Situating bhangra dance: a critical introduction

Abstract

Punjabi bhangra has been a recurrent topic of discussion within the studies of South Asian identity and vernacular culture since the 1980s. Such discussions, however, have suffered due to lack of published information on bhangra's cultural and historical contexts. Consequently, discussants have had to rely upon information available from recent popular media and casual participants. Popular narratives tend to oversimplify bhangra as being or deriving from ‘Punjab's traditional folk dance,’ often without a clear sense of what constitutes ‘folk dance’ in this context or the relationship between such a dance and the particular bhangra with which one may be familiar. The resultant picture of contemporary bhangra as the quintessential Punjabi harvest dance, even if ‘modernized,’ is inadequate to interpret the acts of performers and audiences of what are, in fact, several dynamic phenomena. There is a danger of characterizing bhangra as a too-uniformly understood aspect of Punjabi heritage, and of reducing its performances to mere displays of Punjabi identity, if the past and present practical needs, aesthetic decisions, and situational intentions of participants are not registered. Intended to offer such a contextual framework, this article provides a social history of bhangra dance, in three theatres: Western Punjab before 1947, Eastern Punjab after the Partition, and the Punjabi Diaspora since the late twentieth century. Particular attention is paid to the individuals who have shaped the development and their circumstantial motivations.

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