The outpouring of tributes to the influence of Indian musical icon Lata Mangeshkar on the Indian Guyanese community has probably surprised outsiders. But music is an integral aspect of Indian life and Lata as a playback singer merely epitomised the influence of that genre from the late 1940s into the present. From the moment Indian immigrants arrived in Guyana between 1838 and 1917, they brought their music with them.
Dominated with arrivals from the Bhojpuri Belt of Western UP and Western Bihar with only a quarter of them deciding to return to India, they formed communities in the logies around the hundreds of sugar factories that attempted to replicate Indian village life as they remembered it. Meaning that the full range of traditional folk music was reconstituted including the female-dominated maticores preceding marriages.
When the “dulha/bridegroom” marriage parties arrived from distant villages ( same-village marriages were taboo!), they remained overnight: night weddings were standard until the 1940s. There would be biraha singing competitions between the two “sides” – accompanied with harmoniums and dholaks – where spontaneous compositions were belted out especially on the theme of how inadequate were the accommodations on one hand and how unmannerly were the other. These compositions evolved into Estate-English ditties like “Bangali Babu” and “O maninja”.
There would be songs for every part of the lifecycle for instance, sohars at the birth of a child, especially by hijras/third sex individuals whose blessings were valued. The chowtaals, accompanied by jaals/cymbals and dholaks, were sung in traditional call-and-response style with much gusto at Phagua celebrations. At religious ceremonies such as Jhandies for Hindus and Koran or Milad Shareef for Muslims, Bhajans and Quasidas were respectively sung.
With the introduction of Bollywood movies from the late 1930s – Balasaheb Joban in 1937 – and the introduction of radio stations in Guyana around the same time, “filmi” songs would soon displace the traditional folk music. Starting in 1938, Station ZFY played local-sponsored Indian filmi music and was popular not only locally but also in Trinidad. ZFY became Radio Demerara in 1951 after it was bought by expatriate Redifussion . The Indian music – religious and filmi – was relegated to “Dayclean” (5:30am) to reach the sugar workers before they left for work. That designated time slot remains into the present. The filmi singers like KL Saigal and Noor Jehan ruled the roost with the latter departing for Pakistan in the 1947 Partition after which she was not heard much in Guyana. Lata, Mukesh and Rafi were then to emerge and remain at the top for decades.
By 1950 when the sugar industry would launch the largest housing drive in the Caribbean – 12,000 houses across the sugar belt – obtaining a radio was not a luxury but a necessity as much as stairs. Rooplall Monar was to name the novel about this move from the logies, “High House and Radio”. At that time, the local radio announcers became almost as iconic as the playback singers with the “Man with the Golden Voice” Ayube Hamid setting the standard and Eshri Singh a close second. Indian songs were allocated a block of time on Sundays from 1:30 to 4pm: Indian Melody Time; East Meets West in Music; Local Indian Performers; Hindu Religious Programme: Muslim Religious Programme; Aap Ki Khushi and the “Marmite Quarter Hour”. On Monday nights, there would be “Indian Memory Album” (“oldies”) hosted by Ayube Hamid, with his signature theme song, “Sohani Raat”.
As Guyana achieved Independence, Indian music was never given official support as the Creole-African-dominated genres were defined as “national”. Even though Indian Bands proliferated in the 1960s and which would only be heard at the Diwali and other private fairs – in addition to competitions among the bands. Radio Demerara was nationalised in January 1980, and by 1985, according to Eshri Singh (preserved on a video on YouTube), he was informed by then Information Minister Yvonne Harewood-Benn that even though the Indian programmes were all privately sponsored, “English” songs had to be interspersed. He quit in disgust and emigrated to the US.
That represented the nail in the coffin of Indian music over the airwaves. Because if a genre of music isn’t heard, it becomes “strange” to the ears of listeners: they become normalised to the “national culture” approved music. Local, Caribbean Chutney music, however, has exploded out of the Maticore and Biraha competitions. But it is seen by even many middle-class Indian Guyanese as too “low-brow”. The hegemony is complete?
