland, have come to constitute almost a “paradigmatic example of a transnational community” (1999). Though the nation might be imagined differently from the territorial nation-state, calls to solidarity in post-national constellations continue to be made in the name of the nation. Bhangra nation’s topos of national identity resembles that of the Sikh nation in being a topos of community that contests the topos of the nation and national cartographies. But Bhangra nation is an inclusive, ethnospatial narrative permitting porous, intersecting boundaries opening out to all Panjabi and non-Panjabi ethnies in opposition to the exclusivist, reactive, ethnoreligious Sikh nation. Imagining Panjab as an ethnospatial rather than ethnolinguistic or ethnoreligious complex conforms to harjot oberoi’s notion of the ethnoterritorial community in The Construction of religious Boundaries (1994). i view Bhangra nation as recalling the memory of the Panjabi ethnospatial complex overwritten by religious and scriptural identifications. Oberoi’s definition of Panjab as a geographical as well as a cultural area, which he opposes to humanly constructed political and religious boundaries, meets the postmodern concept of the bioregion conceived by Peter Berg and Larry Dasmann in the 1970s, referring to “both a geographical terrain and a terrain of consciousness” (Berg and Dasmann 1978). Emphasizing the interpretation of the Panjabi places of culture, healing and worship at the level of popular village religion and everyday practices, oberoi shows how they were overwritten by formal religions. Peter van der veer places this rupture at the turn of the twentieth century in the emergence of tomb cults signalling the region’s islamization, which were followed by the birth of islamic and Hindu nationalism (der Veer 1984). While the intersection of Sikh with Hindu boundaries was fairly common knowledge, the collapse of Sikh and Hindu with islamic boundaries uncovered by oberoi adds new dimensions to the understanding of Panjabi identity (1994). john Connell and Chris gibson, in examining the relationship of music with space and identity, show that musical cartographies cannot be read outside political and social cartographies (2003). Bhangra’s generic classification reflects the fluid, porous boundaries of the old Panjabi place. Bhangra performance illustrates the complex interweaving of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh strands in Panjabi identity, which were separated in the emergence of sectarian and linguistic nationalisms. Though certain genres might have a sectarian provenance in being attached to specific Sufi, Sikh or Hindu practices, participation is dictated by the rules of performance rather than by concrete identities. Like all other aspects of Panjabi identity, Bhangra is not the exclusive legacy of any particular group but forms a part of that shared ethnospatial past, which resisted sect, language and nation-based boundaries. The contemporary Bhangra space retains Bhangra’s traditional boundarycrossing feature though it collapses further boundaries to enable non-Panjabi participation. a visit to this performance space returns one to oberoi’s Panjabi

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pastoral insensitive to nationality, geographical location, religion or class. even where visible markers might provide a clue to location, their porousness prevents the fixing of identities. Performing on a transnational network in a music album produced by a local company, the Bhangra player could be located on any site on the Bhangra nation. The alphabetical arrangement of Bhangra artists on a Bhangra website crossing several boundaries illustrates the transnational character of the contemporary Bhangra map. Neither the singers’ names (see Table 9.1), nor those of record labels can provide reliable clues to their sectarian, national or locational coordinates. Table 9.1

Bhangra singers (reproduced from www.punjabonline.com) (“Bhangra Artists” 2004)

a.s. Kang abrar U1 haq Achanak alaap amar arshi Amar Singh Chamkila amrit saab Anakhi apna sangeet atul sharma avtar Maniac B21 (photo) Babu Mann Bally sagoo Balwinder safri Bhinda jatt Bhupi Bikram Singh Bobby jahol Daler Mehndi DCs Didar sandhu Diler Begowalia Dilshad Akhtar Dippa (Satrang) Dolly singh

gurdas Maan Gursewak Mann hans raj hans harbhajan Mann harbjan shera hard Kaur hard-e heera group Inderjit Nikku jagmohan Kaur jasbir jassi jassi Premi jaswinder Kaur Brar jazzy Bains K.S. Makhan Kuldip Manak Kulwinder Dhillon M saddiq Madan Maddi Malkit Singh Manjit Pappu Manmohan Waris Maqbool Meshi eshara Mohammad saddiq nusrat Fateh ali Khan

Pargat Bhagu Parminder sandhu Premi Panjabi MC ranjit Kaur ranjit Mani sabar Koti sahotas sangeet group sarabjit Cheema Sardool Sikander satwinder Bitti satwinder Bugga shamsher sandhu shazia Manzoor silinder Pardesi Sukhbir Sukhdev Sukha Sukhshinder Shinda Sukhwinder Panchi surinder shinda Surjit Bindrakhia surjit gill XLNC (photo) yamla jatt

Considering that Urdu names are as common in Panjab as hindi and Panjabi names, and names are shared by all communities, there is no way of telling whether a singer is Hindu, Muslim or Sikh. Sikh–Muslim imbrication occurs even in Sikh names through the appendage of the ustad’s name as in Daler Mehndi’s case. Bodily signifiers like the beard and the turban cannot serve as definitive identity signifiers for there are as many clean shaven Sikhs as there are bearded Hindus

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in the Bhangrascape.13 The culture industry’s powerful brand marketing further complicates Bhangra’s bodily semiotics. With names evocative of the Wild West, concrete identities are difficult to guess from singers’ monikers such as Jazzy B and Juggy D (see Figure 9.1).

Figure 9.1 The new generation – h-Dhami Not only concrete identities but also their discursive representation reflects the interpenetration of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh boundaries. Since Bally Sagoo’s remix of Malkit Singh’s “Gur Nalon Ishq Mitha” picturized the Sikh’s music in the visual narrative of a hindu wedding, it has become customary to dissolve hindu, Sikh and even Muslim boundaries in Bhangra music videos. Jassi Sidhu’s “Virji Vyahon Chalya”, with the Sikh performing at his Hindu brother’s sehrabandhi, is particularly evocative of the Hindu–Sikh kinship destroyed by separatism. Similarly, Hans Raj Hans’s adoption of the Sufi idiom in the julli genre has the bearded hindu rehearsing Muslim gestures at a pir’s tomb resurrecting the shared spaces of Panjabi worship. Despite their deep commitment to the Sikh cause, 13

The clean shaven Gurdas Mann is a Sikh but the bearded Hans Raj Hans is a Hindu.

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Sikh Bhangra artists have reserved their adoration of sikhi or Sikhism in their devotional rather than Bhangra albums. given such frequent border crossings, it comes as no shock when the Muslim Abrar-ul-Haq compares the beloved to God, using the Panjabi term rab (not Allah) in the song “Ho Sohnay Rab Nay Banaaya Tera Mera Mail Way” (Oh Beautiful God Has Made Us for Each Other), or when the Sikh Harbhajan Mann invokes His Islamic name, wallah, in “ishq Da rog hai Wallah” (Lovesickness, oh God) to warn against lovesickness. Bhangra nation’s character as a transnational virtuality was brought home at the first Panjabi popular music awards in 2004. A young Sikh, Jassi Sidhu, received the Best Newcomer award at the first ETC Channel Panjabi Awards in 2004 for his Panjabi album. his location was revealed only when he peppered his pure Panjabi “thank you” speech liberally with Cockney asides. When pure Panjabi is as likely to be found in Birmingham and British Columbia as in Jallandar and Lahore, panjabiyat ceases to be anchored to geography. i see the Bhangra cartography as reinscribing the geographies of nation states to construct a translocal Bhangrascape with specific local inflections. While studies of specific Bhangra “scenes”, particularly from Bhangra’s new British capitals, have been particularly helpful in illuminating Bhangra’s participation in local cultural politics, i wish to call attention to the translocal identity spaces formed in relation to Bhangra that reveal a complex negotiation with local identities. The Myth of Return Bhangra texts repeat a rap like nostalgia for a primordial panjabiyat captured in the trope of return. The myth of return undergirding Bhangra texts grows stronger in inverse proportion to the impossibility of return, literal and metaphoric. The text invariably opens with the protagonist’s returning home, often accompanied by a Westernized partner, and concludes with his reintegration into an exoticized Panjabi sociality. Though the return trope underlies most texts, some articulate it more unambiguously than others. The unofficial anthem of the Bhangra Nation by the Panjabi poet laureate gurdas Mann needs to be quoted in detail as an introduction to the objects to which primordial sentiments come to be attached, though the use of the conditional might hint at the impossibility of return. Apna Panjab hove Ghar di sharaab hove Ganne da danda hove Baan da manja hove Manje ute baitha jat oye Banya nawab hove Pehle tod vari vichon Duja peg lava hoye Gandala da saag

give me my Panjab any day Homemade liquor flowing free a sugarcane a string cot and the peasant reclining royally on the string cot In the very first gulp downing the second peg gandalan greens

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vaddi bebe ne banaya hove cooked by grandmother Muhn de vich rakhde e The taste of raw spices masale da swad hove tickles my tongue as I put it in my mouth Saron de saag vich main To mustard greens Ghyo te ghyo paayi javaan I keep adding dollops of butter Makki dian rotiyaan noon Countless homemade maize corn bread Bina gine khayeen javan i go on eating Khoon te jaake ganne choopan I saunter across to the well, suck fresh sugarcane oye ghar da kabaab hove Oh anything for homemade kebab (Gurdas Mann. “Apna Panjab Hove”)

The rap remix of the song translates the song’s centrality to Bhangra’s “return to roots” identity performance in the diaspora. a deep male voice announces “We are now returning to the roots”, before playing the soundtrack peppered with jamaican patois. other Bhangra players share and repeat Mann’s “makki di roti” nationalism revealing an emotional attachment to everyday items and rituals. Malkit Singh’s new album echoes Mann’s homeland yearning, once again translated as food. vekh li valait i have had enough of foreign lands Yaaro vekh li valait Friends enough of foreign lands mera maa de hata diyan I ask for nothing more than bread Pakiyan rotiyan khaan nu bara hi dil karda Made by my mother’s hands (Malkit Singh. “Maa”)

The song trails off with the protagonist being escorted back to India by family. other examples of homeland nostalgia abound. More often than not, this mystical, elusive Panjabi essence translates into a female iconicity comprising the mother, the sister and the beloved. as in indian nationalism, the Panjabi woman’s body becomes the site for the negotiation of Panjabi modernity. The female body is draped or undraped to inscribe quintessential Panjabi values. The veiled Panjabi woman apotheosized as virgin or mother is set in opposition to the mem or the Westernized urban or diasporic woman, whose journey back home must parallel the male protagonist’s for her to transform into the beloved. British Asian Bhangra artists first apotheosized the virginal Panjabi woman to tease Panjabi difference out of an essentialist blackness. Since Apache Indian’s romanticization of the “gal from jullundar” in “arranged Marriage”, the sohni kudi has fed reels of Bhangra homeland nostalgia. The village belle, or jatti Panjab di, has conquered many an urban male heart as much by her fabled beauty as by her personification of a valorized Panjabi rusticity. The fetishization of the sohni, virginal but coquettish, sublimates the Panjabi male desire for the homeland. alternatively, the homeland may be visualized as mother. if the sohni is made to serve the Panjabi male fantasy of pristine sexuality, the bebe, or ma, is made to

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conform to the idealized image of the selfless, nurturing mother who nourishes the male without demanding anything in return. Eis duniya vitch jine risthe all worldly relationships Sab juthe te beroop are false and ugly Maa da rishta sab to sachcha The only authentic bond is with the mother Maa hai rab da roop Mother is the very image of god (Malkit Singh. “Maa”)

While the representation of the homeland as maternal is characteristic of romantic nationalism in general, the Panjabi male’s mother fixation invests the image with a particular emotive appeal. Both the sohni and maa, embodying the primordial tie with the rustic homeland, are contrasted with the Westernized temptress or the mem who must be socialized into an essentialized panjabiyat before being accepted into the Panjabi fold. It figures directly as place as well, albeit a place constructed as much by ecology as by practices of everyday life. Bhangra’s originary location in the doabas, or deltas, of Panjab’s five rivers, customarily invoked in the bolian, enables Panjabi subjectivity to be grounded in a concrete, material reality. along with reconstructing Panjabi topography by retracing Bhangra genres to their originary doabas, Bhangra texts also rebuild the cultural and sacred geographies of undivided Panjab around built spaces. These texts close in to fix a specific locus with the result that the homeland they return to is an extremely small place, a province, a town or a village reflecting the longing for the face-to-face community displaced by the new imaginings of collectivities in nationalism or globalization. Though a few Bhangra texts name a specific region or city, the locus of panjabiyat in contemporary Bhangra texts is the Panjabi village, a pind, illustrating the mapping of transnational Panjabi identity on a rural Panjabi imaginary. They retrace the topography of the five rivers and their deltas to recount the history of multiple erasures and recoveries older than those affected in the making of nations. Eh Panjab vi mera ve This Panjab is also mine oh Panjab vi mera ve That Panjab is also mine This sutluj is mine Eh sutluj vi mera e oh chenab vi mera e That Chenab is also mine Of the broken body Sara jism Put together the pieces Tukre jod deyo join hands hatthan jod deyo Sarhadaan tod deyo Break all borders (Hans Raj Hans. “Ai Panjabi Wi Mera Ai”)

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steven grosby, in “The inexpungeable Tie of Primordiality”, explains that though primordiality might be socially constructed and largely “an affect issue”, human beings “do make classifications of the self and the other in accordance with such criteria” (1996: 74). Grosby holds that ineffable attachments and ties to certain objects depend on beliefs about these objects. Bhangra participates in the construction of global panjabiyat through the activation of cultural resources to which “primordial sentiments” are attached. Whether the primordial return is possible or not, Bhangra texts celebrate an a priori Panjabi ethnicity in romanticized narratives of the Panjabi homeland. The objects mobilized in the construction of Panjabi ethnicity include consanguinity, religion and language but also common territorial origin, conspicuous biological features as well as perceptible differences in the conduct of everyday life. The attachment of affect in Bhangra texts to territorial location, customs and culture rather than to religion rescues it from the ethnic absolutism and exclusivism of the Sikh nation. The myth of return to the Panjabi homeland dramatized in several Bhangra texts might suggest organic identifications. But the impossibility of return, literal or metaphorical, disables an uncategorical affirmation of panjabiyat as the Panjabi memory itself reveals deep gashes. heated discussions on Panjabi culture on websites foreground multiple claimants to panjabiyat speaking in the name of language, religion, culture and class. Most chats conclude in vituperative exchanges, nipping the dream of a global Panjab in the bud. as the confusion of categories defining panjabiyat on these website reveals, panjabiyat is still under construction. it would be more pertinent to inquire, therefore, what imaginings of panjabiyat are produced in the mobilization of various identity spaces in Bhangra texts and how the Panjabi subject is transformed in assuming that image. The problem of Panjabi identification can certainly not be the “affirmation of a pregiven identity” but “the production of an image of identity and the transformation of the subject in assuming that image”. Bhangra’s identity politics reveal the negotiation of several aspects, such as religion, nation, class, language, generation or ethnicity, which might overlap as well as contradict. The collective experience of Panjabi nationness may be negotiated in the interstices, in the overlap between Hindu, Sikh and Muslim difference. The Panjabi difference represented at these intersections can be produced in relation to a Panjabi anteriority that accommodates the experiences of invasion, displacement and migration. The “unhomeliness”, which Bhabha views as “the condition of extra-territorial and cross-cultural initiations” constructs a Panjabi homeland defined in relation to displacement and migration (1994: 13). Following anthony D. smith, T.K. oommen regards the notion of homeland as the “irreducible minimum for a nation to emerge and to exist”. “in the case of nation formation, territory is the first requisite”, he declares, rejecting the claims of both language and religion to nationhood (1997: 193). The new panjabiyat destroys the isomorphism between place, space and nation that has been noted in nationalist organizations of space, illustrating the non-contiguous places enabled by global connectivity. The absence of an originary Bhangra location in the context

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of its multidirectional flows interrogates and challenges essentialist, universalized or fixed identities. At the same time, the desire to fix a homeland in a specific locus reflects the pull of primordial ties. In the absence of territorial materiality, the reconstruction of the lived place in the memory can produce only an image. Though the Bhangra Nation returns to the physicality of place to root itself firmly, the place can exist only in the imagination, corresponding to the real place but not quite the same. The attempt to reconstruct the old place in new lands, in changed environments and settings, results in recovering the semblance of the place without its sensuality. arjun appadurai’s distinction between territory as soil, the ground of emotional attachment, and territory as a civil arrangement shows how post-Westphalian nations can exist without territorial sovereignty. Bhangra nation proves that the nation can exist outside the territory but not the soil. in the process of engaging with the variety of subject positions it unfolds, panjabiyat is transformed. The Panjabi identity constructed in relation to Bhangra disengages ethnicity from nation and religion and returns it to language, region, culture and the body. Unlike Sikh nationalism, which mobilized religion and language to appropriate panjabiyat for sikhi, Bhangra nation manipulates primordial ties attached to the bioregion, biology and everyday conduct and rituals in reaffirming an inclusive panjabiyat. The realignment of the ethnocultural identity along these lines might be disjunctive with allegiance to national or sacral solidarities unless the new imagining of community can accommodate contradictory multiple narratives of the self. The recall of the Panjabi ethnospatial place in Bhangra texts can produce a new non-essentializing imagining of panjabiyat, which enables multiple tenancies of language, religion, caste, gender and location.

Chapter 10

Who Speaks for the Jat?: vernacular Cosmopolitanisms Kenneth Keniston puts the cultural nationalist argument forth with great force and clarity in his lecture “Can the Cultures of india survive the information age?” (1999).1 Defining “global monoculture” as “the de facto dominance of a single culture across all the important sectors of the world”, he points out that global monocultures are not new but existed in the past as well. Following the japanese scholar Toru nishigabi, Keniston equates the present global monoculture with the American culture of Hollywood films and American TV along with American values of “free enterprise” and consumerism. Though the cultural nationalist opposition to the global monoculture is reductive in so far as it remains within the paradigm of modernity, it has raised several important questions on globalization and the way it impacts national cultures. First of all, cultural nationalism has interrogated globalization’s presumption in denying other cultures the possibility of exiting outside the global by working its way into the most hidden spaces of the globe. it has uncovered the enslaving strains in the democratization of the global by linking the fruits of globalization to the beneficiary’s submission to the diktat of global monitoring agencies. Cultural nationalism has also revealed the hierarchies of the global, albeit differently ordered, which make its members far from equal. In the process, globalization emerges as a global capitalist hegemony with its gaps and controls linked to ownership. Finally, cultural nationalism has questioned the rightness of ushering in First Wave agrarian economies into Third Wave information cultures. Cultural nationalism’s greatest fear is that of a global monoculture swamping indigenous national cultures riding on the crest of advanced telecommunication technologies (Satchidanandan 2000). Like Keniston, cultural nationalists equate today’s global monoculture with american kitsch (Satchidanandan 2000). Blame for the infiltration of the American global monoculture in the most secluded regions of the earth is laid on the new mass media. owned by Western capital, they appear as new instruments of Western control, reducing non-Western masses 1 Though cultural nationalism has a specific history, I have employed it as oppositional to the understanding of the globalization of cultural imperialism clubbing all master narratives predicated on the production of nation as a locality. While this might overlap with certain aspects of cultural nationalism as originating in the freedom struggle, the contested nature of the nation today has revived the discourse of cultural nationalism in the wake of globalization in the electronic public sphere.

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to inert consumers. similarly, new information technologies are seen as ushering in a technological hegemony as the elite within and without the Western world control information channels. But the cultural nationalist argument, framed within modernity, is oblivious to the new configuration of self, community and nation emerging in the information age. To begin with, its equating of the present global monoculture with a particular national culture is problematic in its being predicated on the modern politics of the nation state. it not only projects a monolithic american culture unchallenged by the contemporary american multicultural fabric, but also shows scant understanding of the dominance of the transnational corporation in the new global economy. Though the present global monoculture emerges from the american soil, Benjamin Barber’s metaphor of the McWorld suggests a consumerist culture epitomized by transnational corporates like Coca-Cola and McDonalds (1995). If we are to believe Keniston, this consumerist cultural hegemony affects “Western” and nonWestern nations alike. Therefore, like David Lyon, one could view this consumerist global monoculture as a creation of transnational corporations, which control both the “global flow of information and culture ‘commodities’ such as television and video” (1988: 113). These views fit in with Walter Mignolo’s contention that the present “global design” is of the transnational ideology of the marketplace, or of neoliberalism as the emergent civilizational project. secondly, the bogey of an american monoculture refutes samuel huntington’s warning about multiple global monocultures threatening local cultures today (1996). Similarly, Arjun Appadurai, arguing that america no longer dominates the world system of images, stresses fears other than those of Americanization (Appadurai and Breckenridge 1996). Conversely, cultural nationalism opposes the global monoculture with vernacular cultures in complete innocence of the origins of vernacular cultures. As Sheldon Pollock tells us, vernacular cultures were not “primeval ways of autochthons” (2000). They were created over time by replacing a range of much older translocal cultural practices. vernacular literary cultures were initiated by the conscious decisions of writers to reshape the boundaries of their cultural universe by renouncing the larger world for the smaller place, and they did so in full awareness of the significance of their decision. New local ways of making culture with their wholly historical and factitious local identities and, concomitantly, new ways of ordering society and polity came into being, replacing the older translocalism. Pollock traces a cyclic movement from “the old cosmopolitan to the vernacular and from the vernacular to the new and disquieting cosmopolitanism of today” (2000). He illustrates it through the shift from the older communities to the nation state and from the nation to the post-national state. arguing that the vernacular literary cultures of the past were conscious decisions made by producers of those cultures, he emphasizes the “produced” and provisional nature of vernacular cultures. Pollock suggests that today, as we are confronted with a choice between a “national vernacularity dressed in the frayed period costume of violent revanchism” and a “multinational cosmopolitanism” bent on eliminating it, a fresh look at the history of the cosmopolitan and the vernacular “may have important implications

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for future practices” (2000). He cites the specific example of the birth of the Indian nation state to explain the movement from the old cosmopolitan to the vernacular. A look at the history of the alternating cycles of the cosmopolitan and vernacular on the indian subcontinent can guard us against opposing global monoculture with a national monoculture. The locality that global monoculture is seen to be destroying cannot be contained within the local/global opposition because the great indian Tradition masquerading as the vernacular is really a translocal tradition that evolved by appropriating earlier vernaculars.2 While making claims for the indigenous, one must keep in mind that they are made in total disregard for the source from which the indigenous has been borrowed. Pollock’s critique of the binary of the “philologies of community” and “philologies of contact” underlying the cosmopolitan/vernacular opposition is relevant to indian cultural nationalism’s espousal of an indigenous vernacular. Pollock’s objection to the projection of community in this opposition, as existing primevally and prior to all interaction, while universalizing forms are seen as exterior, can be transferred to cultural nationalist representations of the indigenous national. The cultural of national memory reverts to a mythic past in which the real and the mythic are inextricably mingled, illustrating that memory and forgetting are inseparable. While previous accounts project the great indian Tradition as evolving out of Little Traditions to reiterate their interdependence, traditions that grew entirely independent of the upper caste, Sanskritized one are gradually coming to light. These reinterpret the paternalistic narrative of accretion through which the Great Tradition was superimposed on non-Sanskrit forms as cooption (Singh 1986). Accounts of those left out of this grand narrative of Indian culture uncover the history of the production of the narrative of the nation notable for its many amnesias and erasures. They unmask the hegemonizing design through which a particular class, caste and language arrogated the right to speak for the nation. This goes together with the identification of several moments in Indian history when a translocal indian master narrative was forged by cannibalizing little local stories. The first of these can be located in the Aryan imposition of a homogenizing vedic culture on subjugated tribal and Dravidian groups, which was gradually accorded primeval origins. recent studies have brought to light 2

For a discussion of the difference between great and Little Traditions of india refer to Powell (1992) and for the intersection of the Panjabi Great and Little Traditions with Perso-Arabic see Mir (Powell 1992: 12; Mir 2006). Powell shows that marga or a central “great Tradition” was the classical phase of the ancient indian musical theatre whereas desi or the “many little traditions” represent the vernacular phase beginning c. 500 Ce. The Great Tradition is marked by a strict practice of composition whereas desi traditions reveal a relatively free practice moving towards improvisation. An important distinction he makes is between the employment of marga in the ritual theatre music and the perception of desi as music for entertainment. Musically the great Tradition’s melody is based on jatis and gramamargas while desi demonstrates an expansion of melodic basic to include later types of ragas.

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several Little Traditions running parallel to the Sanskritic, brahminical and Hindu one essentialized as the great indian Tradition. For example, the various prakrits and Pali helped to script the counter-narratives of the non-brahminical groups in the vedic past just as the various bhasha or indian language literatures evolved into independent regional vernaculars later. The orientalist project of upholding the vedic indian past as authentic merely conscripted this long cherished myth of vedic/aryan superiority to europe’s civilizational mission. Critiques of the great indian Tradition from the varied perspectives of class, caste, gender, region and religion expose the dominant, expansionist impulse at its base to challenge the notion of a unitary, stable, essentialized indian culture. apart from its amnesia to the erasures and occlusions by which an upper-class, patriarchal, settler culture transformed into a translocal culture, the invocation of the great indian Tradition of counter-global monoculture is tantamount to an opposition of one form of cosmopolitanism with another. viewed in this light, the vernacular counterdiscourse to global monoculture can emerge not in the translocal great indian Tradition but in multiple, Little Traditions of regional vernaculars. Moreover, the upper-class provenance of the great indian Tradition introduces the markers of class and caste to the cosmopolitan vernacular problematic. As Little Traditions are shown to have folk origins in regional non-brahminical vernaculars, the great and Little opposition on the subcontinent comes to resemble the high versus low culture debate in the West. in fact, the great indian/Little indian dichotomy is flawed for the forced attempt to fit it into the high–low opposition in the West. as the great indian Tradition forges an alliance with high culture, cultural elite within and without the Western world reiterate a shared concern about the invasion of mass culture. Non-Western Indian critics find themselves in the eminent presence of Western social theorists who have been far more vituperative in their denunciations of the consumerist mass culture than them. The concerns of cultural nationalism reverberate with the concerns of writers of the Frankfurt School such as Adorno, Habermas and Jameson about the threats to liberty from the mass media. george Duhamel’s description of the cinema as “a pastime for helots, a diversion for the uneducated, wretched, worn-out creatures who are consumed by their worries, a spectacle which requires no concentration and presupposes no intelligence” represents the viewpoint of the intellectual and artistic elite of modernity as well as that of India (Poster 1995). Adorno’s comments on radio, and later on television, are repeated in the indian elite’s objections to modern mass culture and “its automatized responses” that restrict the autonomy of the “liberal” subject. one can hear in india, too, althusser’s disgust for the mass media as mouthpieces of a bourgeois ideology and habermas’s objections to the electronic media’s interference with the emergence of a public sphere. in addition to displaying the routine elite disgust for the mass media’s mechanized responses, indian cultural nationalism sees them as agents of an alien Western invasion. The new national master narrative now turns a great indian/Little indian combine against the onslaught of Western popular culture.

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given the imbrications of taste hierarchies with power, the construction of a national vernacular projected as autochthonous is a move towards the consolidation of traditional power structures as expressed through symbolic cultural capital. Both the great and Little indian traditions join hands against the popular to impose new hierarchies through a carefully devised strategy of recognition and misrecognition concealing their own vested interests. The marginalization of popular culture by a putative high culture ironically endows it with “esoteric values” in postmodernist reversal. similarly, the misrecognition and invisibility of the people in the dominant master narrative is the historical background for the discovery of cultural value in the discourse of subalternity. The postmodern valorization of the popular interpreted as the “unofficial culture” with a non-elite focus helps to establish a parallel between subaltern consciousness and popular culture, which can be emancipatory for historically disavowed cultures. in fact, the fundamental divide between high and low, elite and popular appears anachronistic in the face of the facility with which the high and low crisscross one another. The new social space in which the old high/low division grows blurred is created by the interaction of new technologies with the media of film, television and the internet. Mark Poster’s The Second Media Age (1995) addresses itself specifically to the role telecommunication technologies play in the new social space. Poster avers that the debate over the political effect of telecommunications raged when the old broadcast model of communication prevailed. he adds that both groups, whether they viewed the media as emancipating or enslaving, remained within the binary of the autonomous/heteronymous subject of modernity. Poster attributes the Frankfurt School’s fear of the mass media to the media’s destabilization of the autonomous subject of modernity. The subject, as autonomous or heteronymous, existed or was dissolved. Like the Frankfurt School theorists, Indian cultural critics perceive the electronic media as one-way communication systems and hear in them a monologist language of command reducing the subject to an inert mass. as the mass media are seen to deny the subject the possibility to enter a dialogue, they are regarded as threatening the existence of the independent and liberal subject. Adorno and Habermas’s horror of the massified and automatized responses to the radio or television is echoed in the cultural nationalist fear of an american media invasion through transnational television. at the root of all these responses is a technological determinism, which links the authoritarianism of the mass media to their technological features. For instance, the new media’s penetration of the remotest regions of the nation is ascribed to their infinite capacity for duplication. The diabolical design of a superficially alluring alien culture displacing local identities and cultures is predicated on the broadcast model of few producers and many consumers. it remains within the habermasian model of the subject as a whole and is centred upon which structures of domination could be imposed. Though Habermas, in his late writings, acknowledges the “emancipatory potential” of the media in their capacity for infinite dissemination, he sees it as increasing their authoritarian determinism: “insofar as mass media channel communication

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flows in a centralized network from the center to the periphery or from above to below, they can indeed strengthen the efficacy of social controls” (Poster 1995: 13). Poster places against Habermas Baudrillard’s notion of the media as only simulations, which he regards as more cognizant of the way the media work. For Baudrillard the media install a new culture at the heart of everyday life, outside the Enlightenment opposition of reason and the irrational. By delinking the relationship between “a system of meaning” and “a system of simulation”, he robs the media of their manipulation power and sets in motion a different logic of simulation. But Baudrillard’s logic of the object in place of the modernist subject roots him, Poster avers, in the binary of heteronymous/autonomous subject. he proposes a counterpoint in the linguistic turn in poststructuralism and postmodernity. The linguistic turn permits the constitution of the subject in social space, a subject that can be decentred or multiple without being dissolved. Poster’s focus on the role of communication technologies in the constitution of the postmodern subject in The Second Media Age provides a counter perspective eluding the complex ways media and globalization intersect in the production of locality in the postmodern era. his emphasis on the technical aspects of communication, the way improved technologies will transform the relations of production, consumption and reception in what he names the “second Media age”, demonstrates a sharper understanding of the way technology and culture interface with one another in the new global situation. But his model of the second Media age, though he also shows how improved technologies will alter the old broadcast model of few producers and many consumers, is based on the interactive channel of the internet. in contrast, arjun appadurai proposes a broader conceptual frame including all the media and the way they impact both the postmodern and the postcolonial, which is more pertinent to the anxieties of the post-colonial indian nation state. Unlike Marxist critics who examine globalization only in terms of capital flow, Appadurai emphasizes the cultural dimensions of globalization. Viewing the new global process as shaped by the mass circulation of people and ideas aided by advanced communication technologies, he shows how globalization has transformed the way subjectivity links with location, political identification and social relations. Poster draws on appadurai’s views on the new global culture created by migration, media and telecommunications technologies to counter the habermasian view of communications technologies as a corruption of communicative rationality, The incipient synergy of computers, telephone and television produces a cosmopolitan culture in which ethnic difference is evoked and registered. An enormous constellation of images, narratives and ideas is shared across the globe but indigenized by ethnicity and culture in very different ways. (1996: 46)

appadurai sees both the global cultural economy and locality characterized by disjunctures in five spheres that he names scapes. Though the overlap between

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these scapes makes it impossible that they be considered in isolation, the notion of mediascape can help us understand the new configurations in the global space. Mediascape refers both to the method of the dissemination of images and to the images of the world created by the electronic media. The mediascape establishes the primacy of the image in the global village, with the electronic media constructing the image as the main communicative fact, facilitating both imagined communities and counter-hegemonic worlds. The images of the world involve many complicated inflections, depending on their mode, their hardware, their audience and the interests of those who own and control them. These mediascapes transmit a large and complex repertoire of images, narratives and ethnoscapes to global viewers, in which the world of commodities and the world of news and politics are profoundly mixed. as a result, mass audiences throughout the world experience themselves as a complicated and interconnected repertoire of print, celluloid, electronic screen and bill boards. in this context, it becomes necessary to shift from the Marxist preoccupation with the power of the images produced and controlled by capitalism to the implication of knowledge and power in the structure and distribution of discursive formations. In Appadurai’s emancipatory look at the mass media, the consumers of mass mediated forms are agents and actors not merely objects and recipients. he attempts to move towards a theory of reception that is “global and oriented to the interaction of media in the experience of viewers regarded as varieties of subject” (1996: 4). Both Poster and appadurai emphasize the imbrications of printing technologies with the construction of the autonomous, rational subject in the public sphere of modern nation states, which habermas sees as “depoliticized” through its domination by the mass media. appadurai introduces the idea of deterritorialization to explain how nationalism gets divorced from territoriality in the diasporic public sphere and translocal communities. he shows the new communication technologies to be conducive to the constitution of different kinds of public spheres, which lead to the formation of the imagined communities that are transnational. For example, the green movement, cyber communities of scientists or diasporic populations simultaneously participate in multiple national public spheres, as in the case of Sikhs in Panjab and in Canada. Whether one views the media as tools of global capitalism or as contributing to the heterogeneity of cultural forms, there is no denying that they have transformed the meaning of locality. Appadurai looks at globalization as neither homogenization nor essentialization of locality but a dialectic movement in the production as well as dissolution of locality. he substitutes locality with the term “site”, or “a spatial vortex, in which complex historical processes come into conjunction with global processes that link such sites together” (1996: 15). He sees such sites as generating prismatic structures, which are local but also fundamentally interactive with other such structures. The localities constructed through such sites replace earlier centre place models with a “global structure for the continuous (and potentially infinite) flow of images and ideologies through particular sites”.

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In Poster’s view, a dialogue between ethnically specific and gendered subjects is possible under conditions of differentiated cosmopolitanism, which is “furthered by the thickening and intensification of boundaries” enabled by the electronic forms of communication (1995: 51). Mignolo prefers the term critical cosmopolitanism and distinguishes it from earlier forms of cosmopolitanism, which he sees as running counter to globalization through the history of Western civilization. He makes a distinction between global designs, driven by expansionist and homogenizing impulses and cosmopolitan projects, complementary or oppositional, which provide a critical perspective on global designs from the interiority of modernity. The entry of satellite television in India evoked the same horrified alarm with which the Frankfurt School theorists had greeted the mass media. The new mass media appeared to indian cultural nationalists as instruments of control. The capacity of new technologies to beam real-time images across national boundaries was seen to give them the power to impose invasive, alien images on the indian imaginary. Their being owned by Western media barons strengthened the image of satellite television channels as agents of american cultural imperialism. a nefarious plot about the unseen “foreign hand” exterminating indigenous cultures and entities through the seductions of a consumerist culture began to take shape. a decade later, the transformation of the indian cultural space by new media and telecommunication technologies can be viewed as occurring through a variety of complex processes that cannot be reduced to americanization. The cultural nationalist fear of homogenization takes no note of glocalization, the manner in which global monocultures are indigenized by various localities. it also underestimates the role these technologies play in transforming the meaning of locality in the global process. While world systems have always been interactive, the new technologies reinforce and intensify cultural interactivity. This makes it impossible for the remotest locality to remain uninflected by the global even as the local mediates the global. The transformation in the production of locality in the new global setting cannot sustain traditional local–global oppositions. nor can resistance to the global be constituted through a primordial essence attached to specific neighbourhoods. The role of the new media in the emergence of new Bhangra mutants may be used to identify the various ways new media and technologies impact indigenous cultures and the forms of resistance they enable. The nexus formed between different components of the culture industry to dish out traditional fare to indian viewers with a global dressing highlights the role capital plays in the production, distribution and framing of the new media. The asymmetries of production facilities, distribution networks and theatrical venues undoubtedly seem to favour some producers over others. The american dominance in telecommunications proves that advanced nations’ access to media technologies is disproportional to that of developing countries like India. But the fetishization of music Adorno spoke of was brought about in this case by a complex market capitalism in which music labels, artists and the media collaborated with improved communication technologies to alter the conditions of the production, distribution and reception of music. The logic of the marketplace proceeded respecting no

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class, regional or national affiliations. The selection and recording of music, its packaging and modes of dissemination were all part of an elaborative marketing blitz, which cannot be explained as an imposition of a Western hegemony. That the appropriations in this case are as much intranational as international is evident from the fact that both the global and the local music industry cannibalizes the production of rustic Panjabi performers. The Bhangra practitioners are folksingers from Panjab’s interiors; the music company that monopolizes musical production is a homegrown swadeshi enterprise; the satellite music channel primarily used to preview the albums is the indian base of a transnational organization. Bhangra’s audience is equally diverse, comprising the subscribers of this transnational channel as well as buyers of audio and video cassettes. vilayetibhangra’s resistivity has its origins in a working-class youth subculture that resists white ruling-class culture from a space outside and in opposition to the ruling-class culture and is rooted in the specific problems of working-class racial minorities in the West. The historical collaboration between apache indian and Maxi Priest hints at the emergence of an oppressed minority counter-discourse with a non-elitist focus. vilayetibhangra’s black alliances recall black cultural nationalism with a similar emphasis on Panjabi cultural values. But desibhangra is robbed of subaltern oppositionality due to the appropriation of subaltern creativity in the culture industry often with the complicity of Bhangra producers. Unlike vilayetibhangra, Bhangrapop cannot be fitted in the high and popular alterity of the West. Nor does it constitute the Little Tradition conventionally posited as complementing the great indian Tradition. The homegrown Bhangra belongs to appadurai’s contested public cultural space in which the regional, the national and the global intersect. The solidity of high and low dissolves in a fluidity in which the elite and the masses can dialogue in the new social space constructed by the media. Bhangra offers an example of a resistance tactic that opposes the global through a post-national alliance of the regional and the diasporic. The global space has been liberating for traditionally disavowed cultures, which might now constitute transnational localities that conflict with the politics of the national state. While Bhangra lacks working-class or caste subalternity, it belongs to the traditionally disavowed regional vernaculars suppressed by hindi nationalism. These suppressed vernaculars can exploit the new global celebration of difference while resisting its reification. Michel de Certeau’s notion of tactic is particularly helpful in understanding how popular practices can resist the dominant culture. The resistance of Bhangra is the tactic of the deterritorialized who lack their own space. As global monocultural invasion leaves no space untouched, the only choice available to the local is to occupy the “space of the other”, undermine that space and make it habitable (Bennett 1998). This resistance involves less the protection of local subaltern cultures against the incursions of dominant global formations than a liberating play in the space of the other. as in the previous phase shift from orality to literacy, the media is complicit with electronic capitalism in the construction of the new public sphere and a global space that might be viewed from two diverging perspectives. The first is that posted

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by appadurai. While rights of admission into the global might be beyond the means of the majority of the indian population, restricting the democratizing promise of the new electronic media, there is a significant population whose consumption patterns makes them participants in global cosmopolitan cultures. The counter argument is about the relevance of the lifestyles of american multibillionaires to indian villagers who cannot put two square meals together. To this one can say that possession or access to a television set admits the starving villager to the same mediascape, though his reception and actualization of the same images may differ. The threat of the invasion of a global monoculture posits the presence of the global everywhere, even in the Fourth World. global space suggests a new sense of place that is not only constructed but also related to the use of the media. The contradiction between audience lifestyles and media images notwithstanding, the use of the media coopts even those outside consumption networks into the global net. The difference in the reading practices of appadurai’s cosmopolitans of consumption and Keniston’s starving villagers can help us look at the varied ways the global impacts different localities. Henry Jenkins, Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies programme has proposed media convergence as a consumer revolution in his book Convergence Culture: where old and New Media Collide. arguing against convergence as “a technological process bringing together multiple media functions within the same devices”, he views convergence “as a cultural shift as consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections among dispersed media content” (2006: 3). Bhangra’s spontaneous flows through the convergence of various media such as radio, cassettes, cable Tv and internet in digital space constructs that synergy between dispersed Bhangra sites, producers and consumers through which global capitalist domination is subverted. The change in Bhangra consumers’ access to media technologies earns them an indirect control over media content and production. The concern among white consumers about Bhangra’s marketing as World Music that perpetuates ethnic stereotypes is legitimate. Bhangra’s mainstreaming might require such tags and might be facilitated through the involvement of music majors. But in Bhangra’s popularity among ethnic groups, names and hype are secondary to musical quality and innovation. The emergence of a vibrant Bhangra industry offering technically slick music at affordable prices presents one of the best examples of the indigenous music industry’s resistance to global capitalism, notwithstanding the allegations of ethical malpractices such as piracy, undercutting and artist exploitation. The average Bhangra consumer remains unaffected by global market domination by indicating a musical preference for locally produced inexpensive Bhangra music over global products. Though local consumers might have been familiarized to music produced through other channels, their identification with local content compels musical glocalization. Diasporic Bhangra’s resistance to the reification of ethnic music by global corporates, similarly, takes the shape of the appropriation of inexpensive technologies in producing their albums or signing with independent labels. Bally sagoo’s launch of a successful independent label, ishqrecords, offers an instance

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of musical independence. At the same time, Bhangra’s market segmentation, factoring in age, gender, class, region and taste rather than geographical location, is truly global and boundary-crossing. Media convergence impacts Bhangra through the cross-fertilization of various Bhangra genres in the homeland and the diaspora. Despite the differences in the media through which Bhangra is circulated, their convergence constructs a shared space in which global cosmopolitans are made to listen to Panjabi locals. Panjabi peasants continue to use the old modes to listen to their favourite tunes. But old Bhangra’s acquisition of musical authenticity in globalization increases its value within the diaspora and the nation. The decoupling of musical production and consumption from space by digital networks, makes the relation between places in the centre–periphery model redundant. Though the Bhangra produced in each locality reflects the influences of others, the Bhangra universe might not be reduced to the control of any particular locality, group or class. The circulation of the same musical album through divergent circulation and dissemination channels, similarly, might reduce the sonic divide between the consumers of global and local, high and low, folk and popular cultures. The question of cultural appropriation in the Bhangra context cannot be addressed as the appropriation of the native either by diasporic artists or by transnational conglomerates as projected in the metropolitan West’s objections to Bhangra’s reification as World Music. The travels of Bhangra and its producers across various Bhangra production centres question the way locality and cosmopolitanism have been conventionally defined. Digital culture overturns the distinction between the sophisticate and the local through the techno-nostalgic privileging and globalization of the non-technologized and the rustic. Diasporic Panjabi musical production, in fact, has converged on jat, or rustic, music in the transformation of asian, indian or Panjabi ethnicity. not only are traditional music albums remixed and sampled with the consent of their original producers but new albums also produced through active collaborations between Panjabi and diasporic artists. These collaborations reveal a working-class kinship between the homeland and the diaspora forged in the formation of new cultural identities that challenge cultural, caste and class hierarchies at either site. The best example of diasporic homeland collaboration is that between the Birmingham-based Dj Bally Sagoo and the folksinger Malkit Singh. Bally, “the most popular Asian DJ in the world”, routinely collaborates with Malkit, “the king of Bhangra” who moved to Birmingham from Ludhiana to showcase Panjabi folksong and dance to the world. Other Bhangra artists, too, take great pride in tracing their ancestry to the Panjabi jat, or peasant, which often becomes particularized as a narrow jat caste lineage.3 in view of the diasporic canonization of Panjabi artistic production as roots, and the homeland incorporation of non-Panjabi sounds in the traditional Bhangra genres, the relation between diasporic and Panjabi artists might best be 3 i have used two different spellings of the Panjabi term for peasant, jatt and jat to distinguish between the professional and caste affiliations though they are often imbricated.

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described as mutual cannibalization, if not collaboration. The affirmation of these bonds across geographical distance in asian identity politics often ascribes on “homeland” artists the stronger political agendas of diasporic Bhangra despite homeland “stars” confessing to nothing more than a desire to promote Panjabi music and culture globally. instead of implicating diasporic bands as native informants who collaborate in the exoticization of the Panjabi artist, one could look at both groups as at once complying with and resisting their reification through different means. Though both groups resist within the market system, diasporic Bhangra reveals more instances of conscious attempts to circumvent the politics of capitalist production through do-it-yourself recording techniques, or the launching of or signing up with independent labels. homeland resistance tactics are confined to maintaining a modicum of artistic freedom and integrity while outwardly submitting to the dictates of the marketing machine. Bhangra’s globalization is invariably intermixed with its virtualization, which requires its eviction from its face-to-face intimacy of live performance to electronically mediated performance and its dissemination through distanceclosing technologies. Whether the transmission of globalized images in real time necessarily inaugurates a global time that “prefigures a new form of tyranny” through the supercession of real space by real time or not, Bhangra’s virtualization enables its dispersal through global marketing and distribution channels. Bhangra artists, despite complaining about the marginalization of sound and lyrics to the tyranny of the music video, are complicit in Bhangra’s virtualization, the price they are willing to pay for its globalization. Unlike the audio cassette, which closed time and distance through the dispersal of recorded Panjabi music across very Panjabi sites, the Bhangra music video comes close to the “stereo-reality” that virilio warns us about. But i would not agree with him on this point about the “tactile perspective”, the new domain of contact-at-a-distance, essentially banishing real contact (2004). Bhangra images belonging to the global time of the multimedia and cyberspace do dominate the local time-frame of cities and neighbourhoods. But their impact is not always as dehumanizing in post-colonial contexts as has been associated with cyberculture in general. How far does Howard Rheingold’s definition of virtual communities as “social aggregations” emerging “when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace” (Wilbur 1997: 7) fit Bhangra communities? The discussions in Bhangra chatrooms definitely reverberate with strong human feeling, splitting individuals into language, caste and class groupings, but whether they can create a commonality of interests that could return to the Panjabi gemeinshaft is yet to be seen. in my view, the reappropriation of Bhangra from its virtualization in media space into the life of the community takes place through the act of consumption in which real bodies, racialized and ethnicized, are made to participate. Though cyberspace has been regarded as neutral to race, gender or ethnicity in general, the production of ethnicities in relation to Bhangra is predicated on the emancipation from, as well as performance of, the body that plays on the embodiment in Bhangra

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performance. For example, a Bhangra chatroom on the website Global Panjab presents heated discussions on the following topics: “Divisions of Panjabis and Future of Our Identity – A General Discussion”, “Do Castes or Sub Castes Make Any Sense in the Modern World?”, “Are We Brothers or Enemies? Sikhs and Panjabi Hindus!!”, “True Panjabi Identity: Behind the Mask of Castes, Sub-Castes, racial groups, sub-Cultures”. The formation of virtual ethnicities in cyberspace in relation to Bhangra affects its reclamation in real neighbourhoods. Both reveal instances of cultural consumption as an act of production. Bhangra’s acquisition of the status of tradition among diasporic Asian youth inflects it with ethnic pride that becomes a key ingredient in the production of asian youth identities. The youth communities forged in fan chatrooms on Bhangra websites impact youth cultures in real settings. sudhanva Deshpande reports the impact of Bhangra’s revalorization in global Delhi. 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 Panjabi. gurdas Mann, the original bhangra star of the 80s, who is currently enjoying a minor revival, was only heard by Panjabi 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”. (Deshpande 2000)

The pride in the Delhi Bhangra fan’s identification with the new Asian music echoes that of the Birmingham teenager who passionately proclaims, “it is my roots”. Bhangra’s musical worth is enhanced by its ethnocultural status as apna, our, culture though the meaning of “ours” keeps gliding between Asian, Indian, Panjabi, Sikh or jat contingent upon the situation. Bhangra virtualities celebrate ethnic, racial, cultural difference that is performed by racialized, ethnicized bodies in real spaces. not only indian or asian youth but also adults reappropriate Bhangra into the traditional indian ritual space to produce a hybridized asianness and indianness or transformed panjabiyat. Bhangra recovers its ritual origins in Panjabi family settings and functions. Unlike other virtual identities where pleasure is contingent upon impersonation and switching, Bhangra communities forged in virtual space are affirmed through being embodied in dance. Faking invites strong denunciation if not expulsion in Bhangra cyber etiquette and assertion of racial, ethnic, sectarian and caste difference is deemed good manners. But it is the performance of difference through bodily signifiers, gestures, movements and voice in Bhangra dance that consummates its articulation in virtual places. While real borders prevent the realization of the Utopian dream of dissolving or constructing political boundaries voiced in virtual spheres, the performance of bodily difference through dance

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in different neighbourhoods constructs the desired Panjabi place. The Bhangra body is implicated in both unifying and fragmenting drives. it is simultaneously invoked in the recollection of the Panjabi memory fractured by sectarian and political boundaries, as well as in the isolation of sectarian or caste difference. Bodily difference and embodied practice might expel Bhangra’s gore (white) and kale (black) admirers from Bhangra communities which they might have invaded virtually in the production of youth identities. Bhangra performance is as often used to construct Indian or Asian collectivity as to underline Panjabi, Sikh or jat difference. in fact, the jat caste’s domination of Bhangra production leads to a “new form of tyranny” through which Bhangra is not only appropriated as jat music but jat culture essentialized as Panjabi. The global romanticization of the jat, traditionally positioned as an uncouth caste, through Bhangra music reverses traditional Panjabi hierarchies. Bhangra texts, functioning as jat organs, elevate the jat from his former rusticity to a near royal position. Thus, the valorization of jat, peasant, culture and the compelling jat presence on the Bhangra production scene could alter relations of domination between various Panjabi caste groups. In an essay “CyberDemocracy: Internet and the Public Sphere” in his new book what’s the Matter with the Internet?, Mark Poster contends that “the question of potentials for new forms of social space that might empower individuals in new ways are foreclosed” in most discussions on the effects of the internet (2001b: n.p.). While Poster’s essay engages specifically with the emancipating promise he sees in the internet, the term cyberdemocracy embraces the utilization of all electronic communications technologies in enhancing democratic processes within a democratic republic or representative democracy. how do digital technologies impact on the politics of culture? how do they alter relations of power between and within nations, classes, castes, ethnicities and regions? Without ascribing to a completely decentred reading of cyberdemocracy, I wish to foreground the flow of Bhangra in a space without orientation in which texts circulate like decontextualized commodities in multiple directions. Though the flows of music and artists across Bhangra’s sites and neighbourhoods emanate from ethnic, caste, class and sectarian margins, their digital visibility enables them to intervene in the cultural politics of nations. Cyberdemocracy in the Bhangra context works through the valorization of pendu, or rustic music, musicians and values on Bhangra websites by diaspora jats. Jat music’s centrality to diasporic asian/indian/Panjabi identity formation makes its commoditization in global capitalist structures irrelevant to its valorization in fan cultures. in fact, commercial success accorded by musical and media giants might paradoxically reduce its worth in its fans’ gaze. Though Bhangra’s increased global visibility is largely due to its mainstreaming through global circulation networks such as satellite television, informal internet networks redeem Bhangra from its reification by appropriating it in the formation of new global communities, which can be both boundary breaking and boundary crossing. Though the Panjabi jat might remain the object of the digital divide until content is localized, not only do jats access the same music through other media such as radio and cassettes, but Bhangra is valorized for its romanticization of jat core

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values and culture. While it is true that the jat voice may be heard in Bhangra music rather than in the Bhangra debates in internet chatrooms, the jat commands a formidable presence on the internet through the media technologies used by diasporic computer literates who archive, annotate, appropriate and recirculate media content. Jat music, synthesized with global beats to reflect diasporic realities, becomes an essential component in the reconstruction of global panjabiyat. The Panjabi jat gains a voice in the destabilization of traditional hierarchical structures through his centrality in the production of Bhangra music. The romanticization of Panjabi jat rusticity in global techno-nostalgia also makes the Panjabi rustic “kool” among middle-class urban youth. The appropriation of rusticity in the marketing of techno-nostalgia might be a source of the further disempowerment of the marginalized but it certainly has the effect of globalizing the voice of the margin, though dictated by global agendas. But diasporic artists are equally subjected to exoticization by the global media and industry for the value addition accorded them by their asian origins in the current promotion of asian Kool in euro-american locations. The greatest artistic compromise Bhangra artists at all sites seem to make is confirming the romanticized images of Panjabi rusticity propagated by the media and the music industry in Bhangra’s marketing. The reification of valorized exotica and ethnicity in global capitalism catapults the jat into new relations of power. The jat’s visibility and elevation comes at the cost of auto-exoticization. The jat can command an arresting presence and price so long as he is willing to dance to global tunes. To reply to whether his global visibility has emancipated the jat from real structures of past and present domination in the diaspora, i turn to Virinder S. Kalra and John Hutnyk, Not so much Asian Kool as Asian Coolie. What we find significant is that at the same time that asian Kool proliferates with its high visibility, in the forgotten corners of the diaspora, the IT factory floors, the late night violence at taxi ranks, the daily abuse of catering workers, spaces where police repression, racist violence and day-to-day exploitation remain a matter of course. (2001: n.p.)

Back home in India, I only need to view “City 60” on Star News where the gruesome sight of a five-year-old strangled to death by impoverished drug addicts ranging between eight and ten in Panjab for Rs 15 is flashed between snippets of glamorous images of the globe’s favourite exotic aishwarya rai Bachchan. is there “a strategic significance in celebrating the visibility of Asian culture in the metropolitan centre” – even as, tragically, marginal lives remain unaltered here and there?

appendix 1 Music survey Conducted Between 2000 and 2006

1. How many people listen to Panjabi songs? overall 69/80 Panjabi 18/18 rest 51/62 2. Where do you listen to music? Living room 40/80 Bedroom 48/80 Bathroom 6/80 Dining hall 3/80 Office 0/80 Club 5/80 restaurant 8/80 in transit 2/80 3. Media used to listen to music radio 13/80 Tv 36/80 CD player 36/80 Cassette player 17/80 Personal stereo 6/80 Computer 48/80 Live 7/80 4. What kind of music do you listen to? Classical 18/80 Popular 50/80 Folk 10/80 others 12/80

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5. What are the sources of music? Friends 52/80 Library 3/80 Website 18/80 Music shop 53/80 internet 13/80 Mail 0/80 6. Where do you listen to music? Parties 51/80 Functions 25/80 Family gatherings 25/80 Festivals 21/80 others 18/80 7. Why do you like listening to music? relax 36/80 Pass time 10/80 Like music 37/80 Cheer up 27/80 others 5/80 8. What is important to you in music? rhythm 42/80 Lyrics 40/80 speed 1/80 Tone 21/80 style 11/80 visuals 7/80 others 5/80 9. Kind of music Classical Carnatic hindustani jazz Pop rap reggae Soft rock

28/80 3/80 42/80 13/80 33/80 5/80 6/80 22/80

APPENDIx 1

Hard rock ghazal Bhajan Film Fusion remix Folk

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9/80 12/80 6/80 36/80 10/80 28/80 7/80

10. What channels do you normally tune in to? radio 34/80 radiocity 8/80 DD (Doordarshan) 5/80 star Plus 14/80 Zee Tv 7/80 Channel v 15/80 MTv 45/80 B4U 10/80 11. Who are your favourite Bhangra singers? Name Know apache 16 Bally sagoo 30 Sukhbir 41 rish rich 21 jazzy B 39 Pammi Bai 13 Mika 28 nusrat Fateh ali Khan 40 Malkit 25 hans raj hans 43 gurdas Mann 45 Daler Mehndi 54

Listen 0 4 6 5 11 4 3 18 3 10 10 12

12. Number of people who listen to Panjabi songs Have Panjabi singers as favourites 34 (16 Panjabis) Don’t have Panjabi singers as favourites 40 (2 Panjabis) sample size 80 interviews conducted in Bangalore, Chennai, Kharagpur, jallandar and Delhi between 2000 and 2006

appendix 2 Excerpt from Marketing Study on Panjabi Music Conducted by Darshpreet Mann, MBM vinod gupta school of Management iiT Kharagpur for saregama HMV 2000 (see Mann 2000)

Basic A&R (Artists and Repertoire) Process Select singer (artist) – Sit with and get a nod from the artist to work with you. Develop the theme and keep the target audience in mind while creating the music. Lyricist – Develops the idea and get in the right wording based on the theme and target audience planned. Composer – Decides on the pattern and rhythm of music. Music director – The person responsible for all the elements in the value chain. There is generally a team of people who works under the music director and he can play many different roles in the creation of music. Arranging music – This process is also carried out by or under the guidance of the music director. Dubbing – This is the process of ensuring that the voice of the artist has the right pitch and modulation. Mixing (recordist) – Each instrument is played on a different track and the recordist creates the right mix of music and voice. Multiple roles These are the different important roles that need to be played in any music creation. one person can play more than one role: for example the singer can also write his own lyrics. Or the music director can take up roles at various steps of composing, arranging, dubbing and even the mixing of music.

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Key Questions in the A&R Process 1. What is the role of each element in the a&r process? 2. Lyricist – Music director – artist – recordist. how can the role be altered to create more effectiveness and identify certain elements that can be modified? 3. how can the importance of relationships be developed and how can these personal relationships be harnessed? 4. how important are the following parameters: • timing of right music at the right time? • creating the right mix of content and promotion to draw out maximum benefits? Let us firstly try to understand the role played by different elements in the process of music creation and then try to draw out what kind of relationships exist in the music industry. Roles of Different Elements Role of singer / artist: The voice in any composition corresponds to the artist. The artist is very important as generally he forms the public face of any music creation and the marketing and promotion of any album generally revolves around the artist. Two important elements of an artist are: • technical knowledge of music • quality of the voice Some artists in the industry have a good voice but lack the technical knowledge to effect the required changes in voice to suit different situations. Different roles of singer •

•

•

only playback singer – In the Hindi film industry a singer is generally called in to sing without any say in the lyrics or the kind of music. Big banners like Yash Chopra and Subhash Ghai carry out their own personal a&r and hire artists only for their voice. Singer and lyricist – singers also write their own lyrics when some phrases form an attractive pattern in their mind. at the start of a singer’s career, most singers write their own lyrics and even compose their own songs, as they do not have the name or the resources to hire renowned lyricists. Total involvement – singers can also play a role in the deciding of composition by music directors. This happens when a singer makes an album committing his own resources and creates the final product. This is very common in B- and C-category artists (see below) who themselves

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prepare the master recording and then approach the music companies to promote it. Important aspects of singer Tangible • popularity and name that a singer has in the industry • level of resources that a singer is ready to commit in a project and the amount of personal risk he is ready to take in terms of investment intangible • quality of the voice • technical knowledge of music and versatility in voice Role of music director By definition the music composer is defined as the music director. But the role of the music director varies depending upon the type of contract and personal relationship with other members. The role includes: • • •

identify good voice high potential versatility Music directors are responsible for coordinating all the different members involved in music creation, namely the lyricist, artist and all the other instrument players who generally work under the music director. new singers who approach the music director can be divided into two categories: With money – These are the singers who create their own album with inputs from the music director and then approach the company directly with the DaT master recording. There are a considerable number of artists in the industry who have a very average singing voice but are ready to push themselves because of deep pockets, but the life of such artists is extremely short and they exhibit a meteoric rise and fall. shel, who belonged to the oswal family, even created his own music company just to release his own album. Without money – There are innumerable artists of this category in the indian industry. They have to struggle for a long period before obtaining any recognition. They are at the mercy of the music company and need company support to grow.

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The company takes the lead in music creation in this kind of relationship. The company acts as the producer – selects the artist and the music director, and makes them work together on an album. saregama hMv has, for example, brought together ghazal artist vinod sehgal and music director Kanwar Iqbal to work on a Panjabi ghazal project. When the company senses the requirement of any specific kind of music in the market, it brings together the artist and music director to create music which it believes will sell in the market. This can be categorized as one of the most effective a&r processes from the company’s point of view. The company gains substantially in terms of knowledge about music creation and it has full control over the participating members and the type of music being created. But all the risks involved with the project are also borne by the music company. Pammi Bai’s recent hit album in Panjab is an example of saregama hMv’s effective a&r as the company itself approached the artist and had the album created to address a prevalent need for folk music in the market.

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The artist takes the lead in music creation. he arranges his own music director and prepares a composition and then approaches a music company to market it. This is more likely to happen when the artist has resources to create music and also has some name and recognition in the music industry. Big names like Surjit Singh Bindrikhaya and Harbhajan Mann create their own product and hand it to the company. However, this also happens with first timers who have to take the lead in creating an album of their own as nobody else is ready to invest in them. having made their own master, they approach the music companies. since they do not have the reach or the recognition to approach national music companies like saregama hMv, they end up releasing their product with local companies. These local companies exploit the artists and fail to give them the required promotion and distribution. This is a major reason why a large number of good projects end

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up as flops, because they land up in the hands of these local companies who fail to exploit the project’s full worth. saregama hMv engages in projects with a number of artists in which the artist prepares the master and delivers it to the company. a recent album of surjit Khan, for example, was made by the artist and handed over to the company.

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The producer takes the lead in music creation. These producers have their own infrastructure and resources for creating music and are to be found in different cities like Bathinda, Ludhiana and Chandigarh. They are in constant touch with the local artists and also understand the market for music. They themselves select the artist and the music director, prepare the album and then approach the company. Saregama HMV maintains contact with producers like Jarnail Ghuman in Chandigarh, gautam sehgal in new Delhi and others in Ludhiana and Bathinda. Working together with these producers brings to light a significant number of new artists and results in a similarly significant quantity of new albums being released. ABC Classification of Artists This section describes three categories, namely a, B and C, and the criteria for placing artists in each category. Later the characteristics of each category of singers and the role of the music company have been established. a: established player B: emerging runner C: Unknown strugglers A Category – Established Players Presence: national Examples: Jazzy B, Surjit Singh Bindrikhaya, Harbhajan Mann, Hans Raj Hans Characteristics: • more than one hit album at the national level • presence on MTv and Channel v • charge upwards of 2 lakhs for a road show

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aim of the singer: • to consolidate a Panjabi audience and in addition appeal to the hindi segment all over india relationship with the music company: • artist wields tremendous power because of name and recognition • artist wants company to spend upward of 10 lakhs on exotic videos • artist demands substantial down payment and high royalty Conclusions: • These artists try to move outside Panjab and appeal to a mass audience but the risk is that they tend to lose touch with the folk Panjabi audience. Hans raj hans is one such example who moved into the hindi segment but lost out on the folk Panjabi segment. • To attain an album release with these artists music companies have to spend large amounts on royalty and promotion. This greatly increases the breakeven sales figure, which may not always be achievable. B Category – Emerging runner Presence: regional (Panjab) Examples: Balkar Sidhu, Pargat Bhaggu, Raj Baraar, Parminder Sandhu Characteristics: • album with sales of around 40,000 in Panjab • very active on the road-show circuit (Akharas circuit) • videos promoted on ECTV and Lashkara aim of the singer: • to appeal to Panjabis outside Panjab and develop a fan following encompassing the whole of the north region relationship with the music company: • artists have more than one offer from companies to market their music • artists negotiate aggressively for 35mm video promotions and more airtime for videos C Category – unknown Strugglers Presence: local pockets examples: Dharampreet, harpal singh, hardev Mahinangal

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Characteristics: • struggling to move outside their region • struggling with music cassette release aim of the artist: • to have a cassette released into the market to gain visibility • to not look at the cassette as a means of profitability but as a means of promotion relationship with the music company: • music companies have substantial bargaining power • artists are willing to let music companies release albums without any substantial royalty • artists also develop their own album and want the music company to market it without charging anything Mapping of an Artist in Terms of Sales and Talent SALES (Tangibles) high

established talent (A)

surprise (B)

Low

Unharnessed potential (B)

Limited potential (C)

TALENT (Intangibles) Quality of voice Technical knowledge Flexibility

high

average

Talent is an extremely intangible parameter and depends upon an individual’s perception of whether an artist can be considered to have high potential or not. Moreover, perception of talent is not fixed: it varies from time to time and can be different for each person.

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Let us try to look at the characteristics of each type of singer. Established Talent • • •

artists from category a the artist has been in the industry for a long time and has delivered a major hit album and enjoys considerable fame and recognition examples are gurdas Mann and hans raj hans

Surprise • •

the jackpot for music companies in making successful products these artists may come at a low cost but deliver substantial profits through the right mix of promotion and distribution

unharnessed Potential • • •

a very large number of artists who have the talent but are not doing well on the regional and the national circuits music companies have an important role to play in this category in identifying talented artists and promoting them to the established talent category music companies should bind these artists in a contract so that it can reap the benefits for more than one project

Limited Potential • • •

artists lack the talent to appeal to a wider audience typically artists from category C not very lucrative for the music companies

Music companies should be able to differentiate between a good singer who performs well and an average singer who has produced one major hit. Career Graph of an Artist in the Map every artist in the industry starts at the bottom right box and then slowly struggles to reach the top left corner. a major percentage of the artists are never able to make it beyond the bottom right corner while very few reach the B category, which equates to the bottom left and top right boxes. of these B category artists, a handful reaches the top left corner.

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Role of a Music Company To create music and market the product with the development of a suitable marketing mix in terms of • • • •

product price promotion distribution

Music companies have a major role in identifying new talent and promoting it. Music companies will also try to move an artist from the C category to the B category or from the B category to the a category. But the entity who always gains the maximum from any successful project is the artist himself.

appendix 3 glossary* 1

loki kurdiyan munde muttiyaar gabroo jatt jattiyan baniya pehlwaan sapera charda jind mahi jugni veer bhabhi putt mapiyan yaar, mittar pind dhol mela baisakhi lohrdi gidda vihya phasal kanak bajara belgardi

people girls (kurdi = girl) usually single and young boys (munda = boy) woman (emphasizes the difference between a woman and a girl) man (gabroo javan = young man) Panjabi farmers Panjabi women (jatti) moneylender, landlord (the quintessential bad guy) wrestler (athletics forms a big part of Panjabi culture) snake-charmer (sup/sap = snake) bachelor love of my life (jind = life) the quintessential woman. The object of envy and the butt of jokes, the embodiment of the modern Panjabi woman brother (veer mera = my brother) sister-in-law son parents friend (yaar could also mean boyfriend or girlfriend) village two-sided Bhangra drum (dholki = smaller drum played with both hands) fair (outdoor festival) harvest festival start of the planting season women’s dance wedding crop grain barley ox cart (bel = ox, gardi = car)

* This glossary is reproduced courtesy of Radhika Nagpal of APNA (Academy of the Punjab in North America). www.apnaorg.com 1

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akharda gharda manja lassi murga sharab Patiala, jullundhar, Karnal, amritsar (Ambarsar), Chandigarh kaparde kudiaan de kaparde salwaar kameez dupatta lehnga ghaghra guutt paranda gehne munde de kaparde pag kurta lungi jutti kirpan verbs and actions nach gana vekh vich naal uuppr thale edher odher some phrases balle! chak de phate haripa!

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wrestling ring round clay pot (often carried on the head) bed buttermilk drink chicken (tittar = quail) liquor, most likely scotch cities in Panjab

clothes girls’ clothes pants shirt scarf shirt + skirt skirt braid tassel for braid jewellery boy’s clothes turban shirt cloth tie around waist (similar idea to dhoti) shoe dagger dance (nachde = dancing, nachiye = let’s dance, nachna = to dance) sing (gaunde = singing) see (vekh ke = upon seeing) in with (mere naal = with me) up down here there hurrah! (balle shera = balle tiger) kick butt! (chuke gaye phate = got butt-kicked, chuk = pick up, phata = 2 × 4) hurrah! (comes from hariyan paliyan or green fields)

APPENDIx 3

shavaa! oye sohniyon oye heeriye oye makhna kiddan? aao nachiye

hurrah (often said by girls, as part of gidda) hey beautiful (somewhat unisex statement, sohniye = girl; sohniya = guy) hey gorgeous (heera = diamond) hey my buttermilk (makhan = butter, usually a comment on skin quality) what’s up? let’s dance (nach = dance)

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appendix 4 incorrect and Correct Transcriptions of “Mundian To Bach Ke” Lyrics

Joe Caps’ Transcription of “Mundian To Bach Ke” (“Beware of the Boys”) (Panjabi MC) Mimian to but the tiri bachin akilar Baleri ke muki ale bachin akilaaaaar (Jay-Z) yes, live from the United states Brooklyn New York its ya boy, Young (Panjabi MC) Mimian to but the tiri bachin akilar Baleri ke muki ale bachin akilaaaaar (Jay-Z) The neptunes is in the house (Panjabi MC) I’ll retari nakesiri ona tar The Mundian to bach ke rahi (Jay-Z) as soon as the beat drop We got the streets locked over sees at Pudjabi MC and the roc i came to see the mamis in the spot On the count of three drop your body like it’s hot One, young, Two, you, want, to, Three, young hovs a snake charmer Move your body like a snake mama Make me wanna put the snake on you i’m on my 8th summer still hot young’s the 8th wonder All I do is get bread, yeah I take wonder I take one of your chics straight from under your arm pit The black Brad Pitt I mack ’til six in the AM All day I’m P-I-M-P I am simply attached to the track like a symphony It’s simply good young hov infinitely it’s the roc in the building Calib, ramel, Tarrell in the house It’s simply good young hov infinitely

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BhANGrA MovES (Panjabi MC) mundian ton bach ke raheen Be careful of the boys you’ve only just grown up. it’s not your fault that you’ve got beautiful eyes once you’ve realized this, you will become shy Look after your youth (Jay Z) This time won’t come again. We rebellious, we back home screamin “Leave iraq alone” young hova rhymes over a sample of the theme from the “Knight rider” Tv show. For all my soldiers in the field i will wish you safe return But only love kills war When will they learn? (Panjabi MC) I’ll retari nakesiri ona tar The Mundian to bach ke rahi with the hurle, hurle, hurle murd Bilar The Mundian to bach ke rahi with the hurle, hurle, hurle murd Bilar (Panjabi MC) I’ll retari nakesiri ona tar The Mundian to bach ke rahi with the hurle, hurle, hurle murd Bilar The Mundian to bach ke rahi with the hurle, hurle, hurle murd Bilar The Mundian to bach keee rahiiiiiiiiii-ahhh Eraki kisure gemme silli etha hoker-e Siki eth adama sillin millin etha hoker-eee Eraki kisure gemme silli etha hoker-e Siki eth adama sillin millin etha hoker-eeeee Tami ke rakimi itoml-mi putai Tami ke rakimi itoml-mi putai ull the muri gemmi onli albahar The Mundian to bach ke rahi with the hurle, hurle, hurle murd Bilar The Mundian to bach ke rahi with the hurle, hurle, hurle murd Bilar The Mundian to bach keee rahiiiiiiiiii-ahhh! Garib beat to wan mi pea urub da tha marda Pot della alla ina hurlara miss tha hardaaa Garib beat to wan mi pea urub da tha marda

APPENDIx 4 Pot della alla ina hurlara miss tha hardaaa on Ai go the hindi you konimi kanithor on Ai go the hindi you konimi kanithor Ill gerent the ersoni koinar The Mundian to bach ke rahi with the hurle, hurle, hurle murd Bilar The Mundian to bach ke rahi with the hurle, hurle, hurle murd Bilar The Mundian to bach keee rahiiiiiiiiii-ahhh Mundian To Bullop eneri ab tha harria Tell mi if Ai Canabi eneri abi sharia Mundian To Bullop eneri ab tha harria Tell mi if Ai Canabi eneri abi sharia Then you up tha heuabe erubi ab di wanna Then you up tha heuabe erubi ab di wanna In tha Sackin and tha hussin ant tha wa The Mundian to bach ke rahi with the hurle, hurle, hurle murd Bilar The Mundian to bach ke rahi with the hurle, hurle, hurle murd Bilar The Mundian to bach keee rahiiiiiiiiii-ahhh

Tufan’s Translation of “Mundian To Bach Ke” (“Beware of the Boys”) anonymous Nimya tu kuch der pa ke rakh le (2) Pale vitch mukhra luiska ke rai Aave kari na kise de naal pyar (1) Mundiya to bach ke rahi Nahi tu hun hun hui mutiyar (2) Mundiya to bach ke rahi (1) Tera ki kasoor je nashili nain ho gaye Sikh ke adava sharmile nain ho gaye (2) Saanb ke rakh ni eh jovan butari (2) hun mur ke na aauni bahaar (1) Mundiya to bach ke rahi. Chardi jawani tera roop tatha marda Patla jaha lak na hulara vi saharda (2) Gora gora rang ute mirgani tor (1) hai tera jaye soni koi naal (1) Mundiya to bach ke rahi. Mundiya de bula ute teriya kahaniya Channi ni ta khanne diyan galiyan pachaniya (1)

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Jovana de bula ute teriya kahaniya (1) Channi ni ta khanne diyan galiyan pachaniya (1) Janjua te hoya tera roop da diwana (2) Chal sakiya na husan da ba (Mundiya to bach ke rahi.

Tufan

keep your face down and hide it with a scarf (x2) don’t just give your love to anyone (chorus) be careful of the boys you’ve only just grown up be careful of the boys you’ve only just grown up (it’s not your fault that you’ve got beautiful eyes once you’ve realized this you will become shy) x2 look after your youth (x2) this time won’t come again (chorus) (as you are growing up people are becoming aware of your good looks everyone is looking at your thin waist) x2 there’s no one like you (x2) (chorus) (the boys are talking about you everyday the streets are full of stories about your looks) x2 don’t let the attention drown you

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index

aaja nach lai 143, 163, 203 abomination 41, 48 abrar-ul-haq 216, 218 adorno 103, 106, 110, 124, 131, 226–7, 230 aesthetic 17, 65, 98, 105, 107, 140–41, 156, 158, 163, 165, 167, 169, 171, 175–6, 180, 182, 194, 197–8 aesthetics 65, 85, 182 african 35, 88, 212 afro-Caribbean 211, 212 ajnabi 32, 38–9 al-hind 8 alien 3, 6–7, 15, 31–2, 34, 38–40, 59, 66, 106, 108–9, 119, 129, 135, 142–3, 145, 186, 213, 226–7, 230 alien cultural invasion 6, 31, 129, 145 all india radio 49, 58, 61, 129, 132, 134 alterity 46, 81, 116, 150, 162, 231 ambarsare divan 205 americanization 6, 13, 224, 230 anarya 35, 37, 40 anderson, Benedict 8, 9 apache indian 1, 12–13, 15, 30, 43–4, 49, 71–2, 77, 89, 135–6, 140–41, 147, 208–9, 211–13, 219, 231, 241 apasanskriti 31, 32 apna 32, 38–9, 41 apna Punjab hove 23, 66, 150, 181, 211, 218–19 appadurai, ajun 7, 10, 133, 214, 222, 224, 228–9, 231–2 appropriation(re)3, 14–15, 17, 21–2, 38–9, 54, 56, 103–4, 116, 118, 120, 126, 129, 130, 132, 136, 151, 153, 156, 164, 170–71, 172, 176, 187, 231–4, 237 arranged Marriage 30, 44, 208–9, 219 arya 35, 37, 40, 42 aryan 7–8, 22, 35, 37, 41–2, 45, 54, 177, 225–6

asa singh Mastana 64, 132–3, 178, 201–2 ascetic 40, 105, 156, 163–4, 167, 173–4, 196–7 ascetical 173 asceticism 158, 166 asian Dub Foundation 3 asian Kool 17, 237 authentic 5, 15, 50, 71, 168–9, 220, 226 authenticity 4, 13, 17, 30, 44, 50–53, 59, 61, 66, 72, 76–7, 89, 107, 109, 111, 114, 116, 118, 126, 141, 170–72, 233 autochthonous 7, 31, 227 auto-exoticization 237 Baisakhi 19, 149, 190, 253 Bakhtin 24, 105 Bally sagoo 1, 3, 14, 17, 44, 45, 49, 61, 71, 77, 104, 118, 120, 125–6, 130, 135–6, 141–2, 151, 183–4, 209, 216–17, 232, 233–4, 241 Baumann, Zygmunt 5, 25, 30, 153 Bennett, andy 2, 3, 25, 153 Bennett, Tony 231 Berland, joseph 9, 33, 59, 79, 83 besharam 40–41 Beware of the Boys 29, 77, 145, 203, 209–11, 257–9 Bhagwant Mann 151 Bhangrapop 1, 3, 16, 57, 63, 66, 69, 80–81, 84–7, 89, 92, 100, 142, 180, 231 Bhanna ram sunami 56, 58, 72, 178 Bharatvarsha 7, 8 black 1, 25, 30–31, 34, 37, 39–43, 45, 57, 65, 83, 114, 141–2, 145, 170, 183, 194, 208, 213, 236 black popular culture 30 blackening 37, 41 blackness 42, 114, 219

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boli 19, 24, 42, 47, 64, 70, 74–5, 90, 92–4, 97, 100, 110, 141–2, 184, 191, 195, 199–200, 203–5 bolian 24, 47, 75, 100, 200–203, 206, 220 boliyan 70 Bollywood 1, 42, 49, 60, 64–5, 69, 89, 92–100, 111, 115, 133, 137–44, 147, 150, 152, 157, 159, 163–9, 171–2, 178–88, 196, 214 bolo tara rara 91, 93, 195 bordercrossing 2, 12, 13 borders 2, 8, 12, 38–9, 53–4, 66, 70, 133, 135–6, 211, 218, 220, 235 boundary 2, 18, 30–32, 34–6, 38, 200, 215, 233, 236 boundarycrossing 215 Bourdieu, Pierre 17–18, 76, 103, 107, 109 bradri 39 Brah, avtar 9, 31, 32, 200 brahmcharya 155–8, 161–2, 167, 173 brahmin 35–6, 177, 197 brahminical 30–31, 35–7, 40–41, 161, 166, 194, 226 British asian 1, 11, 16, 23, 71, 89, 119, 135–6, 141–142, 149, 151, 169–70, 172 carnival 24, 47 carnivalesque 24, 125–6, 182, 187, 211–12 caste 12, 30–37, 39, 43–4, 50, 54–5, 58, 76–7, 85–6, 89, 93, 124, 132–3, 154–5, 161, 173, 177–9, 197, 199, 206, 212, 222, 225–6, 231, 233–6 Castells, Manuel 10 Channel v 119, 130, 137–9, 145–6, 241, 247 Chitrahaar 137, 140 chunni 32–3 colonial 6, 8, 9, 32, 34, 38–40, 53–5, 81–4, 87, 134, 160, 173 colonialism 32, 46, 53, 81 commerce 15, 61, 104–5, 107, 109, 111, 116, 118, 124, 126–7, 172, 193 commercial 5, 22, 42, 55, 59, 61, 85, 96, 104–5, 107, 109, 111–12, 116, 124, 127, 136, 140, 144, 165, 169, 236 commodification 104, 111–12, 114, 116, 118, 126–7

communitas 24–5, 126, 175–6, 214 consumerism 17, 33, 122, 158, 164, 167, 186, 223 consumerist 24, 48, 112, 116, 118, 167, 224, 226, 230 contact zone 32 contamination 4, 30, 41, 50 Coombes, annie 9, 31 cosmopolitan 45, 142–3, 154, 224–6, 228, 230, 232 cosmopolitanism 7, 9–10, 13, 224, 226, 230, 233 critical cosmopolitanism 230 Critique of Exotica 3, 24, 31 cross-fertilization 33, 53, 169, 233 crossover 63, 200, 208–9 cultural difference 2, 80, 116, 176, 212, 235 cultural imperialism 3, 5–6, 7, 10–11, 14, 130, 223, 230 cultural invasion 4, 6, 8, 13, 31, 34, 129, 145 cultural nationalism 6, 41, 139, 168, 223–4, 226, 231 cultural politics 3, 12, 25, 77, 172, 175–6, 218, 236 culture industry 15, 24–5, 46, 61, 103, 111, 131, 164–5, 172, 230–31 cyberdemocracy 236 cyberspace 234–5 Daler Mehndi 1, 3, 16, 39, 44, 49, 61, 70, 72, 80, 86–96, 100, 113, 115, 122, 136, 138, 140, 142–3, 147, 149, 163–6, 178, 180–84, 195–6, 203–4, 206, 208, 216, 241 Dangerous Crossroads 3, 38, 49 dankara 201 dardi rab rab 93, 95 darrah 8, 9, 32 dasyu 37, 40, 42, 45 decontextualization 106 degradation 30, 48 denigration 35, 37, 41, 80, 168 desacralization 27, 46, 127 desi 1, 3, 16, 49, 138–9, 141–2, 145, 149–50, 155, 157–8, 164–70, 172, 173, 183, 199, 204, 213, 225

INDEx

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desire 3, 42, 44–5, 47, 72, 75–6, 81, 83–5, 87, 104, 114, 118, 124, 144, 163, 167, 169–70, 172, 174, 184–5, 187, 197–8, 212, 219, 222, 234 deterritorialization 106, 229 dhamal 22, 2, 74, 85, 96, 201 dhol 11, 19, 21, 35, 58, 73, 80, 99, 108, 110, 114, 194, 200, 212–13, 253, 26 diaspora 13, 15, 23, 31, 68, 71–2, 89, 101, 105, 118, 133, 151, 153, 172, 185–6, 199, 208, 219, 233, 236–7 Difference 2, 5, 9, 11, 15, 18–19, 30, 32–4, 41, 75, 80–82, 84, 87, 104–5, 112, 114–16, 127, 132–3, 135, 154, 166–7, 174, 176, 183, 188, 198, 200, 208, 211–14, 219, 221, 228, 231, 235–6 Disorienting rhythms 2 displacement 89, 111, 115, 166, 173, 213, 221 diversity 33, 84, 126, 131–2, 134, 144, 176, 194 doaba 2, 22, 74, 85, 96, 201, 206, 220 Doordarshan 106, 129, 134–7, 141–3, 145–6, 152, 180 Durkheim 24, 26

exoticization 15, 103–5, 116, 118, 150, 186, 234, 237 exoticizing 25, 48

eh panjab vi 220 essentialism 31, 214 essentialist 7, 30, 50, 60, 153, 159, 161, 167–8, 173, 219, 222 essentializing 36, 44, 172, 222 eTC Punjabi 59, 61, 72, 103, 125, 130, 145–52 ethnic 2–3, 12, 14–15, 17–18, 23, 46, 54, 96, 105, 112, 114–15, 119, 140–41, 152, 164, 166, 170, 176–7, 180, 185, 187–8, 197, 199–200, 212, 221, 228, 232, 235–6 ethnicity 9, 31, 50, 68, 96–8, 105, 114–16, 119, 140, 142, 151, 153–4, 176, 212, 221–2, 228, 233–4, 237 ethnocultural 26, 30, 52, 68, 114, 152, 164, 166, 199, 222, 235 ethnolinguistic 95, 164, 194, 197, 215 ethnoscapes 229 exotic 15, 24–5, 83, 96, 115, 119, 144, 147, 170, 208, 237, 248

ganda 30, 135, 147 gaze 3, 15, 24–5, 29–30, 33, 45–8, 52, 60, 82–6, 97, 99, 140, 144, 150, 169–70, 184–5, 213, 236 ghair 32–4, 38–9, 41, 200 gharana 38–9, 61, 89 ghazal 12, 13, 58, 68, 92–4, 99, 117, 123, 125, 134, 241, 246 ghulam ali 12–13 giddha 22, 52, 74–5, 85, 96, 193, 199, 201, 203 global 1–6, 10–18, 23–5, 41, 48, 77, 103–7, 109–19, 121, 123–124, 130, 134–136, 138, 141–142, 14–146, 150–154, 158, 163–165, 167, 170–74, 181, 188, 193–194, 199–200, 212, 221, 223–6, 228–37 global capitalism 6, 24, 106–7, 110, 118–19, 229, 232, 237 global pop 1, 3, 13–14, 114, 130

fetish 4, 30–31, 34–6, 40–41, 44, 104, 106 fetishization 24, 44, 99, 104, 106, 184–5, 202, 219, 230 fetishizing 47, 202 field 17–18, 26–7, 52, 62, 74, 103, 105, 107–9, 118, 124, 126, 146, 153, 210, 258 film music 3, 14, 16, 92, 112, 120, 122–3, 130, 133, 138, 145–6, 187 flows 1–5, 7–13, 18, 23, 38, 135–6, 175, 222, 228, 232, 236 folk dance 19, 55, 74, 199 folk music 23, 50, 52–4, 57, 60, 64, 71, 89, 100, 104–7, 110–11, 246 folksong 27, 43, 57–9, 83, 92, 94, 99, 132, 141, 142, 181, 201 folk tradition 16, 22, 49–50, 56–7, 83, 90, 94, 104, 107 folk traditions 17, 19, 66, 124, 134 Frankfurt School 103, 105, 131, 226–7, 230 frontier 9, 33 FundaMental 3

286

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globalization 2–7, 9–13, 17–19, 30, 38, 80, 116, 130, 135, 153–4, 159, 163, 164, 165, 164–5, 168, 220, 223, 228–30, 233–4 globalizing 2, 5, 237 gora 41, 45, 83–4, 180–81, 195, 259 gore 1, 39, 43, 45, 83, 86, 170, 194, 236 gori 41–5, 84, 161, 194–5 great Tradition 8, 31, 42, 225 Gur nalon 44, 70, 125, 142, 195, 217 gurdas Mann 1, 23, 49, 51, 57, 61–3, 65, 69, 80, 88, 100, 106, 115, 125–6, 134, 141–2, 147, 149, 163, 166, 178, 180, 183, 201, 203, 206, 211, 216, 217–19, 235, 241 gypsy 32–3, 67 hans raj hans 49, 61, 129, 141–3, 147, 163, 202–4, 216–17, 220, 241, 247–8, 250 harbhajan Mann 216, 218, 246–7 hard Kaur 216 hardt and negri 6, 12 harvest dance 11, 21, 89, 97, 139–40, 193 harvest rite 2, 5, 30 harvest ritual 17, 23, 48, 92, 106, 126, 202, 212 harvey, David 4, 10 h-Dhami 217 hedonism 98, 158, 162, 164–5, 167, 181, 184 hedonist 98, 161, 173, 184, 187, 196–8 hedonistic 114–15, 140, 158, 160–61, 163, 188, 196–7 hegemonic 6, 14, 38, 83, 116, 118–19, 140, 161–2, 229 hegemony 3, 4, 12, 17, 112, 119–20, 123, 129, 143, 172, 223–4, 231 hindi 14, 16–17, 42, 66, 68, 91–2, 100, 108, 112, 115, 117, 122–4, 129–32, 134–8, 141, 143–50, 152, 154, 159, 164–6, 168–9, 172–3, 184–7, 209, 212, 216, 231, 235, 244, 248, 258 hindu 2, 7, 18, 21–2, 32, 34–6, 38–9, 41, 44, 54, 64, 97–8, 114, 129, 132, 134, 143, 152, 160–64, 166, 172–3, 177–9, 185, 190, 215–17, 221, 226 hindustani 31, 38, 45, 90, 92, 135, 168, 240

hip-hop 3, 19, 35, 131, 137, 141, 145, 164, 176 hMv saregama 1, 14, 58, 103, 112, 120–23, 243, 246–7 homeland 1, 18, 89–90, 98, 133, 199, 203, 212, 219–22, 233–4 homogenizing 6, 18, 36, 127, 132, 168, 225, 230 hubshi 42 hulle hulare 207 Hutnyk, John 2–3, 24–5, 31, 103–4, 116, 119, 126, 143, 212, 237 hybrid 1–2, 30, 68, 105, 118, 125, 149, 183–4, 193, 202, 211–13 hybridization 4, 11, 15, 17, 30–31, 34, 40–42, 44–5, 57, 71, 76, 96, 211 hyder, rehan 3 identity 3–4, 10, 12, 15, 18, 21–2, 25–6, 31, 41, 50, 54–6, 58–60, 66, 68, 71, 86–8, 95, 100, 126, 131–2, 134, 139, 147, 152, 156, 159, 161–4, 167, 170, 172–3, 179, 184, 199, 206, 212–13, 215–16, 219–22, 234–6 imperial 9, 11, 24–5, 43, 81, 118, 177, 196, 206 in-between 37, 53, 68, 213 independent girl 72, 211 independent records 1 indian culture 7, 11, 31–2, 41, 129, 167, 169, 225–6 indian cultures 4, 6–7, 13, 41, 164, 169 indigene 30–31, 35, 42 indigenous 6–8, 13, 15, 30–31, 33, 37, 40, 53, 55, 116, 118, 120, 135, 167–8, 172, 223, 225, 230, 232 invasion 4, 6, 7–9, 12–13, 22, 31–4, 37–8, 45, 129–30, 145, 166, 173, 177, 221, 226–7, 231–2 ishqrecords 1, 14, 120, 232 jajmani 107–8, 111 jassi 49, 61, 125, 142, 193, 203–4, 216 jassi sidhu 49, 218 jat 23, 71, 77, 83–7, 150, 155, 158–9, 161–2, 170–73, 177, 206, 218, 233, 235–7 jay Z 209–11, 257–8

INDEx jazzy B 45, 49, 141, 166, 178, 183, 202, 204, 217, 241, 247 jhummar 22, 52, 55, 80, 201 jind mahi 71, 253 juggy D 49, 166, 217 jugni 42, 84, 96, 151, 161, 204, 206, 253 julli 22, 52, 65, 201, 217 kaala shah kaala 43 kale 1, 39, 42, 45, 83, 170, 236 Kalra, virinder 2, 60, 212, 237 Khan, nusrat Fateh ali 14, 39, 63, 73, 133, 157, 202, 216, 241 khanabadosh 8–9, 32–3 khatri 177–8 Khyber 8, 32, 38 kikli 52, 201 Kool 17, 63, 112, 141–2, 150, 170, 237 Koti, Puran shah 61, 108, 151, 216 kshatriya 177–8, 197 kudi 44–5, 47, 71, 98, 190, 195, 219 kudiaan 29, 44–5, 254 Kuldip Manak 49, 59–61, 64, 132–3, 147, 151, 216 Labh janjua 145, 166, 211 liminal 24, 175 liminality 24, 33 liminoid 175 Lipsitz, george 3, 49 Little Tradition 16, 225–6, 231 Little traditions 16, 31, 225–6 local 2–8, 10–11, 13–14, 16, 18, 30–31, 33, 36, 53, 65, 104–7, 114, 116, 118, 120, 122, 130, 137, 151, 153–4, 156, 165, 171–2, 194–5, 199, 212, 216, 218, 224–5, 227, 229–34, 246–7 locality 5–7, 13, 50, 101, 147, 194, 223, 225, 228–30, 233 lohri 149, 189–91, 193 luddi 22, 52, 201 Maa 219, 220 madhorama 42–3 mainstream 2, 56, 68–9, 95, 104, 108, 112, 114, 129, 132, 134, 140–41, 143, 147, 159–60, 164, 166, 208–9 Maira, sunaina 3

287

Making of the Indo-Islamic world 8 Malkit Singh 1, 39, 49, 52, 69–72, 101, 125, 141–3, 180, 195, 202–4, 216, 219–20 Manak 49, 59–60, 61–4, 123, 132–3, 147, 151, 216 Mann, gurdas 49, 59, 61–70, 72, 89–92, 94–5, 101, 112, 119, 123, 134, 147, 178, 180–82, 201 Manohar Deepak 58, 64, 73, 135, 178 Massey, Doreen 10–11 materialism 162, 164, 168, 170 materialist 164, 167, 173–4 materialistic 40, 167 mausiqui 21 Mediascapes 229 Mehndi , Daler 49, 70, 72, 80, 88–96, 101, 180–84 Mehndi hasan 12–13 mela 19, 71, 74–6, 126, 132, 253 mem 44–5, 84, 219–20 Mignolo, Walter 5, 230 Mika 166, 241 mimicry 79–82, 83–7, 101, 171, 187 mirasi 54–6, 59–61, 75–6, 110–11, 179, 197, 200 miscegenation 30, 34–5, 37, 39–40, 42–3 mixing 1–3, 9, 29–35, 37–41, 45, 75–6, 80, 85–9, 151, 174, 243 mleccha 35, 37, 40 Modernity at Large 10 MTv 13–14, 16, 119, 130–31, 135–52, 156, 164–5, 169–71, 179–80, 183, 187, 241, 247 multicultural 2, 11, 38, 212, 224 multiculturalism 24, 95, 176, 194 munde 45, 150, 153, 157, 159–60, 162–3, 203, 253–4 Mundian to bach ke 29, 99, 143, 145, 150, 195, 209–10, 257–9 mutants 1, 3–4, 19, 22–4, 32, 37–8, 41, 43, 80–81, 105–6, 124, 126, 199, 201–2, 230 Nachde Panjabi 49, 57, 126 naqqal 79–89, 96–7, 110 native 2–4, 5–6, 8, 14–15, 71, 83–4, 86, 88, 118, 170–71, 208, 232–4, 236

288

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networks 2, 4, 9–11, 18, 38, 134, 140, 146, 230, 232, 233, 236 nodes 11 nomads 8–9, 33, 83 odhki 33 odhs 32–3 oriental 34, 38, 46, 80, 82–4 orientalizing 3, 170 other nomads 9 other, the 4, 9, 15, 31–2, 34–5, 39, 41, 44–6, 81–2, 84–7, 114, 118, 127, 142–3, 163, 170–72, 184, 187, 189, 198, 221, 231 othering 2–3 otherness 15, 82 Pammi Bai 21, 49, 51, 53, 57–8, 72–4, 109, 126, 178, 241 Panjabi culture 32, 39, 46, 50, 57, 66, 72, 74, 77, 89, 150, 152, 221, 253 Panjabi identity 18, 21, 55–6, 58–60, 68, 91, 95, 100, 147, 163–4, 199, 206, 215, 220, 222, 235–6 Panjabi MC 1, 29, 49, 136, 145, 183, 203, 209–11, 216, 257–8 Panjabi Munde 45, 150, 153, 163 Panjabipop 1, 86, 145 panjabiyat 32, 44, 46, 49–50, 52, 56, 60, 66, 71, 77, 85, 87, 90, 100, 147, 150–51, 163–4, 166, 180, 184, 194, 199–200, 214, 218, 220–22, 235, 237 Paro 71 partition 2, 22, 29, 36, 52–5, 58, 72, 108, 132–4, 193, 206 pendu 62, 71, 118–19, 236 performance tradition 11, 22, 31, 53, 112 performative 53–5, 82, 110, 150, 156, 176, 201, 203 performing castes 53, 55–6, 79, 89 Perso-arabic 2, 8, 225 pind 13, 44, 50, 66–8, 220, 253 pind diyan 66–7 politics 3, 12, 25–6, 30–31, 33, 50, 77, 163, 168, 172, 173, 175–7, 184, 211–13, 218, 221, 224, 229, 231, 234, 236 pollution complex 31, 34, 42

popular culture 3, 16, 30, 34, 69, 91, 104–5, 107, 109, 111, 114–15, 124, 129, 133, 165–6, 168, 172–3, 193, 198, 214, 226–7 position-taking 17–18 post-colonial 5, 21, 24, 55, 81, 84, 103–5, 129, 131, 155, 158, 160, 172–3, 196, 228, 234 pre-colonial 45, 60, 74 Priest, Maxi 1, 211, 231 primitive 8, 17, 22–3, 60, 82, 84, 88, 94–5, 107, 114, 124, 144 profane 15, 17, 24–5, 33, 37, 45, 47–8, 103, 106, 127, 193, 213 prohibitions 24, 37, 46, 48, 197 Pukiwas 9 purdah 29, 34 purdanasheen 33, 46 Purewal, navtej 60 Puritan 29, 171 purity 4, 30–36, 38, 40–41, 44, 46, 52–3, 56, 59, 62, 75–6, 85, 109, 111, 161–2, 213 rabbi 161 radcliffe, Cyril 2 rajasik 178, 196–7 rap 19, 23, 35, 86, 137, 140–41, 183, 209, 211, 213, 218–19 reggae 19, 35, 71, 86, 137, 145, 183, 212, 240 reification 14, 32, 48, 61, 103, 106, 109–12, 116, 118–19, 124, 164, 166, 212, 231–4, 236–7 reinvent 7, 13, 16, 32, 61, 86, 137 reinvention 12, 53, 63–4, 66, 73 remix 1, 44, 71, 117, 119, 141, 142, 147, 208, 211, 217, 219, 241 resistance 2–6, 25–6, 34, 37–8, 46, 50, 81, 106, 114, 118, 158, 161, 164, 166, 172, 174, 186, 230–32, 234 revival 23, 27, 52, 55, 70, 134, 164, 166, 187, 235 ritu Dj 19, 21 ritual 4, 17, 23–5, 33, 37, 46, 48, 56, 92, 106–8, 110, 124, 126–7, 175–6, 188–9, 191, 200, 202, 212, 214, 225, 235

INDEx roma 9, 32 rough guide to World Music 19 sabar Koti 61, 151, 216 sacred 4, 17, 21, 24–5, 33, 37–41, 46–8, 53, 68, 103, 106, 108–9, 126, 188, 213, 220 safsuthra 30, 65, 106, 147–8 sangeet 21, 39, 61, 97–8 Sanskrit 16, 21, 32, 35, 108, 177, 225 sanskriti 31–2 Sanskritic 2, 7–8, 31, 33, 226 satvik 196–7 scapes 102, 228–9 Schreffler, Gibb 3, 21–2, 26, 52, 54–6, 79–80, 85, 108, 192–3, 200, 203 shagird 39 sharam 33, 40–41 sharma, atul 21, 53, 70–71, 103, 123, 178, 216 Sikh 18, 29, 35, 41–2, 48, 54, 59, 62, 64, 88–9, 114–15, 125, 132–4, 152, 160–67, 173, 177–81, 184, 189, 194, 199, 202, 206, 215–18, 221–2, 236, 259 Sikhism 160–62, 218 sites 18, 119, 153, 175, 206, 229, 232, 234, 236–7 sonic 1, 3, 12, 14, 15, 30, 34, 44, 70, 84, 94–6, 104, 112, 114, 116, 118, 120, 122–3, 133–6, 138, 165, 212–13, 233 sonu nigam 1 space of flows 10–12, 18 spears, Britney 1 spectacle 4, 17, 25, 105–6, 110–11, 226 spiritual 24, 36, 40, 48, 93, 106, 109, 151–2, 162, 164, 166–9, 173–4, 196–8, 201–2 star Tv 13, 129, 137, 145–6, 153, 159, 237, 241 subaltern 89, 94, 121–2, 144–5, 171, 227, 231

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Sukhbir 45, 49, 141, 153, 163, 183, 202, 203, 216, 241 sunder mundriye 190 surinder Kaur 27, 58, 63, 132, 201 T-series 1, 14, 120–22, 126, 141 taboo 30, 34, 36, 47, 136, 158, 167 tamasik 196–7 Taylor, Timothy 3 Tomlinson 5, 6 tootak tootak tootiyan 39, 70, 143, 195 tribal 7–8, 22, 33, 132–3, 225 tumbi 45, 58, 80, 114 tunak tunak 91, 93, 95, 142–3 unveiling 33–4, 40–41, 44, 46, 48, 196 ustad 39, 61, 63, 72, 89, 178 veiling 33–4, 40–41, 44, 46 vernacular 7, 16, 30, 68–9, 131–2, 134–5, 140–41, 154–5, 159, 224–7 vilayatan 68 vilayeti 1, 49, 117, 139, 149, 150, 170, 171, 183, 199, 213 vir 177–8, 180–82, 184, 197 visibility 3–4, 12–13, 15–18, 24–5, 47, 104, 118–20, 136, 141–2, 144, 173, 209, 236–7, 249 voyeur 25, 41, 48, 184 voyeuristic 25, 45 vulgar 66, 96, 105, 135, 171 Wadali brothers 61, 109, 202 work song 21 53 World Music 14, 19, 24, 31, 38, 103–4, 107, 116–17, 232–3 yaari 156–8, 167, 171, 173–4, 183 yaaran da truck 60 young Tata 1, 196 Zee 136, 145–6, 241