Synopsis:
From the mid-nineteenth century Indian
labourers arrived in the Caribbean on boats, bringing
a few belongings and their music – the beginnings
of a remarkable cultural practice. More than 150
years later musician Remo Fernandes travels to
the Islands to explore potential collaborations
and create new work. Jahaji Music: India in
the Caribbean is a record of a difficult,
if unusual and complex, musical journey. We walk
around Trenchtown with Bob Marley's teacher and
rastafari philosopher Mortimo Planno; accompany
calypso and soca singer Rikki Jai to Skinner Park;
chat with visual artist Chris Cozier in the Savannah;
follow Dancehall Queen Stacey to Weddy Weddy
Wednesday; groove to Lady Saw's lyrics; record
a new song with Denise Saucy Wow Belfon and are
guests at an East Indian Hindu wedding. Endeavouring,
through it all, to weave a story of memory, identity
and creativity. Jahaji Music is an attempt
to make meaning of aspects of contemporary culture
in Trinidad and Jamaica, even as it is a witness
to the nature and possibilities of artistic collaboration.
“Would you want to document an interesting
journey?”
I have never separated ‘documentation’
from my films, I see one as an extension of the
other. But this time I made a distinction. I would
love to make a film about this journey, I answered.
What was this journey? Tejaswini Niranjana had
completed the manuscript of her book Mobilizing
India : Women, Music and Migration between India
and Trinidad, a culmination of a more than
a decade long research in the Caribbean. She was
keen on extending her academic work into another
realm, she wanted to initiate “a musical
adventure inspired by her research”. Listening
to Remo Fernandes’ music she felt she heard
strains of the Trinidadian Calypso. Intrigued,
she made contact with him and many exchanges later
she asked him if he might be interested in collaborations
with Caribbean musicians. He responded with enthusiasm.
Tejaswini saw this project as “arising directly
from my work on popular music in Trinidad. I argue
that much of the interaction between musics of
the world is mediated by metropolitan capitals…London,
Paris, New York…Here is an attempt to take
south-south collaboration into the realm of musical
composition and performance.”
This was the journey Tejaswini asked me to document:
Remo’s encounter with the music and musicians
of Jamaica and Trinidad. But this journey had
to resonate, I felt, with other journeys - of
African slaves and Indian indentured labourers
being shipped to Jamaica and Trinidad to work
on the colonial sugar plantations in the mid nineteenth
century. The world was on the move.
 Around
the time Tejaswini approached me I came across
a map. Entire peoples were being ferried across
the seas to alien lands. The world map was criss-crossed
with the routes of these ships. Now I was sure
I wanted to make a film. Not a historical film
on the journeys from the past. Not an ethnographic
film on the music of Jamaica and Trinidad. Not
a film on Remo’s journey and encounter with
Caribbean music. It would be a road film. A travelogue
through music. And the music held a multitude
of stories. Each genre of music told a different
tale – Reggae, Dancehall, Calypso, Chutney,
Soca, Chutney Soca. And the possibility of making
new music with Remo. Would musical conversations,
across the globe, be possible today?
I have never pressed the record button on the
camera when I visit a place for the first time.
I need to soak up a place, form a relationship
with people, only then do I begin to think about
what film I am making and why. But this time it
was going to be different. All I knew about the
Caribbean before the shoot was through books,
photographs and of course loads of music. We had
no choice other than to begin shooting from the
day we landed. In every way this was turning out
to be a film that would force me into new territory.
We were in Jamaica for a week and Trinidad for
three weeks.
Jamaica remains a blur. There are concerts and
events through the night, every night in Kingston.
Music is everywhere. And music talks of the identity
of being black, sexuality, violence, guns, of
400 years of slavery, of oppression, of the rastafari
way of life. And above the music the DJ speaks
- toasting. It's layers and layers of
music and political commentary. Events are not
just big concerts - its also events organized
at the local community square, often in depressed
areas. Dozens of speakers - boom boxes as they
are called - are stacked, one on top of the other.
And as Stacey, a dancehall queen we interviewed
says, dancehall change ya. Women transform –
wigs, make up, clothes – they are no more
higglers (vendors), dressmakers, hair dressers.
Their sexuality is in your face – played
out for the ubiquitous cameraman. As a spectator
you are transfixed – not sure if you are
a voyeur. That tension carried on, through the
shoot and into the edit.
A visit to one of the cutting edge studios –
Grafton Studios - resulted in an exciting jamming
session with Remo. But collaborations were few
and far between. Just when we began grappling
with the dynamics of the music industry there,
it was time to leave. I realized that I carried
hours of footage that was already far more fractured
and disparate than I had imagined. Armed with
this anxiety we entered Trinidad.
Trinidad presents an air of familiarity –
shop boards read 'Rampersad Books', you come across
Calcutta street, the road map is marked by names
like Barrackpore and Fyzabad. But that familiarity
is skewed, without any ambiguity, because we came
through Jamaica. To try and trace the story of
the India diaspora through nostalgia for a lost
India is specious and problem ridden. I had to
look for the story of the Indian in the Caribbean
through the prism of the African identity and
culture. At a Hindu wedding function we were lulled
into the known up until the time the women began
dancing. Bhojpuri became an alien tongue as the
women wined and moved their pelvis. Our only reference
to this dancing was the women in dancehall we
had seen in Jamaica.
 The
sound of Jamaican dancehall carries through into
Rapso, a contemporary genre in Trinidad.
The politics is as stated and in your face as
it is in Jamaica. This is far removed from Calypso
that uses irony, humour, satire. As our maxi taxi
driver said, "when the Africans were
slaves they could not tell the master to his face
if he had bad habit".
With Remo in the frame we began our encounters
with the music and the musicians - Calypso legends:
the Mighty Sparrow, David Rudder, Calypso Rose;
Rapso stars: Ataklan and Three Canal; Soca sensation
Denise Saucy Wow Belfon; Chutney Soca
stars: Riki Jai and Drupatee Ramgoonai. Remo attempted
musical conversations, collaborations. Denise
Belfon’s hit song in the carnival that year
was I am lookin’ for an Indian Man.
Remo responded I am the Indian man…from
India.
As a filmmaker I have a strong impulse towards
the ethnographic. I try to build a narrative out
of moments as they happen in front of me - I try
and erase my presence and watch, record. In this
film, Remo’s presence, The Indian man from
India, upturned my film language. He was a character
we had scripted into the scene, he did not belong,
neither did we – there was no meaning in
watching, recording. The tensions of first meetings,
the uncertainties that journeys hold in store
for the traveler, the expectations and disappointments,
all this and more was what I was filming.
81 hours of footage in our baggage and we came
home.
Two years, one baby and seven reject letters
later I began editing the footage, alone. I had
no funds to work with an editor, and I would not
be able to ‘move on’ to any other
project until this was done. So the edit began.
Two years later the material looked more disparate,
all the more scattered. A mass communication student
who joined me as an intern got hooked on to the
material and stayed on until the end of the film,
helping me carve some meaning. We cut down all
the material into sequences- little films in themselves-
around people, places, concerts, events. Months
later we had a cut- four and a half hours in length.
It was tedious, to put it mildly.I went back to
the original impetus to the film- a road film,
a travelogue. An attempt at a single narrative,
a fully explained context was flawed. And this
was music. Months later, with sharp criticism
and clear suggestions from dear friends, I had
a film 112 minutes in length.
And then we went in for sound mixing. Any notion
of ‘documentation’ that I held dear
was abandoned. Mohandas ‘composed’
the sound track – wiper of a car, a gun
shot , the whoosh of fire. He took on Ramani’s
images and Suresh’s sync sound and added
another layer to the structure I had worked on.
Paresh took the sharpness out of the criticism
and brought it into the structure – a song
left hanging in mid sentence – I have barely
recovered from that- and it is my favourite moment
in the film.
The journey through this film has been both tough
and enriching, definitely far more perilous than
even my first film. (first films always being
perilous)
Surabhi Sharma is an alumnus of the Film
and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune
with specialization in Film Direction, 1998. Her
earlier films include: Jari Mari: Of Cloth
and Other Stories (2001), Aamakaar -
The Turtlepeople (2003) and Above the
Din of Sewing Machines (2004).
|
