The History of Chutney Music in Trinidad and Tobago (part one)

The following is an address I delivered on Chutney Music at Yale University on Friday April 18, 2000.

Chutney music, a syncretic Indo-Trinidadian popular music and dance idiom, is little known outside its own milieu. It is the product of the East Indian communities of Trinidad, Guyana and Suriname.

     Indians had originally immigrated to the regions under a program of indentured labour sponsored by the British, and in Suriname by Dutch colonists from 1845 to 1917. Most of the immigrants came from the Bhojpuri speaking regions of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in India.



  
     In recent years, Indo-Trinidadians have begun active participation in the country's mainstream economic, political and cultural lives. Partly by virtue of high birth rates and the fact that they also constitute one of the largest ethnic groups in the country. Accordingly, the East Indian society in Trinidad and Tobago has been in a state of dramatic transition.With the decline of traditions like caste and orthodox religion, cultural entities such as music and dance have come to assume unprecedented symbolic importance.

     Chutney music, traditionally performed by the use of a dholak (hand drum) a lotha (a brass jar) and two coins, has changed significantly since the 1970s provoking a storm of controversy within the East Indian community.

     As a socio-cultural phenomenon, chutney music has become a dynamic Indian diasporic artform and a prominent fixture of the Indo-Trinidadian music and dance world. It emerged from the rustic traditions of rural Caroni and Penal, rather than the bourgeois Indian community of Port-of-Spain, the capital of Trinidad. Hence, chutney appears to be yet one more instance of the familiar phenomenon of dynamic artforms emerging from the proletariat and only later being accepted by the social mainstream.

     It has given birth to versatile singers such as Devanand Gattoo, Rasika Dindial, Rakesh Yankaran, Heeralal Rampartap, Budram Holass, Ramraji Prabhu, Boyie Basdeo, Sam Boodram and the legendary Sundar Popo, whom you have just heard. There are many more names in the growing list.

     Chutney music is booming. It has become a lucrative specialty music market. It is new, exciting and prosperous and major recording companies are now making huge investments in this rhythmic ethnic beat. The market is unique and almost untouched. Promoters and music producers are quickening the pace by developing a vision to tap the resources and trap new talents that are daily flooding the chutney arena.

     With the advent of the new millennium, eclectic cultural mixes and ethnic diversity have become the most lucrative niche markets. The dynamism of the chutney beat is hypnotic and explosive. Recording companies and music producers such as JMC Entertainment Incorporated and Mohabir Records in New York, Moonesar Chanka and Praimsingh's in Trinidad are trying hard to capitalise on these ventures in order to secure the next big singing star.

     While they are injecting big bucks into the promotion of chutney music, artistes are competing for hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash prizes and motor vehicles in seasonal competitions in Trinidad. Although the chutney vogue is a recent phenomenon, as a music and dance tradition, it derives from the oldest stratum of folksong culture brought by the immigrants.

     This musical legacy comprised a variety of genres, such as wedding songs, birth songs (sohar), devotional Hindi bhajans, narrative biraha, seasonal songs such as chowtal, hori, chathi, Urdu/Muslim qawalli and quaseeda and local classical music, commonly known as "tent singing."

     Modern chutney, however, derives primarily from a specific set of folk songs sub-genres, all of which share the use of fast tempo, simple refrain-verse and erotic Bhojpuri texts. By the early twentieth century, the word chutney, or "chatni" which denotes a familiar condiment made from the mango fruit, had become an informal term for such songs.



     It originated from the bowels of the Hindu wedding. Typically, the cooking night at a Hindu wedding started with classical music like drupad, thumri and ghazals and later switched to chutney to commence the merriment and danging. In recent years, however, the chutney singing has, in some instances, entirely replaced classical singing. Part two..next entry.

The Saga of Sundar Popo - a continuing series

On the drive back to Queens, New York, from Yale University, Connecticut, Sundar Popo was in a fiery mood. Far removed from the journey there when he stretched off on his side and napped, with a casual, "wake meh when we reach."
     He slurped loudly on a can of Coca-Cola while I stared through the darkly tinted window into the night.
     "You know Susan, what we did today is a good thing." he said, sucked his teeth loudly and peered at me through his thick horn-rimmed spectacles.
     I sat opposite him in the sleek black stretch limousine as it snaked through late night traffic along the I-95 towards home. I was tired. Sundar, however, was not. It was past 10.30 p.m. on April 18, 2000, and I was relieved. I had been nervous all week, preparing to speak before an audience of teachers from colleges and Yale about Chutney Music in Trinidad. I worried that I would bore them, instead, they were fascinated and loved it. Afterwards they crowded around us for the Sundar Popo CDs we were handing out and to ask him about the harmonium and his songs.
     Sundar didn't sing out loud, he sang softly, miming from the boom box he had brought. Reason; he could not get his musicians, the dholak and dhantal players, to accompany us on the trip. He was upset about that, too. Still the audience was impressed with his harmonium playing and the way he, every so often, gesticulated his hand while singing. Those at the front, and myself, could hear him clearly.
     I spoke, he sang.
     Taking my attention away from the scenery, I asked. "What do you mean?"
     He again sucked his teeth several times. For a while I thought he hadn't heard me, then, he spoke. "The lecture we conducted at the University. How we talk about chutney music and how it developing in Trinidad and Tobago.What the people get from it and how it brings foreign money to the country. That is a good thing."
     He took a drag from the can, swallowed and shook his head. "Government should be proud of us. But they don't care about chutney singers in the country. Boy, I does get mad when I think about the kind of recognition we bring to the country with chutney music. In other countries people rushing we for autograph, when they don't have writing paper they putting money for we to sign and we own people doh care."
     Again he jabbed the can at his lips and sucked at the contents.
     "Should you be drinking that?" I asked, concerned.
     "What? The 'cokes'. I going for dialysis tomorrow, I could eat and drink anything today," he replied.
     "You are diabetic, Sundar, and that (coca-cola) could make you sick. It's not good for your sugar level. Aren't you afraid of having a sugar reaction?" I persisted.
     "You doh worry nah. When I get dialysis everything is drained from my body. If I follow that rule I will starve. The prime minister (Basdeo Panday) say he strong like a lion, but I am the tiger. I still have plenty life in me yet."
     "You sure?"
     " Doh worry nah. About what I was saying, them things you talk about, in the speech, all of that is true. Few people know about the real history of chutney music, it have money in it, too. Look way we chutney singers have to come to make some money, eh, yuh think it fair? We have to leave we country and come in a next man country, to be appreciated. Look at how them teachers and them listen and ask questions about the music.
     "I feel so good. Today I feel good about the chutney music, when educated people like them what to know about it. This, what we do here today, is history, you know. If we people know how to sell this thing we go kill them dead. Ah vex eh, but inside I feel I do a good thing. I really want to thank you for that, I glad for this kind of opportunity, girl, I telling you the truth, I really glad for this."
     Three weeks later he was dead. I played that conversation over and over in my mind every time my thoughts centered on him. It was the longest we ever shared. Sundar being a man of few words, and replied mostly with a nod, but on that night he was riled by his musicians and the fact that he had done such a memorable thing and his government didn't care.
     The stint at Yale was Sundar's last public appearance. He had accompanied me to demonstrate what chutney music was, while I delivered a paper on Caribbean Migration. The topic: The Development of Chutney in Trinidad and Tobago. Popo performed "Unity" and "Mother's Love".

Bhojpuri and Chutney Music

Long ago, in traditional India society, women groups sang erotic songs at wedding and "sohars," special songs at childbirth. These bhojpuri folk songs were lewd and suggestive and provided a way to hand down traditions and customs to later generations.
Chutney music is a bhojpuri offspring. It was brought from the bhojpuri region in North India to Trinidad by indentured labourers. Arguably, chutney music's origin dates back to1845 when the first batch of indentured labourers, east Indians, from various regions of India landed on Trinidad soil. Their lives were centered around the sugar cane field. And many evenings were filled with drinking rum and singing nostalgic bhojpuri songs, folk songs indeginous to India, late into the night. As time went by the lyrics gradually changed to reflect the development of their new lifestyle.
As history dictates, chutney songs, were sang by women, and only at childbirth and  traditional Hindu weddings for "maticoor," Friday night,  and the "cooking" also known as the "farewell,"  Saturday night, before the wedding. Because of the erotic nature of the lyrics, which centered around what the married couple would do on the wedding night, men were not allowed. The women gathered with the dholak, dhantal and harmonium and performed raunchy songs about the couple. Sometimes they enacted skits and dressed up in costumes and stuffed cloth under their dresses as if pregnant.
The song and the music continued to evolve; rhythm and melody changed and by the late 1960s the traditional song had undergone a complete change, a new genre was taking shape. A blend of Hindi and English with a new melody, chutney music was cooking. It took on greater influence when the late Sundar Popo released his Nana and Nani local composition. From then it became revolutionary. Song after song was released by local artistes and by the mid 1970s chutney music was widely accepted as a new form of Indian music in Trinidad. Following in its wake was a new breed of dancers, chutney dancers. Songs were laced with eroticism and dances were equally as wild. Chutney culture was firmly entrenched in society. No longer a wedding and childbirth act, chutney music was on the airwaves and artistes were competing on stage for large sums of money in annual competitions. More...