The Hindu Business Line : A musical homecoming

On Tuesday evening, a music ensemble from Trinidad, West Indies, was set to play its country's music, called Chutney, but when the moment arrived, the audience was smaller than the 10-member ensemble and its support crew. Admission was free, and slowly the numbers swelled to 100 and then, dropped to a third. But the performers braved it all.

The evening wasn't just about foot-tapping music; towards the end of the show, the 50-strong audience were invited to dance with the musicians on stage. As one of the performers said, "This is how it is on weekends, lots of music and everyone dancing."

Chutney music is distinctly Trinidad & Tobago, rustled up by people of Indian origin in defiance of the Calypso. It is a carry-over from the past, the song and music that indentured labour from East Uttar Pradesh and West Bihar carried with them when they went to slave on sugarcane farms. It has an up-tempo, rhythmic song with repetitive stanzas. The two-headed drum of Indian origin, the dholak, the harmonium and the dhantal (a steel rod beaten with small curved metal piece to keep the beat) are used as accompaniments and largely consists of songs the people carried over 150 years to the strange lands. They are usually religious but now, newer popular compositions with the elements of the Calypso are being written. New instruments such as the steel pan, an open circular flat container from which rhythms are coaxed with drumsticks, have been added.

The group that performed in Mumbai was the Bhuyaa Saaj, from Trinidad's Chaguana. Bhuyya Saaj itself is a Bhojpuri word meaning `sitting on the floor and singing.' The group's offerings had a mix of Bhojpuri and English, and a passer-by may have wondered if he was hearing the Ram Leela.

Though one of the ensemble danced in a typically Calypso manner, it also had the touch of the nautanki.

The ensemble has been brought to India for shows in Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad and Bangalore by the Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology of the American Institute of Indian Studies, with support from the Ford Foundation. They, like their countrymen, can hardly speak Hindi but have retained the diction of Bhojpuri singing and called their music "our traditional Trinidad music."

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