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

     Particularly important in the Hindu wedding ceremony is the matkor or matikor, maticoor, which takes place the Friday night before the actual marriage ceremony on Sunday.



     On this occasion, women accompanied by male tassa drummers proceed to the nearest water course or a stand pipe, and perform a ritual by digging a small hole in the earth to bury flowers and sindoor (vermilion) which were used in the matkor ceremony. The drummers stand at a discreet distance with their eyes averted while the women sing lewd songs and perform erotic dances. A similar session follows on the festive "cooking night" held on Saturday and after the wedding ceremony.

     After the tumeric anointment of the bride, the women also sing ribald songs behind closed doors and perform erotic dances. The same is done in private chatthi and barahie, childbirth celebrations. Such traditional women songs are clear antecedants of contemporary chutney compsitions.

     As the spoken Hindi declined, such songs often became "creolised" by the introduction of English words.

     Dance is the focus of chutney and is an essential aspect of the folk genres from which it emerged. Chutney dancing was performed largely by lower-class women in the sexually segregated contexts of the wedding or chatti. The dancers engaged in a fairly limited, but expressive set of standard movements, typically combining graceful hand and arm gestures with sensuous pelvic rotation, in Trinidadian parlance this simply means "wining."

     The loosening of social restrictions on dance occurred over a period of several decades. Alice Jan and Champa Devi, earned local renown as hired dancers at Hindu weddings in the country. Although such women were generally regarded as socially unrespectable, their prominence helped loosen proscriptions for the next generation.

     Equally important was the gradual relaxation of inhibitions regarding men and women dancing in the same space. Traditionally, men who danced with women, e.g. at a wedding, would have been considered effeminate, while a woman who danced with men, whether at a wedding or a rum shop would be considered of loose morals.

     In the 1970s such inhibitions gradually loosened as many Indo-Trinidadian private weddings included animated chutney dancing performed by women and a few men - not necessarily in couples, but in the same space, in merry disregard of prior taboos.

     In terms of music and dance, chutney is not, on the whole, original, but constitutes a revival and repacking of the folk genres described earlier in this text, some of which have otherwise declined in their contexts. Thus, what is dramatically new about modern chutney is not its form but its flouting of the social inhiitions previously restricing dance, and its recontextualisation as a form of public culture enjoyed and performed by men and women together.

     Accordingly, as a socio-musical phonemenon, its emergence has been conditioned by the broader transformation taking place in Indo-Trinidadian society since the 1970s. These processess include the decline of various ancestral traditions and of orthodox Hinduism, this however, should not be interpreted as a decline of Hinduism, per se. Chutney, in its own way serves to popularise songs about Krishna and is one part of the lively resurgence of Hinduism and Indian culture taking place in the country. Part three...next entry.

    

    

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...