Africa

Indians and South Asian music have long histories on the African continent. Both the very poor and the very rich brought their music and culture along with their hopes and aspirations. Around 1860 sugar entrepreneurs were studying Indentured Labour- effectively contractual slavery - in Mauritius. They imported it to Durban, along with an estimated 150,000 Indian labourers. Righteous South Africans protested the harshness of the Indenture contracts, but Indian workers were escaping a rural homeland blighted by colonial oppression, caste prejudice and princely politics. Within the decade “Passenger Indians” followed – teachers, traders and fortune hunters. Cultural tensions against Indians transformed into legal restrictions, until in the 1890s Mohandas Gandhi's activism against indenture exploitation would change the world. Beyond the South, the last Imperial generation of Indians was arriving in Africa as bookkeepers and engineers. They supported the Colonial administration and public works development in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia. After the post war collapse of the British Empire, many Indian businessmen in Africa found themselves working for the new multinational interests. African nationhood and self government in the 1960s would bring new tensions. Some newly independent African nations like Malawi introduced affirmative action policies to benefit their indigenous peoples. These policies made it difficult for Indians to hold land or office. Other regimes, as in Uganda, scapegoated the Indian bourgeoisie and exiled thousands of South Asian families. Many would settle in Britain; their   aspirations and experiences would shape and extend the British Bhangra sound that had taken root Birmingham and other UK cities a decade earlier. Bhangra is the sound of the harvest, of a whole village working together in the heat of the day. This is the same experience celebrated in many African communities; tradition transmitted through music and movement. Today, Swahili Taraab has absorbed Bhangra beats along with Hindi film music. The sound of the dhol resonates through modern urban Africa, where traditional instruments find contemporary, global audiences . In a continent of new hybrid sounds like Kwaito, Bhangra represents a model for successful non European dance musics.

 

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