| Music of Hindu Trinidad: Songs from the India Diaspora |
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Music of Hindu Trinidad: Songs from the India Diaspora. By Helen Myers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Pp. 510. Includes compact disc, glossary, biographical dictionary, gazetteer, Bhojpuri texts in Devanagari script, notes, bibliography, discography, list of songs and index. $85.00 cloth, $39.00 paper. Between 1845 and 1917, the British brought numerous Indians to Trinidad as indentured laborers. How do the fourth- and fifth-generation descendants of these laborers express themselves through Indian music? What is the context, content, form, function and meaning of the Hindi and Bhojpuri songs sung by Indians who grew up in English-speaking Trinidad? Do they sing the same songs that their ancestors sung or does their music reflect Caribbean influences? Through her wonderful work Music of Hindu Trinidad: Songs from the India Diaspora, Helen Myers answers these questions by tracing the history and the development of the musical traditions of the Indian community in Trinidad. In this work, Myers presents an in-depth case study and analysis of music in the village of Felicity, linking the traditions of that Hindu community to those of the Indian villages from which most Indians in Felicity trace their origins. Myers's work, a product of five research trips to Trinidad (1974-1990) and eight research trips to Northeastern India (1986-1992), is divided into nineteen chapters. Myers is both a good storyteller and a fine scholar; as a result, reading this book is like journeying through the times. Her work includes rich descriptions of the rituals, festivals, ceremonies and seasons around which the core of the traditional Hindu songs are composed and performed. She also gives a strong sense of her personality as an ethnographer, revealing her fieldwork approaches, interviewing methods, relationship with her informants, and the basis of her interpretations and conclusions. In the first chapter, Myers gives a rich account of the circumstances in which Indians left their homes and arrived in Trinidad. In the second chapter, she discusses ways in which anthropological theories and methods related to acculturation, syncretism, social constructionism, pluralism and consensualism are significant to ethnomusicological studies. This chapter also reviews the literature on the East Indian community pertinent to her work. The third chapter is devoted to Felicity village and gives a sense of the place, the size of the village, the landscape, and the village's connections with the larger world. In chapter 4, Myers not only introduces her informants and gives an account of her field techniques through her description of "A Day in the Village," but she also addresses the aesthetics of Trinidadian music and the relationship of Creole music to that of Felicity. In chapter 5, Myers presents the annual calendar of festivals and fairs in Hindu religion and outlines the music that goes with each of those celebrations. Chapters 6 and 7 are devoted to a folk taxonomy of musical terms and the history of Indian music in Trinidad. Chapter 7 also describes how the music of Felicity village has been influenced by the advent of film music records from India, the Trinidadian music industry, and the introduction of North Indian classical music by Guru H.S. Adesh. Chapters 8 to 16 are devoted to the discussion of both the content and the performance contexts of secular and sacred songs. The secular songs are sung at weddings and births. They describe emotions such as that of sensual yearning, love, and longing. Chapter 16 shows that music is central to the lives of the people in all their rites of passage except death. The sacred songs that Myers discusses include verses from the epic Ramayana, as well as devotional songs called bhajans that are sung in the temples to honor deities of the Hindu pantheon. Chapter 15 gives an interesting account of the bhajans dedicated to the sect of Sai Baba, who is regarded as the incarnation of the Shaivaite saint Sai Baba of Shirdi and worshipped like a God by many in both India and Trinidad. In the last two chapters Myers presents her conclusions connected with change and exchange, discussing how the Felicity villagers draw upon Indian models for religious contexts and western models for dance and other entertainment music. She concludes with the story of her experiences in India and the changes that took place in Felicity during her years of research elsewhere. Her final paragraph beautifully brings together her informants' perspectives about the meaning of singing in Hindu Trinidad. Deeksha Nagar |
