Nevin said:
Hans,
So i like your interesting take on the essence definition that i put forth, and while I agree with your assesment that on some level a 'non-traditional' performance of bhangra may be more accessible to a new audience than a purely traditional one i feel like you are missing the point of my original post that addresses this issue.
Dancing to promote punjabi culture is different than dancing to preserve punjabi culture.
Naweenie,
I don't think I'm missing that point. I'm basically in agreement with you on that idea, and where we disagree is on whether or not
everyone needs to stay close to "root form bhangra" to preserve Punjabi culture.
I agree that it's important for at least some teams to stay "traditional" to preserve the dance's history, but I don't think that everyone needs to do this. That's what I meant by emphasizing the difference between a dance's
form and its
message. The
form is the actual set of moves and the beats, whereas the
message is the idea of bhangra, and what it's meant to communicate.
My opinion is that the
message is universal, but the
form is temporary. So I think that as long as a dance retains the message, what we've been calling the "essence" of bhangra, it doesn't need to have the same literal form. The moves can be changed, the music can be modernized, and I think it should still be called, and respected as, "bhangra." Your opinion seems to differ from mine since you feel like deviations from "root form bhangra" hurt the effort of preserving bhangra, and I think that's a viable opinion even though I disagree with it. All that means is that if we were both judging a dance on its balance of "preservation vs. promotion," you would probably judge "preservation" more literally than I would, and weigh it higher. That's entirely a matter of personal prefernce, and no one can be wrong or right there as long as each person understands their own judgments.
What bothers me most, though, is that a lot of people who talk about "traditionality" do not have the same respect for different interpretations or ideas. I hear people say "that's a good dance, it's entertaining, but it's not bhangra." That, I feel, is a pretty narrow-minded view. You can look at almost any art form and people always say very similar things when the art takes a huge turn. Monet and the impressionist painters, for example, were disrespected in their time, because what they were doing was different and in a new direction. Today, those paintings are some of the most valuable and widely-recognized works around. It was a different kind of painting, but it was still painting. The interpretation was different, but it drew from the same sources of inspiration and technique.
So, just because it's a different kind of bhangra, doesn't mean that it's not bhangra. This is sort of stepping back a little bit from the initial discussion, but I think it's something that I've been thinking about for a while, and I'm curious to see how others feel about this.