Sikholars 2012: Reflections on Bhangra scholarship & North American Bhangra Circ

[hardeep_singh]

her desire to know what bhangra really is seems disingenuous

Hmm, it sounds rhetorical to me. I don't know if she is seeking "real bhangra" outside this video, but in the vid it sounds to me like she is asking a question to open a discussion. If people are going to tell her (allegedly), unconstructively, "Go learn real bhangra," it makes sense that she's wonder what they mean and be skeptical whether they knew what was "real." This is probably just the editing, but the response of paraphrased "Bhangra is folk dance which means you do whatever you want" (am I getting it right?) is confusing.

dilbagh "tharrr-master" nagi colorfully states in that first video that bhangra is a "lok nach." it's not defined by any classical standards or historical/cultural boundaries, it's a dance of the people and as such is defined (almost) wholly by it's present practitioners. modern bhangra teams are influenced by what has already been done, i think the evolution and influences in bhangra have been discussed in the past, but the conclusion that can be made is that the live and music teams from north america and live teams in punjab are the most influential in terms of guiding the evolution and popularization of bhangra. the catalyst for this evolution is competitions, without competition the dance form would remain relatively stagnant, and with the growth of competitions bhangra has been expanding and evolving faster. so masala bhangra doesn't compare at all to modern bhangra, the only reason to keep "bhangra" in the name is for marketing purposes, i think at this point sarina would be better off just calling her dance "masala" to avoid the automatic comparison.