Jahaji Music

by Ratnakar Tripathy
I recently saw Jahaji Music, an excellent documentary film on the Caribbean by Bombay-based filmmaker Surabhi Sharma. The word Jahaji means fellow-travelers on ships that carried indentured labor to the Indies from India to work on sugar cane plantations owned by the British. This nearly two hour film takes you very close to the fervent musicality which the Caribbean is known for in both senses – the stereotypical and the profound. I walked into the theatre with incongruously cheery associations in my head. At some point in college, I had admired Bob Marley, which is a very sober and adult way of admitting a passing but intense phase of madness. Marley was for a long time stuck like an audio loop in my mind and well, in my body, for the way it made you want to dance in innocent and celebratory rather than insane or drugged ecstasy. I had always puzzled about the cultural associations that went with Marley without looking too deeply into them – the cannabis, the Rastafarian cult and its unlikely association with the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, and the even more unlikely and bizarre linkages with Judaism and queen Sheeba of all people. Even now this delightful broth of legends seems a good example of history written under the influence. Somewhat later I discovered Tosh, the original one, and heard his ‘Legalize it’ with a lot more detachment. I am reminded of it since I recently saw the slogan on the t-shirt of a Sherpa coolie in Gangtok with the tri-pinnate cannabis leaves.
Surabhi’s main focus in the film was the diasporic angle – the rather incredible journey and transformation of music between India and the Indies. It’s as if every indentured labour carried his own India all the way to the distant lands and reverse engineered it for his own purposes, before reinstalling it on a pedestal of faith. Surabhi’s film makes you wonder what crazy somersaults our memories can perform and how the mind is capable of incredibly intricate set design, changing completely alien spaces into home with some help from music, rituals and costumes.
Anyway, what I found or rather rediscovered through Surabhi’s film was how strongly and centrally music may matter to one’s identity. To those accustomed to the centrality of linguistic, caste or religious identity, there is something incredible about the central idea of film. Also, if I may point out, the Trinidadian Indians and Africans seem to posit their musical identity primarily for themselves, and the viewers seem to be incidental passersby. Throughout the film it seemed fairly clear that the Chutney or Rege defined identity primarily among the practitioners themselves rather than the outsider. There was an air of innocence about their music and dance in that its primary purpose seemed to be self-absorption among the performers rather than display. The raw sexuality that the film brings out is just that – pristine and raw sexuality with no patina of the pornographic, and the coy dissembling that often goes with it.
I also didn’t notice any anxiety among the performers over the image that the outsider may form of them. There was no purveying of the ‘look at our culture’ line at all. This is of course understandably a somewhat relative point as any performance is clearly aimed at display rather than purely private narcissistic viewing. The conclusion here may be that while choosing to posit our identity we also choose the dimensions so to say through which our identity is affirmed, and it is interesting to see that unlike some societies who choose religion, language or race, certain other societies choose music and dance. Why music seems as puzzling to me as the question why language or religion. I am sure dimensions such as religion, language and race do matter to the Caribbean but I get the impression that music and dance perhaps have a more decisive sway. Despite how things look from a few thousand miles, I am aware that what I say may not be true of the entire Caribbean society at all, but a smaller urban segment trying to rise above its misery with the help of music.
I am aware that smaller communities in Bihar, India have certain song forms such as chaita or biraha running in their veins. But I am not sure they are as music-dance mad as the Trinidadian. There is also the instance of the rather unique movie madness of the Telugus and the Tamils in India, which is as incomprehensible to those under its divine influence as the outsider, to those who live out this madness with great élan and poise, and those who see in it as an inscrutable puzzle. While rhythm seems to so central to the West Indian, I must admit, melodies matter to me a lot more. I have never forgotten a tale told by a friend who went to the US at a very young age. After being admitted in a campus residence, she quietly sat on her bed feeling crushed by a sense of utter loneliness. Suddenly she heard the strains of a Geeta Dutt song and followed the trails of the suspected hallucination, in the process making her first friend with a fellow Indian and perhaps laying the first mental foundations of a new home. Oliver Sacks, the neurologist would have us believe in his ‘Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (2007)’ that rhythms are neurologically more fundamental than melody but in melodically intense moments like these I am no longer sure. I somehow feel the Indian ear identifies more easily with the melody than the rhythms.
To conclude, I wonder if it’s possible to speak of ‘accents of identity’ wherein you have a wide range of features marked by traits like cuisine, smells, language, religion, melody, rhythm, terrain, physical appearance, costume where the needle of identity may find repose. Some pick on language and some others on music or cuisine. This would of course be a case of a harmless form of identity which seeks familiarity/commonality of some kind and in the process makes its preferences clear, whether for music or religion, to mention two examples. ‘Jahaji Music’ shows that the chutney singers often don’t speak Hindi and simply mug up the lyrics. There is thus no great passion for the language as such involved here. Superimposed on such preferences is of course the more politicized form of identity. A combination of the sensuous and the political [cerebral] can form a very tight and rather inescapable circle of identity. And then you have the questions of claimed identity and that which is placed like a mantle on you whether you like it or not!
Irrespective of all those unpleasant issues, the most beautiful part of the story here is one that involves an almost categorial definition of culture, rather rare in practice or theoretical discussions. We are informed that it is usually deadly dangerous to enter Trenchtown, Jamaica [where Bob Marley grew up] even during daytime. But once the scheduled musical event begins, the whole area turns into a glowing utopian haven of goodwill even in the dead of the night. I thought this contraposing of music and violence carries an implicit definition of culture - violence in, music out, music in, violence out. I have quite fallen for this variety of clarity after watching ‘Jahaji Music’. Remember, the Taliban in Afghanistan did not only whip its women for showing their faces, it also dynamited the ancient figures of Buddha in the Bamiyan caves.
I am aware that art and violence have no simple relationship, but it’s good to see them both declared antonyms even for a night of unalloyed pleasure.