Part 2. These are some thoughts about what “traditional” means in the Indian context. This is why I believe it that in most cases drawing a comparison to something you saw or which someone said in India is not a good way to argue what you consider to be traditional
for the purpose of critiquing North American bhangra. And these are reasons beyond
the more obvious fact that bhangra in India (as evidence in the Visual History thread) has changed every decade.
I do realize I’ve steer this thread off its original topic, sorry. Thanks for indulging me, and in Part 3
I’ll explain why I’ve persisted with this off-topic discussion here.
I'll begin with an anecdote.
You know there's a step called "luddi," right? Actually, do people do that much anymore? It's the one where you clap in from of your chest w/ arms stretched forward.
This "luddi" was the first bhangra step I was ever "taught." And it was presented as "luddi". Garib Dass was the drummer. But he was with a bhangra coach guy he happened to be partnered with. In such cases, the college educated coaches did all the talking, while the drummers -- not formally schooled and, I think, maybe even considered too ethnically different to present to a mixed audience -- would hang back, stay silent. Although dholis tended to be the only folks with a real knowledge of tradition and technique that was passed through their families, they were mainly employed for a fee while a more normative-face guy did the explaining of things...explaining according to their school-based understanding. So, being a foreigner to Punjab and wanting to learn bhangra, and being taught this step by a group with a bhangra coach and a traditional drummer, it would be logical for me to file it away as a traditional step, right? I could close up shop, go back to the U.S. and say "Here's the traditional bhangra. I was taught by bhangra experts of Punjab." Or could I?
This "luddi" was indeed a popular step, as other performances confirmed, but WTH?--what did it have to do with the traditional luddi dance? As I would see later, actual luddi looks completely different, for example:
Dance called luddi
Also, the dhol rhythm played with this "luddi" from bhangra was being called "luddi" rhythm. It's what the Brits call "chaal" and what many in North American simply call "kahirva." But again, it is different from the rhythm of actual luddi.
By the time I had become aware of the “real” luddi, I’d long known not to treat the first luddi I’d learned as
necessarily something traditional, though it had become
customary. However, I could not be positive that the stage bhangra-based luddi had not developed out of some dance move,
somewhere, that was traditional, if marginal.
While the origins of this stage luddi and why it would differ from the still-existing folk luddi were mysteries, I came to notice that the step was something that the 1950s PEPSU troupe did. Team member Balbir Sekhon in particular championed this step. I really wish you guys could see the video of him dancing it in the early 90s (I don’t currently have it). Sekhon had an amazing, beautiful style of dancing “bhangra.” I mean, THIS was the stuff that inspired people – the whole nation of India – to go crazy for bhangra in the 50s, and to establish it as the state dance. Balbir Sekhon was not only a great dancer but also a wonderful man. Yet this doesn’t change the fact that he was from Patiala and really unlikely to have seen the luddi dance of northwestern Punjab. I don’t know to what degree this stage step was adapted from something in tradition or if it was made up fresh, but all the information was suggesting that its origins as we know it lay with Sekhon.
So after thinking long about this, after several years of studying Punjabi dance, etc., I put the idea to the master, Garib Dass. This was Garib Dass who regularly presented the “traditional folk dance, bhangra” to audiences and trained countless dancers (mostly people in school or college).
I said, what do you think? Is it possible Balbir Sekhon created this version of “luddi”? Garib Dass replies, matter of fact: “Oh yeah, Sekhon and those guys made it up.”
Later, Master Harbhajan Singh corroborated that the PEPSU guys had “manufactured” the action.
There are two points to this anecdote. The first is that you can talk to people in India for a long time and they will continue to call something traditional, even if they know or suspect it was contrived. First off, your Average Joe just doesn’t know what is or what isn’t traditional in bhangra. He or she can only say based on what he’s seen, e,g, what he first learned in his decade is “traditional,” and everything else is modern bakwaas.
Yet the more important part of this point I’m making THAT I WANT TO REGISTER WITH PEOPLE is that even the qualified masters of the art will tacitly
allow you to assume that everything they do is traditional. That is just the way it works. Bhangra is supposed to appear as something traditional, and it makes no sense to them to "confess" to everything they do that isn’t. Indeed, that is to their disadvantage. The Bazigar dholis, for instance – the guys who helped shape a lot of the early Indian stage bhangra – really needed to get paid. The “In-Charge” who employed them, in a Public Relations office or whatever, could ask them for “traditional” and they’d say “Oh yeah, sure, Boss, whatever you want. 100% traditional.” Yet these people were
artists and they also liked to be creative. They were meant to be creative—a desire that could be seen as at odds with the state and modern audience’s desire for something frozen in time. So I don’t think they did anything unethical in making changes, creating new stuff. It’s just that they had to play the game – to allow audiences to presume that everything they did was more or less coming out of traditional bhangra.
I don’t think these artists were hung up, either, by the fact that what they were doing wasn’t traditional bhangra. Just like many American bhangra groups today accept and are not worried that their bhangra isn’t traditional, it was no skin off their backs if audiences believed it was. In a way, it’s really an unfair demand of the audience. Let the audience have their fantasy if what they get out of watching bhangra is largely a feeling that Tradition has been reaffirmed, rather than appreciating the artistry that the performers strive for.
The irony is that while many bhangra artists in India knew that what they were doing wasn’t traditional bhangra, people in the West assumed that it all was.
Add to this the observation that a lot of guys in Punjab, if they don’t know something, will just make up an answer. If you come as a layperson to a bhangra master and ask, “ustad ji, is xyz traditional?” if he doesn’t know, he probably won’t say that. After all, he is supposed to be the master, and you are the student. It’s easier just for him to say “yeah,” because, aside from possibly needing to save face, it’s just the way that bhangra is presented. No one is interrogating the issues; it’s not the custom to view bhangra as an art that was developed by individuals with personal contributions through the decades. Rather, "bhangra" as the State Folk Dance is a big pool into which people throw their contributions and hopefully everyone forgets
who did it as quickly as possible!
The issue of discourse and what you can expect a bhangra master to say if you ask him brings me to the second point of the anecdote. I’d have not known to ask “Is luddi traditional?” from Harbhajan Singh if Garib Dass had not already given me the clue. And Garib Dass would not have been so frank with me if we had not developed a relationship over years, in which I became viewed as someone to which these details mattered and could be told without "fear" as it were.
If you go over to India and have a brief meeting with some bhangra guy, or if he comes here, the things he says in response to you aren’t necessarily going to enlighten you much about what is traditional in bhangra. First off, of course, you need to know what sort of questions to ask. If you just ask “Is this traditional?” it’s like asking your dad if he masturbates. People always like more engaging questions and ones that show you have a broad understanding of things. You need to show that you understand that person’s rules of discourse. Approach eliciting the information in a different way. But mainly, yes, knowing what sort of questions to ask, which develops through talking to a lot of people. So if you just went over to India and had a conversation with one guy, repeating what he said back to you, in my opinion, doesn’t really constitute knowledge of what is traditional.
Second, that person may view you in a certain way. He is “esteemed teacher” and you’re “reverent student.” In those cases, the master is telling you things he thinks you’re supposed to know, but only as much as you need to know. You ask dad if he masturbates and he starts giving you a lecture about “the birds and the bees.” In this case, the fine details are deemed inappropriate, stuff he shouldn’t be telling. Garib Dass would not have told a starry-eyed American bhangra team dancer, in search of “traditional bhangra,” that Balbir Singh Sekhon made up luddi. He would just have been like “Here, son. This is a move in our traditional bhangra. Try it. No, hold your hands a little higher. Good. Now go home; God be with you, beta.”
Aside from all the other people I spoke with in Punjab – in which my habit was to pay return visits (people tend to be guarded on first visit), Garib Dass ji was someone I was in regular communication with for 10 years. I went to his house and on trips with him countless times, and brought him to stay with me in U.S. twice. He and his family got to know what I was about – a seeker of knowledge, and not just satisfaction of an urge to be a bhangra star or explore my identity. So when we talked, although I hope I treated him with utmost respect, it was more as friends and there was more candor – he spoke “on the level.”
I am doubtful that that level of candor and sophistication of questioning (which develops over a long period) is often present when people claim that they know traditional bhangra because they met so-and-so. So if someone says they are in the position to assess what is traditional in bhangra because they danced in college in Punjab, talked to their uncle, or even had a chat with a bhangra master, there is still much reason to question whether they really are.
