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

[HdBrar]

Not sure if anyone posted this earlier, so I wanted to get this video out there. It's pretty interesting. If you got 30 min to spare, give it a watch.

Sikholars 2012: Reflections on Bhangra scholarship & North American Bhangra Circuit by Ashveer Singh

 

[hardeep_singh]

@18:30, +∞
@20:08, +∞

@21:32, i feel like connecting with the language is an important part of being involved in bhangra, i don't think it's a matter of discouraging non-punjabis from integrating comfortably, it's more a matter of retaining that connection to the mother tongue. one of the insecurities of the NRI punjabi communities is the disconnect the younger generations have with their ancestral language, i think we all know plenty of punjabi kids who grew up in the US and can barely speak the language. there is that fear that our parents' and grandparents' generations have of not being able to communicate fully with their kids and grandkids. punjabi youth of our generation are aware of this disconnect since we see so many examples of it, so using bhangra as a method of retaining and enforcing that connection makes perfect sense in my opinion.
the statement that you make @22:00 about how academics who study punjabi culture should have an understanding of the language and at least know how to pronounce "bhangra" mirrors my opinion that dancers who learn bhangra should have some level of understanding of the music/language they're dancing to.

 

[jfried]

Daaaaaaaamn, dog.

Paging Ashveer Singh! The Academy needs you.

 

[Basim]

Wow! That was an absolutely amazing wealth of knowledge dispersed in a short amount of time.

This video/thread deserves a whole lot more attention. I'm always been fascinated to hear/read Ashveer's thoughts & contributions due to his study of cultural anthropology at the undergrad, masters, and PhD levels (at very respectable institutions might I add).

Ashveer, you had some amazing points - I'm sure there was a lot of topics you could have branched off to more, especially towards the end where you discussed the modern bhangra moment & the role of females in the bhangra community. I felt the ending was a bit "rushed" due to time limitations - really would have loved to hear more on those two topics.

If you're reading this, I'm curious to know about the commentary session that followed your roughly 30 minute presentation. Did you get good feedback? Did you receive any rather difficult or interesting questions?

Thank you for sharing this HdBrar!

~ Basim

 

[footballforlife]

There is a lot of really good information and references to other sources about bhangra. Many good points and a lot of food for thought. I really appreciate the academic work that Ashveer and others have done on this and related topics.

This video/thread deserves a whole lot more attention.

Also this. The video needs more than 300 views.

@22.00 -> Preach, brother preach!

 

[Ashveer]

Ruh-roh.

 

[hardeep_singh]

Ruh-roh.

i don't think you have to worry about anything happening. when was the last time people on btf became actively involved in a meaningful intellectually charged discussion?

 

[Ashveer]

Ruh-roh.

i don't think you have to worry about anything happening. when was the last time people on btf became actively involved in a meaningful intellectually charged discussion?

I think one of the insecurities of doing academic work that involves other people is that they'll not be very happy with your arguments, which is why I never posted it or told any of my friends who dance in the bay about it despite the conference's proximity to BAR-B HQ, for example, where the bulk of the presentation was written up. Pleasantly surprised that it was well received among those who watched it and who know the circuit. To your point on language, I need to complicate it a bit, thanks for the observation. I'm on board with your notion that dancers should invest some time in understanding the cultural background of what they're doing, Punjabi or not. Its related to my point that there is no inherent multicultural move forward in remixing or non-Punjabi participation when that remixing/participation treats music/dance as disembodied socially or even worse just assumes a vulgar notion of culture.

@Jfried thanks dog. see you soon dog. Might be getting a table at the park when I get back if youre home around aug 9th weekend.

@Basim so nice. Thanks for the add, btw. You're one of the few people I don't know on BTF who I would like to meet. To contextualize this a bit, Sikholars is a graduate student conference for folks who work on Sikh and Punjab Studies. Its run by a Sikh non-profit called Jakara, and is held in California. That means the audience was all Sikh and 80% were people I've known for years, limiting some of the critique I might have gotten. I actually can't remember any specific questions that came up, but my sense was most of them were about the ins and outs of the bhangra circuit rather than dialoguing with my arguments. One person accurately pointed out that I elided the fact that whereas the current salient tension is between modern and traditional, the tension in the generation before us was between Gujaratis and Punjabis. I gave this presentation at a grad student conference at Stanford, and those questions were more haute sociological theory that isn't worth taking the time to give the background for, mostly centered around questions of the ethical and the recursive.

 

[KushK]

Wow this was amazing! Thanks for the shout at 27:54! ;D

 

[Gabbah Shareef Bhalwan]

Nice!


Sarina Jain is an easy target, especially in hindsight (though nonetheless worthy of critique) I think what she was doing (short of making it into a fitness franchise!!) was what most people (young North American dancers, that is) were doing back then. If you were dancing in the 90s and you weren't lucky enough to be located in a few specific places or have the right friends, you'd (I mean "you" in general!) probably be dancing like her.

IIRC, her "Masala Bhangra" dates back at least to 1999. She was a successful (=winning) dancer in groups of some of the earliest "South Asian" dance competitions in California.

As Ashveer points out, bhangra for college-age people in N.A. was very much a pan-South Asian thing. Not so much people trying to do a "Punjabi" dance as wanting to do a dance that was cool and fun...that was danced to hipper music with a happening beat...a party dance...an alternative to other South Asian dance choices. It just happens that bhangra, which is associated with Punjabi stuff, became that dance...the one you could make "modern" and "fuse" stuff with. You'd put "bhangra is a traditional harvest dance, blah blah.." in your program notes just as a matter of form. But what you were doing was having some fun in a distinctive South Asian-American space. Not too different from today (I think), only the moves have changed and the stakes for making errors/transgressions have gotten a lot higher.

By the time Jain started the Masala Bhangra, things had started to turn, but she basically continued on with her shimmy shimmy boopety boppety dance that was familiar.

Anyone got a link to the video Ashveer refers to?

 

[Ashveer]

Nice!


Sarina Jain is an easy target, especially in hindsight (though nonetheless worthy of critique) I think what she was doing (short of making it into a fitness franchise!!) was what most people (young North American dancers, that is) were doing back then. If you were dancing in the 90s and you weren't lucky enough to be located in a few specific places or have the right friends, you'd (I mean "you" in general!) probably be dancing like her.

IIRC, her "Masala Bhangra" dates back at least to 1999. She was a successful (=winning) dancer in groups of some of the earliest "South Asian" dance competitions in California.

As Ashveer points out, bhangra for college-age people in N.A. was very much a pan-South Asian thing. Not so much people trying to do a "Punjabi" dance as wanting to do a dance that was cool and fun...that was danced to hipper music with a happening beat...a party dance...an alternative to other South Asian dance choices. It just happens that bhangra, which is associated with Punjabi stuff, became that dance...the one you could make "modern" and "fuse" stuff with. You'd put "bhangra is a traditional harvest dance, blah blah.." in your program notes just as a matter of form. But what you were doing was having some fun in a distinctive South Asian-American space. Not too different from today (I think), only the moves have changed and the stakes for making errors/transgressions have gotten a lot higher.

By the time Jain started the Masala Bhangra, things had started to turn, but she basically continued on with her shimmy shimmy boopety boppety dance that was familiar.

Anyone got a link to the video Ashveer refers to?

You're absolutely right Gibb. Bhangra in NA looked pretty 'funny' in the late 1990s whether it was Sarina Jain's bhangra or one of the collegiate teams from the time. Looking at the earliest videos of the scene they are unrecognizable. In fact you can pull up some of the older Cali teams that have placed in the last year or two and think "what in gods name are they doing?" Indeed she just never let the style go or joined the transnational conversation which makes her easier to hose.

Here's the video I mentioned. I, like one of the top comments like watching the dude on the left side:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m6lEAzkkIY

@Ankush haha my pleasure. I used the Coalition Fundraiser an example in my other presentation, you guys are a good instantiation of my arguments.

 

[rajkaran]

@Ashveer: I wasn't able to watch the whole thing just yet, but gathering from comments, I have a general gist of what is going on. I wrote a "term paper" on BTF and imagined societies as part of a "Theories of Culture" class I once took. Albeit poorly written (since I wrote it overnight #lazycollegestudent), I'd love to see what you think about it and how it fits into your presentation. Some BTF members are referenced in the paper as well!

 

[Ashveer]

@Ashveer: I wasn't able to watch the whole thing just yet, but gathering from comments, I have a general gist of what is going on. I wrote a "term paper" on BTF and imagined societies as part of a "Theories of Culture" class I once took. Albeit poorly written (since I wrote it overnight #lazycollegestudent), I'd love to see what you think about it and how it fits into your presentation. Some BTF members are referenced in the paper as well!

I'd love to read it. Singha [at] stanford . edu

 

[Gabbah Shareef Bhalwan]

Thanks, Ashveer—I've seen that (and other) similar videos many times ;D I actually meant a video (??), which I thought you referred to, in which Jain talks about wanting to learn more. I might have mis-heard/understood your comment...perhaps it was a written statement somewhere, or an anecdote? Either way, that "statement" is important to register (props to you!) as part of the historical development. It would bring some form of closure to the little Masala Bhangra "arc"!


To sort of repeat but emphasize what i was saying, Jain [not Fonda] did not come out of left field when she made up Masala Bhangra. There were so few "bhangra experts" around that it was possible to not even realize there were any—if that makes sense. Anyone who had been dancing in shows/competitions a good amount (and preferably with a South Asian, not necessarily Punjabi background) was more or less qualified to represent the dance to the mainstream. Jain had won competitions, so there would have been nothing audacious in her starting the Masala Bhangra.


I first heard of Masala Bhangra in 2000, and was more intrigued or surprised by the commodification aspect than the dance form (again, which was not too different from what "most people" were doing).


I think I also talked to DJ Rekha in 2000 -- nothing formal or serious (she probably wouldn't even remember). But I didn't get the impression (and I'm not saying that you said this, Ashveer, just putting it out there) that she herself thought she was any "special" person in the bhangra music world. I think she embraced her position as someone that people considered "the first blah blah doing blah blah" but didn't have a big head about it. Recognition was more foisted upon her, by journalists and scholars. She, more than anyone, had become the "go-to" person to talk to about "this new bhangra music thing"—but she didn't claim to be an expert, just someone who'd been around at a place and time. Interviewers convinced themselves that Rekha was an expert on X,Y, & Z, when really she was only an expert on Q and they should have limited their questions to that.


I think we can also look at performances from nowadays and ask "What in God's name are they doing?"


These people can all tell us something valuable if we historicize bhangra. Sarina Jain could probably say some interesting things about SoCal bhangra in the early 90s, just as Rekha told me a couple insightful things about what was happening in New York, a her generation experienced it, in the mid-90s. But people seem to ask them for general questions like "What is Bhangra? Where did it come from? What's it all about? What does it mean?" and we get answers that, predictably are going to sound whack or wrong to someone. And although I don't imagine there would be many takers for it, one actually could study the dance and music forms of their era and document what that was, on its terms, rather than treating it as something deficient in what we now consider correct and therefore basically considering it to be something we don't want to know (i.e. since we are only interested in the "correct").


Sorry for the heaviness-- maybe this cheap video mash-up I once made will lighten it up:
The Latest Traditional Bhangra Step!!

 

[Pakhtoon]

Ashveer - always a pleasure listening to you speak. Nice work!

"Are we done?" --- lollll

 

[hardeep_singh]

Thanks, Ashveer—I've seen that (and other) similar videos many times ;D I actually meant a video (??), which I thought you referred to, in which Jain talks about wanting to learn more. I might have mis-heard/understood your comment...perhaps it was a written statement somewhere, or an anecdote? Either way, that "statement" is important to register (props to you!) as part of the historical development. It would bring some form of closure to the little Masala Bhangra "arc"!

i believe these are the videos:
Sarina Jain speaks with the AEG Bhangra Dancers
New York City: AEG Bhangra meets Masala Bhangra® at Alvin Ailey

gabbah i also wanted to ask you if you had any videos of 90's bhangra comps in india. the only bhangra i recall seeing during my childhood is the dancers in the random punjabi music videos i'd see occasionally on the 2 channels we had in the pind. i've seen videos of US comps from late 90's and early 00's, it would be nice to have something to compare that to, in terms of style and form.

 

[Ashveer]

@Gibb Hardee's got the right ones up, thanks H. Sorry, I'm lucky to have wifi in chd but its not strong enough to support youtube so I had to guess which video I was talking about. More on both your guys responses later in my today.

 

[Gabbah Shareef Bhalwan]

Thank you, hardeep!
Dang, erm...lots to think about from that video (first one).



Thanks too, Ashveer—sorry, I didn't know you were in CHD! If it's not obvious, my comments are tangential things that are just coming to mind, not criticism of your presentation.


I guess I'm just thinking that now that "we" have some distance from The Great Tradition Wars of the last decade we can look at what people like Sarina Jain have done with some improved objectivity.


Sarina Jain's work is an easy target (rather unfortunately for her) because it is stationary. Some others' takes on bhangra are moving targets...there seems to be a strategic counterargument for everything! Another reason why I think it's better to say this is this and that is that rather than trying to find a way to collapse it all into one definition.




There should be some India-in-the-90s videos in the "Visual History" thread. Not necessarily comps, but my impression is that the dancing style did not differ substantial between comp. and non-comp contexts.

 

[hardeep_singh]

Thank you, hardeep!
Dang, erm...lots to think about from that video (first one).

that video is off-putting because of the fact that she emphasizes the adversity she's claimed to have faced in the form of "haters" and hate-mail/hurtful comments. she's been quoted as stating that people on btf have said that she should die, i refuse to believe that until i see concrete evidence, but anyone who whines about negativity they've been exposed to online just comes off as desperate for attention/sympathy. her desire to know what bhangra really is seems disingenuous also, because she made a conscious decision to maintain her style of "masala bhangra" she could have reached out to bhangra teams anytime from when she conceived her program til today, yet she only reached out once bhangra had become so popular that the general public started to criticize her style. i've seen pictures of her at a bhangra competition about 4 years ago so she can't truthfully claim that she wasn't aware of the evolution of bhangra, her willful ignorance has made her program obsolete and collaborating with AEG just seems like a desperate attempt to remain relevant on her part.

 

[Gabbah Shareef Bhalwan]

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. Is that supposed to be the definition of "real bhangra," or is it an argument to say that there is, in fact, no "real bhangra." If it's the former, it makes no sense because Jain is doing what she wants (?). If it's the latter, then it would seem to absolve all Jain has done, but then why the gesture to teach her something?


Trying to stay objective: If Jain wanted to learn real bhangra, why would she go to contemporary competition teams? (Her interpretation come from older competition teams, who at one point were probably just as certain that they could positively tell an audience, "Bhangra is XYZ.") Why, honestly, is she supposed to stay abreast of what competition teams are doing? (It's already a fitness workout, and therefore will never be bhangra, so how would the addition of a herky-jerky jhummar step make it more bhangra?) The basic footwork of current bhangra teams is something pretty new. Why would someone necessarily imitate that if they were not planning on competing against other teams (among which it is the current fashion and, therefore, the standard of judgement)?