D’Bhuyaa saaj: Live in India (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: D’Bhuyaa saaj: Live in India Peter Manuel (bio) D’Bhuyaa saaj: Live in India. Remembered Rhythms CD Series. American Institute of Indian Studies, 2005. One CD with liner notes and photos. Various artists. As a researcher of both North Indian and Indo-Caribbean music, I have often contemplated trying to facilitate a dramatic conference or concert tour in which veteran Caribbean exponents of Bhojpuri folk song could commune with their counterparts in India, and interested South Asian urban audiences could marvel at the idiosyncrasies of Indo-Caribbean “local classical music.” While my plans have not progressed beyond the daydream stage, in recent years two sets of activists have organized North Indian tours of Indo-Caribbean musicians. In early 2007, a Surinamese, Narinder Mohkamsingh, brought a troupe of local folk singers to Banaras, the hub of the Bhojpuri region, for a set of performances. Mohkamsingh related to me that the troupe members felt disappointed by their failure to attract or connect with appropriate audiences. I was not surprised to hear this since I had verified on a recent trip to the Bhojpuri region that, for example, such a ubiquitous Indo-Caribbean genre as chowtal was in fact obscure in much of the modern Bhojpuri area and would have been quite unfamiliar to most Banarsi listeners. In 2005, ARCE arranged Indian tours of three diasporic South Asian ensembles, including a set of Indo-Trinidadian performers, presented here as D’bhuyaa saaj, meaning “sitting/ground music.” On the tour, co-organized by Helen Myers and Trinidadian promoter Ajeet Praimsingh, the group presented mostly light, chutney-style music, especially to college audiences, in several cities (not including Banaras) and also recorded this CD. Recordings of Indo-Caribbean music are scarcely disseminated outside of the Caribbean or its diasporic communities, so the appearance of this nicely produced CD (available through www.musicdiaspora.org and www.underscorerecords.com ) is felicitous. Most of the items, sung by Rakesh Yankaran, Lily Ramcharan, and Rasika Dindial, consist of fast chutney songs, with their conventional, simple, repetititve mi-re-do-re-mi-re-do melodies, here accompanied by harmonium, dholak drum, dantal (a metal idiophone), and unobtrusive steel drum (reflecting the sort of eclecticism that is increasingly common in Trinidad). The generally informative liner notes refer to the [End Page 153] uncertain origin and possible Caribbean invention of the dhantal, so basic to Indo-Caribbean and Indo-Fijian song accompaniment, and add that the instrument is “no longer found in India.” The latter sort of statement is generally injudicious in reference to a country of a billion people whose rural traditions remain underresearched. For instance, Mohkamsingh discovered that essentially the same instrument is used to accompany the Alha epic, and that Laxmi Tewari had earlier noted the use of the word dandtâl as a generic Bhojpuri-region term for metal idiophone. Aside from the chutney-type songs, the CD opens with a free-rhythmic invocation (which some musicians might call a sumiran) by Yankaran, who also sings a song identified as a thumri. This item, however, bears no resemblance to the usual Indo-Trinidadian thumri with its distinctive and highly standardized formal structure, and would not be recognized as such by other Caribbeans (not to mention South Asians). All the items are well sung and produced, with text translations and background information provided in the liner notes. Peter Manuel The Graduate Center of the City University of New York Peter Manuel Peter Manuel has researched and published extensively on the music of India, the Spanish and Indic Caribbean, Spain, and elsewhere. His most recent book is Creolizing Contradance in the Caribbean (Temple University Press, 2009). He teaches ethnomusicology at John Jay College and the CUNY Graduate Center. Copyright © 2009 University of Texas Press