Men may have now taken centre-stage but not by any means have they displaced the women. Emerging out of the traditional north Indian female practice of singing wedding songs to brides on the eve of their marriages, chutney music has over the years added Hindi filmi rhythms, modern electronic and western instruments and calypso beats to create a spicy genre of intoxicating dance music. In particular, the form of diaspora music known as chutney or chutney-soca, has been a mass experiment and experience of communal self-realisation for the Indian populations of the West Indies. In recent decades, that search for an identity that connects history with future prospects has been played out in part in popular music. ![]() In the more than 150 years since, the East Indian community of the West Indies has struggled to forge a distinct and meaningful identity that captures both their roots in (mostly) eastern UP, their present, as a large and powerful group across the Caribbean, and a hopeful, as-yet-in-formation, future. ![]() The first Indians landed in Trinidad (sold to desperate Bhojpuris as “Chini-dad”) as sugar slaves (euphemistically known as ‘indentured workers) in 1848.
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