Peter Manuel’s latest book is a sequel to his East Indian Music in the West Indies: Tan-Singing, Chutney, and the Making of Indo-Caribbean Culture (2000). While his earlier volume dealt with a set of genres often referred to as “local classical music” and with the surge in popularity of chutney and chutney-soca, his new study examines the diasporic manifestations of various North Indian folk music forms, which he notes have been insufficiently documented in both India and the Caribbean. Manuel is exceptionally qualified to pursue research of this sort. In addition to his Hindi/Urdu linguistic competence and expertise in North Indian musicology, he has carried out extensive fieldwork in India, Trinidad, Suriname, and Guyana, as well as with the large “secondary diaspora” of Indo-Caribbeans in New York. This broad comparative perspective, along with meticulous attention to ethnographic and historical details, enables him to construct a persuasive account of the dynamics of continuity and change in Indo-Caribbean music. His comments concerning musical origins, innovations, and influences will be of much interest in both academic and popular discussions of cultural politics and national identities in the Caribbean.
Between 1838 and 1917, colonial authorities transported close to a half-million indentured laborers from India to the Caribbean to work on sugar plantations. Originating mainly in the Bhojpuri Hindi linguistic area of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, most of these workers were taken to the British Caribbean, though some ended up in the Dutch colony of Suriname or in French territories. At present, people of Indian descent constitute large portions of the populations of Guyana (43%), Trinidad (35%), and Suriname (27%). Manuel’s principal thesis is that the musical practices that these communities retained and developed in the Caribbean are a distinct phenomenon, rather than a cross-section or miniature version of North Indian Bhojpuri culture (xiii). He builds his argument in relation to the broader field of diaspora studies and notes that Indo-Caribbeans are a fairly unique case: after 1917 they had almost no contact with their Bhojpuri homeland and its folk traditions, but since the 1930s they have experienced substantial infusions of mainstream urban North Indian culture via Bombay film musicals and visiting Hindu religious figures. Ongoing encounters with this Indian great tradition have clearly diminished appreciation of some types of Bhojpuri folk music, while also offering expanded repertoires of songs and new vehicles for expressing a modern Indian identity. In general, Indo-Caribbean communities have embraced urban Indian genres in a musical eclecticism that is also open to Afro-Caribbean and other forms. This is certainly true for Trinidad, which has an especially diverse and vibrant music scene and is the territory to which Manuel devotes the most attention in this book.
The trajectories of particular Bhojpuri folk music genres in the Caribbean have varied considerably. By the mid-twentieth century, the performance of birha and other types of narrative song was declining rapidly, due to a dwindling number of Bhojpuri speakers. However, chowtal (associated with the springtime Phagwa or Holi festival) continues to be enthusiastically performed throughout the region, even though it has only a limited presence in contemporary India. Manuel attributes this diasporic flourishing to a lively communal musical style, the use of written texts, the existence of leaders who can interpret the songs, an openness to the participation of women, and the institutionalization of the genre in competitions. Another remarkable development in the Caribbean has been the tassa drum ensemble, the basic form of which includes two kettle-shaped tassa drums, a double-headed cylindrical bass drum, and a pair of brass cymbals. While tassa drumming has a rather lackluster existence in India at present, it thrives in Trinidad, where performers are championed for their virtuosity at Hindu weddings, the Muslim Hosay (Muharram) observance, formal competitions, and other events. Manuel presents an excellent analysis of the numerous tassa “hands” (rhythms) in relation to Indian antecedents and innovations in Trinidad, while also addressing the issue of possible borrowings from Afro-Trinidadian traditions. Though hands such as “kalinda” and “steelpan” resemble Afro-Trinidadian rhythms, he suggests that they are similarly consistent with rhythms found in India.
Manuel concludes that tassa drumming is a “neotraditional” and “quintessentially Indo-Trinidadian” musical form: it has evolved along Indian aesthetic lines into a style that is distinct from anything in India but that also reflects very little Afro-Trinidadian influence. From this observation he formulates a broader suggestion that creolization (however defined) might be inadequate as a paradigmatic concept for describing the creativity and multiplicity of Trinidadian culture. This line of argument may make sense in relation to a genre like tassa drumming, but, as Manuel notes, chutney-soca (also very popular in Trinidad) demonstrates obvious creolization. Given the complex interplay between processes of cultural differentiation and interaction/convergence in Trinidad, studies that emphasize one side of this dynamic while downplaying the other risk leaving readers with a somewhat distorted picture of the island. However, Manuel and others have written cogently about chutney-soca elsewhere, so this book is best assessed as a highly informative examination of the re-creation of Bhojpuri folk music traditions in Trinidad and other Indo-Caribbean locales. It will certainly be of great value to scholars and students of both Caribbean and Indian music, as well as to individuals with a general interest in diaspora studies.
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[Review length: 868 words • Review posted on May 4, 2015]