Tales, Tunes, and Tassa Drums : Retention and Invention Into Indo-Caribbean Music

Today's popular tassa drumming emerged from the fragments of transplanted Indian music traditions half-forgotten and creatively recombined, rearticulated, and elaborated into a dynamic musical genre. A uniquely Indo-Trinidadian form, tassa drumming invites exploration of how the distinctive nature of the Indian diaspora and its relationship to its ancestral homeland influenced Indo-Caribbean music culture. The book traces the roots of neotraditional music genres like tassa drumming to North India and reveals the ways these genres represent survivals, departures, or innovative elaborations of transplanted music forms. Drawing on ethnographic work and a rich archive of field recordings, the book contemplates the music carried to Trinidad by Bhojpuri-speaking and other immigrants, including forms that died out in India but continued to thrive in the Caribbean. It reassessment of ideas of creolization, retention, and cultural survival defies suggestions that the diaspora experience inevitably leads to the loss of the original culture, while also providing avenues to broader applications for work being done in other ethnic contexts. Today's popular tassa drumming emerged from the fragments of transplanted Indian music traditions half-forgotten and creatively recombined, rearticulated, and elaborated into a dynamic musical genre. A uniquely Indo-Trinidadian form, tassa drumming invites exploration of how the distinctive nature of the Indian diaspora and its relationship to its ancestral homeland influenced Indo-Caribbean music culture. Music scholar Peter Manuel traces the roots of neotraditional music genres like tassa drumming to North India and reveals the ways these genres represent survivals, departures, or innovative elaborations of transplanted music forms. Drawing on ethnographic work and a rich archive of field recordings, he contemplates the music carried to Trinidad by Bhojpuri-speaking and other immigrants, including forms that died out in India but continued to thrive in the Caribbean. His reassessment of ideas of creolization, retention, and cultural survival defies suggestions that the diaspora experience inevitably leads to the loss of the original culture, while also providing avenues to broader applications for work being done in other ethnic contexts.| Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Preface 1. Introduction: Global Perspectives on the Indo-Caribbean Bhojpuri Diaspora and Its Music 2. The Trajectories of Transplants: Singing Alha, Birha, and the Ramayan in the Indic Caribbean 3. Chowtal and the Dantal: Finding Fertile Soil in the New Homelands 4. Bhojpuri Diasporic Music and the Encounter with India 5. Tassa Drumming from India to the Caribbean and Beyond 6. Concluding Perspectives Notes Glossary References Index | "Peter Manuel's book is therefore a welcome addition to the existing Indian historiography of the Caribbean... Manuel uses mainly an ethnographic approach to support his analyses, essentially visiting and participating in events relating to Bhojpuri music in India, the Caribbean (mainly Trinidad) and the Indo-Caribbean North American diaspora. This approach has produced one of the most compelling books on Indo-Caribbean music... Manuel must be commended for producing this important scholarship on music in the Caribbean in particular, as well as India and the Indian diaspora in general."— Ethnomusicology Forum "A truly significant contribution. . . . The focus on under-theorized, flexibly handled, challengingly conceived if sometimes simple musical phenomena is much in keeping with Manuel's work throughout his career and this book is, in my view, a crowning achievement in that regard."—Richard Wolf, author of The Voice in the Drum: Music, Language, and Emotion in Islamicate South Asia "A definitive study of diverse musical traditions among the Indian communities of Trinidad, Suriname, Guyana, and the U.S. Manuel offers a descriptive/historical study based no extensive fieldwork. . . . Although he has published in this area previously, there are no comparable books. . . . no one else could have written such a comprehensive and clear study. Recommended."— Choice | Peter Manuel is a professor of musicology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY and author of Popular Musics of the Non-Western World: An Introductory Survey and Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae . "In this study, Peter Manuel discusses Indo-Caribbean music that uses a set of neotraditional music genres to explore how the distinctive nature of the diaspora and its relation to the ancestral homeland have conditioned the trajectories of its music culture. Focusing particularly on tassa drumming, a popular Indo-Trinidadian genre, Manuel traces the roots of neotraditional Indo-Caribbean music genres to North India and explores the ways in which these genres can be seen variously to represent survivals, departures, or innovative elaborations of transplanted genres. He examines music that was carried to Trinidad by Indian immigrants in the early twentieth century, including some forms that died out in India while thriving and evolving in their new world home. Drawing on rich ethnographic work, Manuel reassesses ideas of creolization, retention, and cultural survival in ways that have potentially broad application to other ethnic contexts"-- Provided by publisher Today's popular tassa drumming emerged from the fragments of transplanted Indian music traditions half-forgotten and creatively recombined, rearticulated, and elaborated into a dynamic musical genre. A uniquely Indo-Trinidadian form, tassa drumming invites exploration of how the distinctive nature of the Indian diaspora and its relationship to its ancestral homeland influenced Indo-Caribbean music culture. This work traces the roots of neotraditional music genres like tassa drumming to North India and reveals the ways these genres represent survivals, departures, or innovative elaborations of transplanted music forms. Itroduction. Global perspectives on the Indo-Caribbean Bhojpuri diaspora and its music The trajectories of transplants : singing Ālhā, Birha, and the Ramayan in the Indic Caribbean Chowtal and the Dantāl : finding fertile soil in the new homelands Bhojpuri diasporic music and the encounter with India Tassa drumming from India to the Caribbean and beyond Concluding perspectives.