Aaja Nach Lai [Come Dance]

Abstract

This article discusses the performance of Punjabi folk dances bhangra and giddha in some Canadian contexts. After introducing a notion of Punjabi identity, the article provides a brief description of these dance forms, their agrarian origins and their gendered natures, as well as of the types of events at which these dances are performed among Canadian Punjabis, and specifically, Jat Sikhs. I argue that not only do these dances express and maintain Punjabi identity in diasporic contexts, but that these identities refer to a Jat “rural imaginary” that is actively constructed through dance and music in response to the displacement of urban and transnational migration. This rural imaginary is usurped by bhangra’s increasing Westernization and popularity in the non-Jat South Asian diaspora, thus raising challenges to Jat centrality, meaning, and identity.

Sounding the Indian Ocean: Musical Circulations in the Afro-Asiatic Seascape

“…I suggest that kirtan in this archipelagic context is an act of community building for displaced people who wish to assert their territorial presence, affirm their religious identity, and heal a profound sense of isolation through a shared experience of sound. I build on a growing corpus of literature on music and identity-making in diasporic contexts (e.g., Purewal and Lallie 2013;Mooney 2008;Poole 2004;Ramnarine 2007;Tewari 2011;Townsend 2014), on congregational singing (e.g., Nekola and Wagner 2017;Ingalls Sherinian, and Reigersberg 2018), and on the relationship between religious soundscapes and place-making (e.g., Tamimi Arab 2017; Weiner 2013) to articulate the theoretical liaison between sound, people, places, and identities. These conceptual frameworks are frequently based on urban, mainland-centric, and North Atlantic contexts.…”

“…However, at least in their perspective, the Bengali community has responded to displacement with tenacious attachment to the traditions perceived as old, authentic, belonging to a common past. Like many subaltern diasporic identities, Bengali devotees on the Andaman Islands have felt the urge to maintain musical and performative traditions as an indispensable tool of rootedness, a practice of identity (Mooney 2008;Poole 2004). This quality of traditional music in contexts of displacement is intensified by the islandness of the Matua practitioners.…”

Gendering Dance

“…Mooney defines Jat Sikhs as "a caste of farmers and landlords with significant regional status" and views them as embodying "the autochthonous Punjabi identity" despite their leading urban and transnational lives. She ascribes Jat Sikhs' symbolic association with the region to their "landed attachments to the region, whether expressed in actively agricultural practices, emotive rural nostalgias, or religiously nationalist Khalistani aspirations (Mooney 2008)." Maintaining that "the jat [sic], and his female counterpart the jati [sic], are portrayed through respectively stereotypical notions of male strength articulated with farming skills and youthful prowess and a feminine beauty that is 'sharp' in looks and allegedly unique to this caste", Dudrah notes the privileging of the Jat subject in bhangra (Dudrah 2002, p. 376).…”

“…Maintaining that "the jat [sic], and his female counterpart the jati [sic], are portrayed through respectively stereotypical notions of male strength articulated with farming skills and youthful prowess and a feminine beauty that is 'sharp' in looks and allegedly unique to this caste", Dudrah notes the privileging of the Jat subject in bhangra (Dudrah 2002, p. 376). Mooney avers that "Bhangra is thus understood, practiced and represented as a primordially Jat phenomenon, related to both language and beat, as well as to the organic embodiment of Jat identity in its performance (Mooney 2008)." Gill's emphasis is on bhangra's articulation of a certain kind of masculinity or hypermasculinity that is both mapped on the Jat Sikh body and appropriated by the caste in its self-constitution (Gill 2012).…”