Indian Gypsy singing

Subject: Indian Gypsy singing
From: Jack Campin
Date: 03 Jun 20 - 04:57 AM

This is amazing. It had never really sunk in before that Flamenco was Indian. This is both at once and unbelievably impassioned.

Facebook video

Subject: RE: Indian Gypsy singing
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Jun 20 - 06:09 AM

Incredible passionate stuff
Canto Hondo can be just as powerful - I think the flamenco on offer nowadays is mainly for the visitors unless you find the right places
WE found Morocco the same, but you had to get away from the main drag to find the real stuff
Jim

Subject: RE: Indian Gypsy singing
From: GUEST,Nick Dow
Date: 03 Jun 20 - 07:50 PM

The Romany's came out of India. The Sinti I believe. Horse dealers and metalworkers. My wife is related to the Dolan's, and with this weather is brown as a nut at the moment. When we went to an Asian wedding, and she dressed in a Shari you could not tell her apart. I believe there were a few good singers amongst the Dolans. I love that hard edged decorative style you get with all Gypsy singing. It goes through your heart.

Subject: RE: Indian Gypsy singing
From: GUEST,BlackAcornUK
Date: 03 Jun 20 - 08:13 PM

Excellent, thanks for sharing Jack. American finger-picking guitarist/Timothy Leary's former 'musical director' Peter Walker has written and recorded some great stuff around the shared heritage of raga and flamenco, but there's no substitute for the the real deal.

Subject: RE: Indian Gypsy singing
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 04 Jun 20 - 08:41 AM

These aren't "Gypsy" singers. They are singers of qawwali, the classical North Indian form of singing Sufi poetry. Singers ("qawwal") are attached to shrines of Sufi saints. The South Asian Sufi devotional ethos is "ecstasy" -- getting close to Allah through losing yourself in passion. The women performing are the duo "Nooran Sisters" from Jalandhar in Punjab state of India. The language is Punjabi. The guy in wine colored shirt that they keep focusing on is star (since early 1980s) Punjabi pop star Gurdas Mann.
https://youtu.be/hnAs7VO5nMY

I suppose some Spanish singer just thought "Gitanos" were the closest thing to their experience and labelled it in the facebook post (?). What might be throwing things off is that historically qawwali singers have been men only. Yet the cultural atmosphere of Sufism is very catholic, and it's not surprising an "exception" is made for women, especially if they are chiefly "artists" and not engaged as functionaries at shrines. As a case in point, Gurdas Mann (showing his appreciation throughout) is a Sikh rather than a Muslim.

The mind can run wild connecting North Indian peoples to Rom people of Europe, yes the historical connection is there. But it is not made with such specificity to some group of "Gypsies" in India and, even when people hazard to do that, they don't connect these qawwals.

I work with people in Punjab that have an actual history as an itinerant tribe and whom the colonial British referred to as "gypsies" colloquially, but they are different. These people here are the established (most mainstream) stock of musicians from which classical North Indian music comes. No one would call them gypsies. One would guess their "caste" is "Mirasi."

In the '70s and '80s people's minds ran hog wild connecting European Rom stuff and Northwestern Indian stuff, very speculatory, since we're talking about 1000 years of cultural change. The governor of Punjab state sent soil (dirt) from Punjab to some Rom in Europe. Indira Gandhi had Rom come perform in India. A conference was held by the International Romany Union (sp?) in England around 1980 and they sent a troupe of bhangra dancers -- dancing in forms made up after the 1950s -- and made a big show as if it was an "ancient" dance that connected the Gypsy family of the world, ha. I guess all brown people look alike!
In 2000 I met Dr. WR Rishi, who was editor of a "ROMA" magazine for many years -- it was the mouthpiece for a lot of the dilettante "theories." Included in its pages were several articles about the "flamenco connections" and whatever. Rishi himself was a linguistics professor in Chandigarh. He put together several dictionaries comparing Punjabi language and Romanes (Rom language). Of course, the languages ARE related; linguistics is the discipline that had been most engaged in sketching migrations of Rom people. But North Indian vernaculars of 1000 AD being the root of Rom language is limited to what it can say about ethnicity and culture as pertaining to the present. Anyway, this Rishi guy claimed to have gone to England and conversed with some Rom in Punjabi and they totally understood each other... which is nonsense... but a fun story. His whole schtick was that other dilettante writers connected European Rom to peoples in Rajasthan, yet he was certain their ancestors were Punjabi! 1000 years ago... Punjabi, Rajasthani... no substantive difference.

Subject: RE: Indian Gypsy singing
From: leeneia
Date: 04 Jun 20 - 01:36 PM

Thanks for the link, Jack. Warning: that video is LOUD.

Subject: RE: Indian Gypsy singing
From: Jack Campin
Date: 04 Jun 20 - 04:33 PM

Thanks, Gibb. It was so unlike other qawwali I've heard that it didn't occur to me it was the same genre.   Are the lyrics similarly devotional? Didn't seem to be as repetitive as the more familiar stuff.

I got the link from Linsey Pollak, who got it from Sonia Fernandez, who I know nothing about. Does she have an agenda?

Subject: RE: Indian Gypsy singing
From: GUEST,RA
Date: 04 Jun 20 - 05:00 PM

I think flamenco is about as Indian as pibroch - which is possibly quite a lot on a deep structural level. It's all Indo-European.

Deben Battacharya did a lot of work about the connections between the music of India and Gypsy music in Europe. Is the black-faced Santa Sara venerated by Gypsies in Spain a manifestation of Kali, or is that fanciful?

Subject: RE: Indian Gypsy singing
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 04 Jun 20 - 10:43 PM

Jack,
My very speculative guess would be that most people are not used to seeing female qawwals -- which is accurate because there *are* very few. They are, however, used to seeing qawwali performed by males in the archetype of the world famous figure of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. At the same time, while they may know male flamenco singers, MAYBE the most salient global image of a Spanish flamenco singer is female (?). Also, the dress/grooming/ sartorial presentation of the lead Nooran Sister in this clip (though not in all their clips) is a bit more, I dunno, "tousled" somehow... a bit less typical than the stereotypically Puritanical visual presentation of a lot of women Indian singers on stage. This may give them a more "free spirited gypsy" look. Anyway, this is just all fun speculation :)

The performance contains a medley of stuff. I don't know the Sufi poets (e.g. Bulleh Shah, Ghulam Farid) well enough to give author to all the poetry. But they are devotional lyrics.

One twist I noticed is that towards the end (35:44) they sing "Main Teri tu Mera" by the 1950s (starting era) Punjabi "folk" singer and recording artist, Lal Chand Yamla Jatt. (Lal Chand can be considered a "folk" singer much like many to receive that label in the English speaking world at the same time, who created music with a "folk" aesthetic yet were creating new compositions and being stage performance artists.) The twist here is that Lal Chand's song is not Sufi at all in the literal sense. It appears as a secular love song. However, Sufi poetry so often takes the form of love songs that are meant to be interpreted on two levels, the second (perhaps "true") level is that of a devotee's love of the Divine. Almost always, the subject voice is female (regardless of the gender of the singer) and addresses a male lover (metaphorically, the husband, the Lord = God). So in this context, Lal Chand's song (which is an absolute classic of modern Punjabi music) is being re-contextualized as a Sufi sentiment.

With apologies to all if my notes come off at all as patronizing to some readers. I offer them this way on the assumption that some readers of this thread may not know about this stuff, while acknowledging that others already do know it well.

Here's a recording of Lal Chand's son singing the song, which I recorded in 2005:
https://youtu.be/a745sAQ5eU0

Subject: RE: Indian Gypsy singing
From: keberoxu
Date: 07 Jun 20 - 07:40 PM

The 'Gipsy Kings,'
who came to the south of France
by way of Catalonia
(and whose speech has a considerable amount of Catalan in it),
refer to themselves as 'les Indiens.'

Guest RA,
retired professor Dr. Ian Hancock,
formerly at UT-Austin
and a linguistics specialist (that's the subject of his doctorate),
would say 'yes' to your question about Kali,
however that is just his opinion.
Certainly, if it isn't 'la sainte Sara,'
there is often a 'black Madonna' somewhere in European culture
who becomes a focus of worship.