Bhangra is commonly understood as the hybrid music produced in Britain by British Asian music producers through mixing Punjabi folk melodies with western pop and black dance rhythms. This is derived from a Punjabi harvest dance of the same name.
In her book Bhangra Moves: From Ludhiana to London and beyond, Prof Anjali Ghera Roy, from IIT Kharagpur, looks at Bhangra’s global flows from one of its originary sites, the Indian subcontinent, to contribute to the understanding of emerging South Asian cultural practices such as Bhangra or Bollywood in multi-ethnic societies.
Source: SBS
In conversation with SBS Punjabi, Prof Ghera Roy says that through this book, she aims to trace Bhangra's moves from Punjab and its 'return back' to look at the forces that initiate and regulate global flows of local texts and to ask how their producers and consumers redirect them to produce new definitions of culture, identity and nation.
The importance lies in understanding the difference between the present globalizing wave and previous trans-local movements. In her book, Gera Roy contrasts the frames of cultural imperialism with those of cultural invasion to show how Indian cultures have constantly reinvented themselves by cross-pollinating with 'invading' cultures such as Hellenic, Persian, Arabic and many others in the past.
By looking at Bhangra's flows to and from India, Ghera Roy revises the relation between culture, space and identity and challenges boundaries. She weighs both the uses and costs of visibility provided by global networks to marginalized groups in diverse localities and explores whether collaborations between Bhangra practitioners, largely of working class origin, give ordinary people any control over the circulation of culture in the global village. Finally, she also considers whether cultural practices can alter hierarchies and power structures in the real world.
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People in traditional attire perform the 'Bhangra', a Punjabi folk dance, as part of Baisakhi celebrations in a wheat field in Kokadwala village Source: AAP
Indian men from Punjab Patiala University perform the Punjabi folk dance 'Bhangra' Source: EPA
Source: Picquery.com
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