Salsa/Bhangra: Transnational Rhythm Cultures in Comparative Perspective

The dance-music complexes known as “Salsa” and “Bhangra” have not been subjected to any comparative academic scrutiny, despite clear parallels in their respective histories as cultural processes born out of multiple ruptures and conjunctions, including European colonialism, migrations during the postcolonial period, and transnational cultural and commodity flows. While Salsa has resulted from the movement of people, music and rhythmic cultures across Africa, the Caribbean and the United States, Bhangra evinces their movement across the partitioned space of the Punjab, the United Kingdom, and the post-Partition nations of India and Pakistan. Both Salsa and Bhangra have, moreover, moved beyond original regional ambits to become cultural signifiers (albeit often contested as much as claimed) of wider Latino/a and Desi (pan-South Asian) identities respectively. Undoubtedly, it is the academic and cultural embedding of Salsa within a Hispanophone postcolonial paradigm, and of Bhangra within its Anglophone counterpart, that has prevented serious comparative work between these two musical expressive cultures which are equally but differently exemplary of the complex relationship between music and migration. Yet across the world, from Delhi to San Francisco, the two dance-music complexes increasingly meet each other in the same space, particularly that of the dance floor. Drawing on such evidence as well as on personal experience of dancing both the Salsa and the Bhangra, I will advance in this article a theoretical framework for their comparison as transnational musics, suggesting ways in which such a framework can illuminate the circuits of pleasure and politics that traverse each of these dance musics as embodied histories of a traumatic yet life-affirming postcolonial modernity

Translations analogiques : la Rome impériale, l’Angleterre médiévale et les Indes britanniques

« Le temps semble être venu de dire le monde français, comme autrefois le monde romain ; et la Philosophie, lasse de voir les hommes toujours divisés par les intérêts divers de la politique, se réjouit maintenant de les voir, d’un bout de la terre à l’autre, se former en république sous la domination d’une même langue. Spectacle digne d’elle, que cet uniforme et paisible empire des lettres qui s’étend sur la variété des peuples, et qui, plus durable et plus fort que l’empire des armes, s’accr..

Musical Recall: Postmemory and the Punjabi Diaspora / ﺍﻻﺳﺘﺪﻋﺎﺀ ﺍﻟﻤﻮﺳﻴﻘﻲ : ﺍﻟﺬﺍﻛﺮﺓ ﺍﻟﻤﺎ ﺑﻌﺪﻳﺔ ﻭﺍﻟﺸﺘﺎﺕ ﺍﻟﭙﻨﺠﺎﺑﻲ

[The Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 has profoundly altered the geopolitics and demography of South Asia, generating also large-scale diasporic movements to Britain from the regions most deeply affected thereby, such as the Punjab. Deploying paradigms from Holocaust studies, the author connects diaspora with trauma to analyze the memory-work inscribed within contemporary music produced and enjoyed by British Punjabis in Britain. Arguing that such music expresses a \u27neo-ethnic\u27 Punjabi \u27postmemory\u27 that recalls pre-Partition Punjab, the author suggests that such \u27musical recall\u27 has a redemptive and commemorative potential inherent in its ability to bypass narratives of violence and nationalism, and articulate instead post- and transnational modes of identity formation and cultural belonging. /‮كان لتقسيم شبه القارة الهندية في عام ٧٤٩١ بالغ الأثر في تغيير الملامح الجيوبوليطيقية والديموجرافية ﻟﻤﻨﻄﻘﺔ جنوب ﺁسيا؛ فقد ﺧﻠّﻒ حركات شتات ونزوح واسعة النطاق إلى بريطانيا قادمةﹰ من المناطق التي تأثرت بذلك التقسيم على نحو عميق مثل الپنجاب٠ من خلال نزوع الكاتبة هنا إلى سوق نماذج من دراسات الهولوكوست نجدها تربط بين الشتات وحالة الصدمة بغية تحليل عمل الذاكرة المحفور بعمق بين ثنايا الموسيقى المعاصرة التي يبدعها ويستمتع بها الپنجابيون البريطانيون في بريطانيا، وتطرح أيضاﹰ قضية مفادها أن مثل هذه الموسيقى ما هي إلا تعبير عن ذاكرة ما بعدية پنجابية إثنية جديدة ترنو إلى استدعاء پنجاب ما قبل التقسيم، ومن ثم فهي تقترح أن ذلك الاستدعاء الموسيقي ينطوي على إمكانية خلاصية تذكارية تكمن في قدرته على مجاوزة قصص العنف والقومية وتجنبها، وإبراز صور ما بعد وما وراء قومية لمفهوم تشكيل الهوية والانتماء الثقافي٠‬