Bollywood Bhajans: Style as ‘Air’ in an Indian-Guyanese Twice-migrant Community

Abstract

During weekly services at Indian-Guyanese Hindu temples in Minneapolis, participants sing devotional songs from Hindi films as well as songs rooted in Bhojpuri-speaking North India that are maintained through oral tradition in the Indian-Guyanese diaspora. In this context, the Bollywood song style comprises a stylistic language that becomes disarticulated from film songs and re-articulated with Bhojpuri songs, Sanskrit verses and distinctly Indian-Caribbean religious practices. Despite some disparagement of the older Bhojpuri style, an ideal of inclusion leads participants to assert that bhajans (devotional songs) can be sung in any ‘air’, a term that encompasses style, melody and affect. In this paper, I argue that ‘air’ serves as a powerful resource in the creation of new class and ethnic identities for Indian-Guyanese migrants to North America. Although there is little interaction in Minneapolis between direct migrants from India and twice migrants from Guyana, many Indian-Guyanese-Americans self-consciously ask themselves what their Indian neighbours would think of their Hindi pronunciation and rural song style. The disarticulated film style adds a sonic layer of Indian ‘authenticity’ to Indian-Caribbean religious practices. Moreover, it serves as a medium for Hindi language pedagogy and a tool for positioning selves and others in intra-community and inter-community systems of belonging and hierarchy.