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| ARTS TRIBUNE | Friday, May 26, 2000, Chandigarh, India |
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Bid to keep Bhangra alive
Love defines it all The right to privacy
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Bid to keep Bhangra alive THE beating of drums, recitation of bolis, clamouring of chimta and kato and the quintessential physical gyrations that formed the basis of Bhangra, the traditional Punjabi dance, seems to have been replaced by a more free-flowing dance form performed to a stereotypical techno music. And it is such a scenario that the Nachda Punjab Youth Welfare Club has been established, not just for the revival of this traditional art form, but also for its promotion, especially amongst the younger urbanites in the state. Says Avtaar Singh, president of the club, “These days the original form of our traditional dance, be it Bhangra, Jhummar, Jandua, Gidda or Malwai Gidda have been lost to disco, tango or rock-and-roll, which have invaded these dances and have left a major influence on them. It is with an aim to counter this invasion that we have set up this club.” Avtaar Singh along with his team of Gurcharan Singh, Lakhwant, Sukhanpal, Bhupinder, Harnek, Ravinder, Gurpreet, Avtaar Singh Birdi, Parminder, Rakesh Jogi (drummer) and Sukhjinder Happy (singer) have now been actively involved in promoting the traditional dances. Over the past couple of years, they have given numerous Bhangra and Malwai Gidda performances in India and in a few of the Arabian countries. Explains Bhupinder Singh, a Bhangra dancer, “For most of us associated with this club, bringing the dance forms to the forefront is a sacred mission. This is an inherent part of our ethos and committed efforts have to be made for its resurrection.” Bhupinder is a college student and in spite of his hectic schedule in college, he manages to put in long hours of practice in order to perfect his dance. Another member of the club, Ravinder Singh says, “Even though we are not making a single penny from our numerous performances, we are continuing with our exercise of promoting the folk dances of Punjab by spending money from our own pocket.” Another of his team-mates, Harnek Singh laments that while the Punjabi folk dances are appreciated in the other states and abroad, there remain few takers for this in its homeland. “The average Punjabi residing in the city generally looks down upon these traditional dance forms. However, now even those settled in the rural areas have taken to the Punjabi dances and music set to Western beats in a big way,” he rues. He cites a case when their team was invited for a Bhangra performance at Chandigarh recently and they were asked by the organisers to perform wearing jeans so that the viewers “could identify with them.” “We refused to do this and only then did they relent,” he recalls. Interestingly, this club has evolved a new type of Malwai Gidda, wherein instead of only the male dancers reciting the boliyan and performing the Gidda, both male and female dancers recite the bolis in the form of questions and answers and perform the Gidda together. Says Avtaar Singh, “This new form of Malwai Gidda is typical of the rustic family life, where there is a lot of verbal duels between a brother-in-law and sister-in-law, husband and wife or between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law.” Meanwhile, another member of the club, Lakhwant Singh, observes that with the advent of the various music channels, a new impetus has been given to Punjabiyat, and our music and dances have been popularised to a large extent. “But efforts need to be made so that our culture is projected in its true form and not after it has been ‘westernised’ to suit their need of attracting attention by portraying semi-nude models in Punjabi songs,” he says. |
Love defines it all IT HAS been defined so often and yet it has no perfect definition. It resides within each but each one searches for it. With all its manifestations and the multi-dimensional aspects, love remains an unsolved mystery for us humans. It encompasses every other emotion within itself and yet surfaces above them all. Love is what we want but cannot give easily; it is every being’s desire that might/might not get fulfilled. It draws on extremity i.e. between creation on one side and destruction on the other. It has no shades of grey. Either you love someone or you don’t. That is it. No middle path. Great minds have frequently played with the subject of love, in its various contextual references. According to certain theosophical traditions, love borders on two worlds i.e. the material, where us humans live and thrive and the other being the divine realm. Man as a subject in the journey of his existence pendulates between the notions of ‘Ishq Majajji’ and “Ishq Haqiqi’. Those who finally belong to either have left vast amounts of information regarding their experiences making it even more complicated to understand and state the absoluteness of this means of communication termed as love. One human existence might not prove to be sufficient to comprehend what love is all about. And yet, history bears witness to thousands of individuals who devoted themselves entirely through creative mediums in realising the depths of this idea, notion, concept known as love. One such literary gem was the 18th century Drama Master Marivaux. This French playwright wrote a great many plays, mainly comedies, novels and critical journalistic articles revolving around the French society. He was passionately fascinated by the subject of love and hence wrote the play La Dispute, which deals with the delicate issue of putting us humans to test! A trilingual theatrical adaptation was recently performed by Alliance Francaise under the experimental skill of Celine Cateland (the Director of the play) a French prestgrad from Lyon. Commenting on her theatre experience at A.F. Celine expresses spontaneously: sharing the adventure of La Dispute with Indians, in India, is quite a powerful adventure for me. The challenge was big but so exciting: three months to get to know, to trust each other, to free our bodies and then build the characters, to devise the pictures ... to tell the amazing story of La Dispute”. The questions of inconstancy, infatuation, infidelity and intrigue mark the charade within which humans as character elements wind and unwind emotionally, mentally and physically. Though this vibrantly colourful and extremely dramatic production did manage provoking the psyche about the strangeness of relationships between men and women. Personally speaking, what comes as a frightening realisation is the fact that speaks of self-destruction which lie within ourselves and it takes hardly another human feeling to merely uncap the ugliness of it all. It is not so relevant so to who is a bigger infidel man/woman, but the harsh reality that the trait of unfaithfulness is inherent amongst us individuals waiting to be unscathed by situations and circumstances. Yes, one does need to provide satisfactory answers to irking questions like is there constant and eternal love? Can people remain in love, eternally? Interestingly, some of the dialogues in the play made one ponder about the changing levels of honesty and compassion evident in human behaviour. When Egle remarks sarcastically, “I am tempted to have what you love” or statements such as these. “He fancies being an infidel” and “Revenge is sweet”, highlight the degree of human connivance possible. Some of the play’s sensitive and humorous moments were when the lovers, Egle and Azore, are pushed into experiencing the perils of ‘little separations’ which is necessary for sustaining love. Another moment was when the issue of vanity clashes between the two women Adine and Egle. Both end up using infidelity as a weapon to prove ‘who is fairer of them all!’ The director Celine managed portraying the charms that Marivaux used in the characterisation of ‘La Dispute’ which exhibits the “ingredients of love, passion with its beauty and its danger”. Celine has successfully underplayed the juxtaposition that love in life creates and destroys and recreates again. As she herself states, “It (the play) ends strangely ... what can we think? Can we really condemn the character’s bad behaviour? Isn’t it the rhythm of the play, that represents the rhythm of life, that decided for them ... eternal question!” The entire cast of ‘La Dispute’ deserves an applaud for having marvelled in their attempt to project the intricate maze of human passion and temperamentality. A special mention about red backdrop stage setting which provided the drawing mood that the play rests on. Indeed, a good job done.
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The right to privacy In this country, we tend to be amazingly coy about the personal lives of politicians. The media tends to be a past master in cover-ups. While everybody has access to gossip and indulges in it shamelessly at cocktail parties, no one writes about it unless something really big, like suicide, murder or really blatant corruption comes out into the open. There is the classic case of the son of a union minister some years ago. He was under-age for driving, but after consuming a goodish bit of hard liquor in the afternoon at a five-star hotel, he drove at reckless speed a Maruti van along Golf Link Road, which then had lethal speed-breakers. His van over-turned more than once, and the teen-aged friend sitting beside him got killed on the spot. The police promptly arrested the driver. But the minute he mentioned his father’s name, he was let off and one heard no more about whether he was punished or not, probably not. But not a word appeared in the print or electronics media. Yet President Radhakrishnan’s son had the honesty, in his biography of his father, to mention his father’s weaknesses and how it hurt his mother. Sadly, very little of this kind of courage is common amongst the children of our famous people. Our columnists and anchors. However, with the satellite invasion, there is a sudden upsurge of frank, at times brutal interviewing. Everyone wants to be Tim Sebastian, down to the last handshake (even with women, which is not done amongst Indians but is slavishly followed). But they forget that Tim Sebastian observes a special code, as does Nisha Pillai. They are brutal (not personally but politically or otherwise) only when the person deserves it by being arrogant, dishonest or evasive. Nisha was so tough with Bal Thackeray that it is alleged he said he would not allow her to come to Bombay again. But she never went beyond good taste and decency. Tim Sebastian tried to be tough with Jaswant Singh and George Fernandes, but got as good as he gave. And was never coarse or indecent. With interviews a dime a dozen, and everyone fancying himself as Tim Sebastian, they are becoming not only a bore but confined as they are to about 20 persons, Shobha De, Tendulkar, Amitabh Bachchan, film stars of the latest release, writers of the latest launch, it adds up to about 20 interviews of the same people the same week, sometimes the same day, usually as long as time permits, but more usually some quickies in the news. When it is politics, it is the same experts who hop from channel to channel (in the case of Sri Lanka Mani Dixit, Major General Ashok Mehta et al). It would be a miracle if they had something different to say every time. So Constant interviewers (and sometimes editors and columnists who would not dare to ask or say the same things in their newspapers) start cultivating their personas a la Tim Sebastian. One of the most surprising changes of personality, and significantly following on Karan Thapar reducing Kapil Dev to tears, was on the part of Vir Sanghvi, who is normally the most civilized of interviewers. I found cruel and distasteful the way he kept on needling Shekhar Suman about the tragic early death of his small son. It went on and on, how did he take it, how did his wife take it and so on, until Suman started wiping his eyes and himself asked the camera to turn away. Something which Sanghvi should have thought of in the first place (this is common practice and a courtesy observed by most interviewers) and which Karan Thapar should also have done, stop the camera for a few minutes when Kapil Dev became incoherent instead of persisting with the same monotonous third party charges. Because while this might have led to some photogenic melodrama, many viewers (and not old fuddy duddies but modern young people) felt enough is enough in such cases and the interviewer should know when to call a halt. I think majority opinion is on Kapil Dev’s side and this has nothing to do with guilty or not guilty but common human kindness. I can think of one interviewer who might lack Sanghvi’s suavity or Karan Thapar’s sledge hammer style, but who gets the same results by doing his homework and varying his questions, and this is Paranjoy Guha-Thakurta, who has got more out of Jyoti Basu and over-confident economists by keeping his cool and not forgetting to be courteous even when asking something which could be insulting in the final analysis. Personally, I am tired of too many people doing too many interviews and asking the same questions of the same people. They could at least take a sabbatical to spare the viewer and also limit themselves to one channel by which they as well as the channel can be identified. At the moment, they are signing on recklessly like commercial film stars who take on too many films at the same time and flit from one shoot to the other on the same day. They are just as greedy and boring, if not as cheap. |
A.R. Rahman live A.R. Rahman Live in Dubai (Sony Music): The real magic of A.R.Rahman lies in the snatches of music that come between the words. In fact, lyrics tend to be incidental in many of his compositions. Unless he collaborates with men like Javed Akhtar and Gulzar the words at times are even meaningless. But it is the melody which makes the songs stand out, even when they are of the Telephone dhun mein bajne wali…. sort. In film songs, the music can be only brief. It is only in live programmes that a composer can give full play to his creations. That is exactly what Rahman does in this live performance in Dubai. The film songs that he presents take an entirely different colour here. The two-cassette album mostly has film songs, with the exception of Vande Mataram…. The artistes that have performed with him are S.P. Balasubramanyam, Udit Narayan, Hariharan, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Chitra, Sukhvinder and Sujatha. One misses Lata Mangeshkar in numbers like Jeeya jale jaan jale…. Chitra has done very well, but Lata is Lata. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s recorded voice has been used in Gurus of Peace — Vande Mataram.... The best impact is left by the theme music of ‘‘Bombay’’. The performance ends with Maa tujhe salaam… in Rahman’s voice. And has he done wonders! WALLAH WALLAH (Tips): Bhupinder Chawla (Bhupi as he is popularly known) has achieved success after a long long struggle and seems to revere it passionately. He puts in a lot of labour before coming up with a new cassette. For this cassette, some 40 songs were reportedly prepared before shortlisting them to 10. That is why each one of them has an identity of its own. Through his stage shows, he knows the value of giving the listeners simple hummable catchwords. Here the words that everyone can sing along are Wallah wallah…. Naturally, this is the song being promoted the most. Despite using fast music, Bhupi preserves the typical Punjabi style of singing. He has included slower numbers like Chidiyan da chamba… which is based on a folk song. Chimta taan wajda… is a remix, the original having been sung by Ustad A. Khan. Most of the songs have been written by his brother G.S.Chawla, while one has been penned by Dev Kohli (Kudi patola malmal wargi…). Among co-writers are Surjit Rahi and Shankar Sahney. Music director is the man with Midas’ touch, Jawahar Wattal. CHAL MERE BHAI (T-Series): The music of one David Dhawan film is as different from the other as one rabbit is from another. What distinguishes this one is the fact that it gives a chance to Sanjay Dutt and Salman Khan to warble a song, the title one at that. Not only is the name of the film borrowed from a song in an Amitabh Bachchan hit, the song too is almost a copy, with one brother trying to drag his intoxicated brother home. A remix of this song is sung by Shankar Mahadevan and others. This song is pure madness, and so is Mere baap ki beti mujhe bhai bolti…. (Abhijeet, Vinod Rathod and chorus). But the other creations of Anand-Milind are rather sweet. Among the better of the lot are Meri neend jaane lagi hai… (Alka Yagnik and Sonu Nigam) and Thodi si beqarari… (Kumar Sanu and Alka Yagnik). Even the sad version of Chori chori sapnon mein ata hai koi… is enjoyable. |
