65 – Rediscovering roots through heritage making and cultural preservation: Indian-origin diasporas and their engagement with Indian popular music in Europe
For a large part of the nineteenth century, Indian workers were transported by the colonialists to other colonies, including British Guiana, Trinidad, Jamaica, Suriname, Mauritius, Fiji and Natal (now part of South Africa). Upon their arrival in the colonies, the indentured workers were assigned to plantations where restrictions were imposed on their movements. Here were formed communities – growing out of abysmal living conditions – which came together through religion, ritual, music, and other forms of communal practice. Musical performances in these contexts provide insights into interlinked music, human and plant histories. In present times, the circulation of music between India and its various diasporic sites takes place through live performances, touring networks, media artefacts, digital technologies and India’s major film industries. In many cases, musical tastes, practices, and ideas can serve as particularly salient indices of the complex multiple identities of migrant communities. Besides the transnational linkages, musical circulations within ethnic communities has emerged as a powerful cultural force that has led to the establishment of ‘cultural enclaves’ even in situations of dislocation.
In the newly adopted and evidently inhospitable homeland for the newly migrated Indians, music came to play a particularly imperative role in sustaining Indian culture – and intangible heritage – as well as ties to India itself. Amateur song sessions, whether in the form of congregational Hindu bhajans, or antiphonal male chowtals associated with the vernal Phagwa (Holi) festival, or informal singing sessions by women, became focal events in the reaffirmation of Indian culture for the indentured diaspora.
The proposed panel undertakes to move beyond these notions of exile and nostalgia ensconcing migration and diaspora studies and unpack the contemporary circulations of musical genres among the Indian-origin diaspora, particularly in Europe (for instance, the Dutch-Hindustanis in the Netherlands and the Indo-Trinidadians in the UK) and their attempt at decolonizing cultural practice through a revival of traditional, classical, film and folk music.
