Abstract

The crowd thickens on the small dance floor at S.O.B.'s, a world music club and the venue of Bhangra Basement, the first regular bhangra night at a mainstream club in New York, hosted by the ubiquitous DJ Rekha. The insistent beat of the dhol, the percussion base of the traditional North Indian folk dance known as bhangra in Punjab, pounds out over the techno and reggae tracks reverberating amidst the tightly packed bodies. Shoulders shrug and arms flail in semblances of bhangra moves, here, far from the wheat fields of the Punjab, far from the Californian orchards where early Punjabi migrants first settled in the early 20th century. Tonight, most faces are various shades of South Asian, but there are a few African Americans and whites getting down on the dance floor, too, for this is one of the few bhangra club nights that draws a noticeably racially mixed crowd. One of the past Bhangra Basement events featured a booth with mehndi, lacy designs in henna, traced on palms by a young white woman riding the current fascination with Indian body art. On this night, there is an appearance by a live dhol drummer all the way from Lahore, his yellow turban and sequined kurta presumably authenticating the Indian elements of this musical fusion. The drummer has an astonished, if delighted, expression on his face, as if simultaneously bewildered and excited by his performance for a frenzied crowd of young South Asian professionals and party goers, women in hip huggers twisting their arms in movements learned partly from Hindi films and partly from other bhangra nights like this, perhaps in college or at the Indian remix music parties that began springing up six or seven years ago. A young turbaned Sikh man leaps onto the stage beside the sweating musician, spinning and bouncing with acrobatic, break-dance-like agility. Jumping back into the crowd, he is joined by another young Sikh man, and as the crowd parts in a rapt circle, the two men circle around each other in exuberantly coordinated precision. Then three young women who have various degrees of classical dance training come forth, challenging

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