Anjali Gera Roy’s scholarly meditation on the global phenomenon that is Bhangra will prove a valuable introduction to the complicated national and transnational contexts for the changing shape of this dance/music form. The author seeks to highlight how globalized cultural forms can subvert the hierarchies and forms of power located in the process of globalization itself, “altering the relations between diasporas and homelands, the global and the local music industry, cosmopolitans and locals, and producers and consumers to produce new virtual communities in which marginalized rusticity is valorized” (11-12). Surely Bhangra accomplishes all of this. One of the most salient discussions in the book is the ways in which the “popular” and the “folk” do and do not coincide, and the problematic place of popularized (and technologized and commodified) Bhangra in relation to its “folk” antecedents and ongoing forms (see particularly chapters 1, 2, and 5).
Gera Roy is at her strongest when she engages most fully with her data, such as in her
explication of the “3 Ms”—Mann, Malkit, and Mehndi—three central figures in Bhangra’s
rise to global prominence (the focus of chapters 3 and 4). The discourses of
authenticity and hybridity are examined in chapters 2 and 3, and resonate in the
discussion in chapter 4 of the mixing of Bhangra with popular Western and non-Western
soundscapes, a style popularized by Daler Mehndi in the 1990s (80) and a somewhat
problematic rendering of the listenership of Bhangra, in chapter 7 (see below). The
dynamics of the music and video industry—crucial to understanding Bhangra’s global
prominence—are discussed in chapters 5 and 6. The close readings of Punjabi lyrics in
chapter 8 are revealing, and her nuanced explication of the racial politics of British
Bhangra videos provides a compelling critique of simplistic renderings of that period of
cultural production, identifying ways in which segregation and difference are written
into the seemingly diverse shared space of the video (212-3). The author’s discussion of
the topography of Bhangra provides ample evidence of the ways Bhangra undergirds
multiple imaginaries of place and belonging (74) and a “deterritorialized transnational
The author is less successful when she speaks in generalities, or does not base her discussion in sufficient evidence. The historical components of the argument constitute its weakest dimension, particularly in the second chapter where references are made to classical models to explain contemporary phenomena (such as, for example, locating the sources of conventions regarding the veiling of the female body as “dating back to the Aryans” [34]). Firstly, these are throughout the book dominated by Sanskritic forms, inappropriate for the Punjab which has long been a major center of Persianate culture in South Asia. Secondly, in addition to being anachronistic, such orientations often obscure rather than reveal. For example, a focus on caste in relation to Brahmins—who are notably not major players in Punjabi caste dynamics—allows the author to elide significant castist discourses that do exist in Punjab. This is in fact one of the mysteries of the book: the term “jat” is presented as “rustic” (85 and elsewhere), and Jat subculture is discussed at length from page 155 on without any discussion of it in caste terms. Indeed, the definition of “desi” and “jat” as equivalent and “defined by the way they locate themselves with respect to the West” (155) is false: “jat” defines a caste-based identity (as we finally learn on page 236 of the 237 page-long book) and while the author sees Bhangra as liberating and destabilizing existing caste hierarchies with its valorization of the Jat, this is a shallow understanding of caste dynamics in Punjab today. In contemporary Punjab, political, economic, and social capital is held by Jats, and the expression of Jat power in Bhangra reflects this, and thus not an inversion of existing power relations.
The discussion of Bollywood, in addition, would be enriched significantly by analysis of the role of Punjabis (working in the Hindi language) in that space; understanding the play of Bhangra in the Bollywood sphere is impossible without it (163-4). Indeed, the ambiguity over religious identity is troubling overall. It is asserted that this reflects the reality on the ground (for instance, on pages 216-7), but as chapter 8 demonstrates, the representation of the Sikh body is central to the popular representation of Bhangra (and its role in both national and transnational terms). It is therefore in many senses religiously marked. (The reference to “the idealized Panjabi body” as the “sword of the Hindus” reveals this [177].) At times, the author’s decision to “go with” an idea at first, only to counter it, is disconcerting; she emphasizes Bhangra’s liberatory potential alongside the ways the Bhangra “artist/protagonist” is “emasculated” (25); she accepts a slur—“pseud,” for those listeners who are culturally oriented towards the West and not “Indian” enough—as an analytic category for most of a chapter (in very strong terms), only to finally note its lack of usefulness (155 and following). This destabilizes her analysis, and makes it less convincing than it would otherwise be.
The author is extremely well-read, and enriches her discussion with able mastery of the relevant theoretical literature; this is one of the work’s strengths. This is visible, for instance, in her discussion of the idea of the “vulgar” and its complex relationship with Bhangra’s folk roots and its popular but sexually more permissive (and for some, therefore, problematic) forms (105 ff.) At times, however, further analysis would be welcome, such as in relation to gender and patriarchy—I just don’t see how Apache Indian is “deconstructing the arranged marriage phenomenon” in the example given (44).
On the whole this book is required reading for anyone interested in understanding the
global dimensions of Punjabi cultural production today. It will be of interest therefore
to students of music, culture, South Asia visual and media studies, and, of course,
those interested in
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[Review length: 1022 words • Review posted on December 5, 2012]