TASSA THUNDER : Folk Music from India to the Caribbean – YouTube
Published on Mar 25, 2014 – Vibert Cambridge shared this link.
This 53-minute video documentary explores Indo-Caribbean music culture through focusing on a set of neo-traditional music genres, relating them to sources and counterparts in North India’s Bhojpuri region and Indian communities in Fiji. Topics covered include chutney, chowtal, birha, nagara drumming, Ahir dance, the dantal, the Alha-Udal epic, and most extensively, tassa drumming. Tassa music is explored in reference to its rhythmic structures, its performance contexts of weddings, competitions, and Muharram (Hosay), and the construction of its drums. The film combines unique performance footage and interviews taken between 1990 and 2010 in India, Trinidad, Guyana, Suriname, New York, and Fijian communities in California. It conveys how Indo-Caribbean music culture comprises a unique and dynamic combination of both resilient marginal survivals as well as innovative forms.
Down Liberty Avenue! By Dr. Dhanpaul Narine
Dr. Dhanpaul Narine
Down Liberty Avenue! By Dr. Dhanpaul Narine
L iberty Avenue in Queens, New York, is the center of the universe for many immigrants. It is the Middle Earth where worlds converge and where opinions vary as to where the next trend or revolution might be. It is the Avenue where dreams are born, money is made and lost, parades take place and die in ignominy, where temples change hands and the elevator will eventually connect to the subway at Lefferts Boulevard and to Manhattan.
The sights and sounds on Liberty Avenue are a unique blend of curry and spices, roti and doubles and the music-men belching out bhajans, reggae, hip-hop and chutney songs while the Korean shopkeepers address their customers as ‘mamoos’ and know more about jhandis than the average Mandir-goer. Continue reading →
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