This Monday, April 7th, our very own Vicki Virk will be talking with Falu Bakrania, Associate Professor of Race and Resistance Studies at SFSU, about "Bhangra and Belonging: South Asian Music in the Diaspora." If you'd like to attend in person, the talk is from 4:00 to 5:30 pm at 554 Barrows Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. In preparation, and out of a deep sense of curiosity, a number of us Dholrhythmers have been devouring Bakrania's book Bhangra and Asian Underground: South Asian Music and the Politics of Belonging in Britain. What does the bhangra scene look like when viewed through the eyes of an academic? A lot the same, and a lot different, than what we experience on the ground in San Francisco.
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| Photo Credit: Odell Hussey |
Bakrania's project is to examine how postcolonial youth negotiate their identity as both British and as South Asian through clubbing. I don't know whether I'm impressed or jealous that Bakrania got funding to study clubbing in London for almost two years- probably a bit of both. She found the club scene in Britain to be a hotly contested site, with different groups jockeying to assert their notion of identity as important and authentic. In turn, ordinary club goers actively constructed a "hybrid" identity for themselves while at the club, blending British and Asian definitions of identity into something unique. This identity formation followed them out of the club, informing the way they perceived themselves in the rest of their lives.
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| Photo Credit: Odell Hussey |
In London during the 90's bhangra went head-to-head with the Asian Underground, sparking intense criticism from both sides. Bhangra labeled the Asian Underground scene as culturally inauthentic, pandering to a white market by pulling classical Indian motifs and removing their context to make them easily accessible. The AU scene criticized bhangra right back as uncultured and unintelligent, also pandering to whites. I'm going to quote Nitin Sawhney for having the courage to go on record saying "But bhangra... is so simple, it's unreal. Bhangra is four-four music, it's perfect for Western ears, and that's why it's received such interest." In the tumult Panjabi MC ended up labeled as producing black music, since "Mundian To Bach Ke" is primarily a hip-hop track. In the end the debate really didn't matter; AU music died out as fans chased new trends and bhangra, in Bakrania's argument, never fully crossed over to mainstream success.
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| Photo Credit: Odell Hussey |
The place where Bakrania's research got interesting was when she started talking about women. In case you hadn't noticed, bhangra is pretty male. Quick- list five female bhangra artists besides Miss Pooja. Any luck? Men by and large produce the music and in London it's primarily men who consumed it in clubs. Where were the women while all this is going on? Having an interesting time of it. London bhangra clubs had audiences up to 85% male, and sexual harassment was ubiquitous. As a result, women who attended bhangra clubs were primarily lower class, of a marginalized identity (divorced, separated, single mothers, victims of domestic violence), and prepared to aggressively protect themselves if necessary. Ironically, this caused middle and upper middle class South Asian women to flee bhangra clubs for the AU scene, searching for a place to construct a more authentic South Asian identity without being defined by gendered harassment.
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| Photo Credit: Odell Hussey |
Things are a little bit different in San Francisco now than they were in London. We're a lot less violent; almost all the London clubs Bakrania researched for her book are now closed due to fighting. Sexual harassment still happens, but it's a far cry at Public Works from what it used to be at the Rickshaw Stop. Because white patrons were often prevented from entering London bhangra clubs at the door, our San Francisco crowds are more diverse. Perhaps NonStop falls more along the lines of an AU club from the 90's. With primarily female organizers and an all-female dance troupe, however, we seem to avoid some of the visual exoticization of South Asian women that was part of the decoration and ambiance of the AU scene.
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| Photo Credit: Odell Hussey |
At most NonStops half of our crowd in non-desi, and our gender ratio approaches 50%. Our dance troupe is also diverse, reflecting our NonStop audience. Bakrania barely mentions white women in her book, although she does castigate one AU group for having a white classically trained dancer on stage. I suppose if you're focused on identity formation in postcolonial youth, other groups are less relevant. But I found Bhangra and Asian Underground doesn't create a useful lens for our non-desi Dholrhythmers (not all of whom are white) and club goers. Bakrania's research also tends to conflate South Asian-American members and club goers, in the case of Dholrhythms flattening the experience of North Indians, South Indians, Fijian-Indians, and first and second generation women as the same. I'm also curious about what bhangra might have to do with the construction of Punjabi identity specifically, as opposed to simply constructing a hybrid South Asian identity. So many questions, so little time... but it will be fascinating to hear what both our speakers have to say about the similarities and differences between the London and San Francisco bhangra scenes.
