MUSIC SPECIAL....CHUTNEY MUSIC

Pour some chutney on me Chutney music, with its rich beats and Bhojpuri-Caribbean flavour, has long been an unsung Bollywood influence.     The sound of steel drums and Calypso beats barely reach your ears and you find yourself swaying — and laughing — to lyrics like: I am a hunter She want to see my gun When I pull it out Why the woman start to run     The song, I’m a hunter from the film Gangs of Wasseypur was released two weeks ago on YouTube. In no time it caught the attention of urban India and is being furiously shared on social networks. The structure and rhythm of the song is inspired from chutney music or chutney soca, the music that the Indo-Caribbean community calls its own. The form of music which has been in existence for over 40 years derives elements from traditional Indian music and popular Trinidad soca music.     The Indo-Caribbean community dates back almost 150 years, from the time the British recruited workers — many of them from eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar — to work on their sugar plantations. They were called indentured labourers — V S Naipaul’s ancestors were among them — and hired under a system that promised them free sea passage in exchange for five years of work at a minimal wage. But when the time came to return to India, few chose to go back. Instead they stayed on, singing songs of longing in Bhojpuri, that over the years assumed layers of Caribbean influence, particularly in rhythm. For the Indian diaspora in the Caribbean, chutney music gave them an identity that was separate from their African counterparts, and also not strictly Indian.     For a film based on the coal mafia in Bihar, at first glance it might look strange to have a song that is more reminiscent of the sun and sands of the Caribbean than the earthy scenery of Bihar. For music director Sneha Khanwalkar, it was perhaps the perfect ironic fit.     “I discovered chutney music while I was in college when suddenly at a fest this song called Lotala started blaring from the speakers,” says Khanwalkar, who’s known for her music in movies like Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye and LSD. “I ran to find out who the singer was, because it seemed Indian because of the lyrics but also wasn’t Indian. It was a singer called Sonny Mann and it was chutney music. I researched it and the idea of doing something like this stayed in my head. So when I was offered Gangs of Wasseypur, it seemed like a good fit.”     Even though Gangs director Anurag Kashyap wasn’t aware of the connections between chutney music and Bihar, he gave Khanwalkar the green signal to travel to Trinidad to record a few songs. She met Vedesh Sookoo, who has chutney hits such as Dhal belly Indian and I ain’t ride no bicycle, and asked him to sing a song and even write the lyrics, if he wished. Sookoo, had given up writing music, but had lyrics for a song called Hunter, which he offered her. In the movie, Sookoo sings the song along with Rajneesh, Shyamoo and Munna in a style similar to his hit song, I ain’t ride no bicycle.     Chutney music is typically played with the dholak, dhantal — a curved metal stick that is struck with a clapper — and the harmonium. The harmonium provides the melody, the dholak and dhantal the rhythm. The modern chutney artiste writes lyrics in either Hindi, Bhojpuri or English and then lays them over beats that are a mix of dholak and soca. The dhantal is now extinct in Bihar, says Khanwalkar, but people in Trinidad still use it. Chutney is characterised by upbeat songs about life and love, with a generous smearing of smut. The pounding rhythm also makes it perfect for raunchy dance moves. “It’s the same loop as a regular Bhojpuri song,” Khanwalkar explains. “It’s the addition of soca that makes it so aggressive and so fast that you can only shake your ass.”     Sandeep Narayan, who spent a chunk of his teenage years in Port of Spain, says that chutney music is a way of life in the Caribbean. “You can’t be still in that country,” Narayan laughs. “If the song is not good enough to dance on, it’s not worth listening to. So at first as an Indian you really like chutney music, because it has a home feel to it. The lyrics are easy to understand as compared to soca or dubs which is Jamaican. It’s also a history lesson — you can tell people’s origins from their music.”     The linkages between chutney music and Bollywood go back a few decades. Sundar Popo, considered to be the king of chutney music, was a regular visitor to Bombay and even worked with bhajan singer Anup Jalota. Jalota worked with Popo on an album Hot & Spicy, released in 1980, from which one song, Chaadar beechawo baalma, became a rage. The album was re-released in 2010, a decade after Popo’s death.     Though not a big fan of the lyrics in chutney music — “their songs having been modified over the years have no meaning” — Jalota agrees that it’s the beat and feel of the music that crowds most enjoy. Even today, when Jalota tours the Caribbean or even Holland, where a community of Indian Surinamese has settled, he is requested to sing a few Bhojpuri songs that Popo made famous.     Another Indian contribution that helped develop chutney music was the role played by the duo, Babla and Kanchan. Babla was the younger brother of the Bollywood music composers Kalyaniji-Anandiji. Not as successful as his elder brothers, Babla and his touring orchestra played out Bollywood hits to Indian fans in faraway places such as the Gulf, Fiji and the West Indies. Along with his wife Kanchan, Babla reworked many of Popo’s hits like Kaisi bani and recorded nearly 15 albums of Indo-Caribbean music.     Journalist Naresh Fernandes who has written Taj Mahal Foxtrot, a book on the history of jazz in Mumbai, visited Babla’s office in Mumbai. The office walls were plastered with posters. ‘Babla & Kanchan: Live in Guyana’, said one poster. ‘Babla & Kanchan: Live in Trinidad’ said another,” says Fernandes. “There he was, famous in the West Indies, but here in India no one gave a damn. This was the man who gave us disco dandiya and no one in India was interested in what he was doing.”     This isn’t the first time that a Bollywood song has been inspired by chutney. “A lot of Indians don’t know this,” Fernandes says, “but Om Shanti Om from Karz is actually a song composed by a black Trinidadian who called himself Lord Shorty.”

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