**1. Introduction**

*"Munde bhangra paunde te kudian giddha paawan* [Boys dance to the steps of bhangra and girls to those of giddha]," Sukhbir's chartbusting bhangra song of the 1990s, provides a glimpse into the segregated space of Punjabi dance with its generic gendered boundaries (Sukhbir 1996). Originating as a Punjabi male dance, bhangra, reinvented as a genre of music in the 1980s, reiterated religious, gender, and caste hierarchies at the discursive as well as the performative level. If their borrowing of folk formulaic composition made Bhangra texts inherit patriarchal Punjabi/Jat/Sikh gender and caste hierarchies, the dominance of male producers in the space of bhangra production, if not of consumption, marked it as an unmistakably masculine space. Although the strong feminine presence of trailblazing female DJs like Rani Kaur alias Radical Sista in bhangra parties in the 1990s challenged the gender division in Punjabi cultural production, it was the appearance of Taran Kaur Dhillon alias Hard Kaur on the bhangra rap scene nearly a decade and a half later that constituted the first serious questioning of male monopolist control over the production of Punjabi music. The tone of amused dismissal with which her arrival was grudgingly acknowledged by male bhangra legends such as Malkit Singh: "*Oh kudi jedi rap-shap kardi ai* [Oh, that girl who does rap-shap]" (Kaur 2006, personal communication) reflects the masculine paternalism underpinning the field of bhangra production. Although a number of talented female Punjabi musicians have made a mark on the bhangra and popular music sphere in the last decade or so1, Punjabi sonic production continues to be dominated by male, Jat, Sikh singers

<sup>1</sup> Among these contemporary rising stars, one may include Mona Singh, Sazia Judge, Seetal Kaur, and Sarika Gill in Britain and Jasmine Sandlas, Kanika Kapoor, Sunanda Sharma, Nimrat Khaira, Neha Kakkar, and Miss Pooja in India. Talented singers like Jaspinder Narula, Satwinder Bitti, and Rani Randeep appear to have been reduced to singing other genres after the token recognition they received in the first decade of the 21st century.

and music producers. This paper will examine female bhangra producers' invasion of the hegemonic male, Sikh, Jat space of bhangra music to argue that these female musicians interrogate bhangra's generic sexism as well as the gendered segregation of Punjabi dance to appropriate dance as a means of female empowerment. The essay begins by tracing how traditional bhangra texts and remixes have constructed Punjabi/Jat/Sikh masculinity and femininity and bhangra. It traces the articulation of bhangra, which was not an exclusively Sikh music, to the Jat Sikh body and appropriated in the construction of a post-independence Sikh ethnocultural identity. It then shows how the Punjabi/Jat/Sikh customs and traditions of veiling, segregation, family honor, sexual "purity", and so on have been carried over in these texts through their fetishizing the female as beloved, whore, or mother. The essay will proceed by examining female performers' re-reading of the texts that enables them to challenge the hypermasculinist, sexist, and misogynist lyrics of bhangra music by focusing on the music videos of bhangra rapper Hard Kaur.

#### **2. Gendered Space of Punjabi Dance**

In addition to region, sect, instruments, rhythm, and movement, gender forms a crucial component in differentiating Punjabi dance genres from one another (Chandan 1987; Nahar 1988). Gender is the primary category along which Punjabi dance genres have been classified followed by those of region and religion. While *bhangra*, *jhummar*, *luddi*, *dhamal*, *julli,* and *dhankara*/*gatka* are defined as male dance genres, *giddha*, *sammi*, *kikli*, *teeyan,* and *jaggo* are considered appropriate for performance by females. Each dance genre, believed to have originated in a particular region in the *doabs* or interfluves of the five rivers of Punjab, is associated with beliefs, ritual practices, and festivals of different ethnic and sectarian groups (Schreffler 2013, p. 389). Unlike *julli* that is traditionally associated with *pirs* and performed in a sitting position at the *khanqahs* of Sufi saints, *dhankara* or *gatka* is a Sikh martial dance performed with swords or wooden sticks. The gender divide is equally visible in the gendered dance movements with male genres characterized by more robust, energetic, and vigorous movements requiring extraordinary stamina and strength in contrast to the gentle, swaying, graceful movements of female genres suited to the female body in which *malwai giddha*, a male genre with gentle, swaying movements originating in West Punjab, constitutes the sole exception. Additionally, the instruments accompanying each genre accentuate the gender divide through instruments requiring more strength such as the *dhol* attached to male genres and smaller instruments such as *dholki* to female ones. Finally, the stock themes of the lyrics of the genres are split along the masculine (alcohol, women, desire, hedonism, war, bravery) and feminine (longing, devotion, complaint, affection) grid.

Bhangra's movements have been alternatively traced back to martial or agricultural activities of warriors and peasants who were traditionally constituted as male and its vigorous beats (Randhawa 1954, p. 199) are injected with the *veer rasa*, the signature mood of the male warrior. Whether bhangra existed prior to the partition of Punjab or was a new dance invented through the amalgamation of a variety of Punjabi performance genres or not (Schreffler 2013, p. 395), its gendered boundaries remained unaltered through its many transformations. The dance performed by students of Mohindra College Patiala in the 1950s that formed the template for what came to be known as bhangra was simply presented as 'Men's Punjabi dance' (Schreffler 2013, p. 396). The eligibility criteria about height and chest size used by Bhana Ram, the hereditary dhol player from the *baazigar*<sup>2</sup> community who trained the team that included a number of Jat Sikh dancers (Pande 1999), in the selection of dancers unambiguously produced it as a martial male dance (Bai 2006, personal communication). Bhana Ram's inclusion of the robust, vigorous movements, leaps, and jumps from various male genres demanding physical strength, stamina, and energy to the exclusion of the gentle, swaying, graceful moves of the *malwai giddha* emphasized its strongly masculinist orientation. Additionally, the all-male composition

<sup>2</sup> *Baazigar* is a community of multi-source nomads found in Punjab who were also entertainers and performed acrobatics. Many of them were forced to migrate from west Punjab to east Punjab after the partition of Punjab in 1947.

of the same group of dancers who came to be known as the PEPSU team and performed at several official events over the following years naturalized its masculinist credentials. The raw energy and virility exuded by the team performing at the first Republic Day Parade in 1954 was summed up by the Hindi film actor Nargis in her exclamation, "*Pehli bar mardon ko mardon jaise nachte dekha* [I saw men performing as men for the first time], which reflected the gendered etiquette that has conventionally defined Indian dance (TNS 2003).

A co ffee table description of Punjabi dance by eminent dancer Ashish Mohan Khokar reveals the extent to which the emblematic masculinity of bhangra has been assimilated by practitioners of the dance,

The dances of Punjab are earthy and robust, just like its people. The land of five rivers ... Punjab has given to India a race [sic] that is daring and noble. The Punjabis symbolize freedom of spirit and daredevilry. They regard dancing as their birth right, and their dances reflect this attitude of supreme confidence and conviviality. The people are capable of strenuous work, ye<sup>t</sup> nothing seems to sap them of their infectious zest for life. They do nothing by halves. So they launch into their dances with swaggering gusto and overflowing energy. Bhangra gives this Indian state its very identity. Performed by men, this folk style has jumps, leaps, swirls, skips and hops—just about any physical feat that a virile son-of-the-soil can attempt. It is punctuated by a lot of acrobatics, meant to showcase daredevilry. Clapping, snapping of the fingers, and a recitation of boli [witty couplets] are its specialities. ... Gidda [sic] is the feminine riposte to Bhangra, no less colourful or vigorous. (Khokar 2003, pp. 19–20)

The newly invented bhangra's foray into Hindi cinema through its attracting the attention of several Hindi film actors and directors is marked by twin transformations that impacted the traditional gendered segregated space of Punjabi dance. The first was the transformation of bhangra into a couple dance with female dancers joining the male dancers of the PEPSU team with their feminine steps and movements forming a perfect alterity to the male. The second was the well-known Hindi film actor dancer Vijayantimala's integrating bhangra machismo, including *bolis*, 3 in her dance composition after having watched it at the Republic Day Parade (Schre ffler 2013, p. 397). If the insertion of female dancers in the first fissured the all-male space of traditional bhangra, the rendering of its masculine movements by a trained female dancer struck at its performative boundaries. It is the second, Vijayantimala's interrogation of bhangra's mapping on the male body through her deft execution of its masculinist moves in the song "*Tum sang preet ladai*" in the film *New Delhi* (Mangeshkar 1956), which inaugurated the feminine questioning of bhangra's paradigmatic masculinity that has been carried over by contemporary female bhangra musicians.<sup>4</sup>

#### **3. Lyrical Machismo**

In addition to its performative space, beats, and movements, bhangra's discursive space reflects a strong sexism and casteism through its lyrics that glorify male valor, courage, resilience, and reify women as the objects of male adoration or desire.<sup>5</sup> Traditionally performed to bolis largely consisting of nonsense lyrics (Randhawa 1954, p. 199) whose themes ranged from celebrations to patriotism,

<sup>3</sup> Bolis are call and response couplets that were traditionally sung by women but also by men in *malwai giddha*. Bolis have a uniform rhythm and their appeal lies in the inclusion of a meaningless rhyme. In bhangra, they were used to provide a breath pause in the vigorous, high-energy dance with either the *dholi* [*dhol* player] or one of the dancers singing a call with a formulaic couplet. The rest of the dancers would respond by naming an object and the lead singer would improvise a couplet to rhyme with the object inviting the rest to join in.

<sup>4</sup> Gabbah Shareef Bhalwan introduces another twist to Vijayantimala's borrowing from the PEPSU team's dance by observing that the team, probably inspired by the men's *giddha* of the local Malwa area (where they lived) did a set of *boliyan* that seemed like the malwa styles, which suggests that "bhangra" included some "giddha-like stuff" too (Bhalwan 2002).

<sup>5</sup> Gayatri Gopinath, in her examination of bhangra as a diasporic genre, argues that "bhangra as a multivalenced text resists being read as purely patriarchal or sexist, ye<sup>t</sup> it remains possible to identify certain dominant notions of gender and sexuality that surface in much of the music" (Gopinath 1995, p. 304). Through examining the music video of Bally Sagoo's '*Mera*

social issues, and love, the textual component of bhangra gradually increased with nonsense formulaic improvised composition replaced by individual lyrics and poetry (Gera Roy 2010, pp. 203–4; Schre ffler 2013, pp. 397–98). With the increase in the proportion of the lyrical content and individual composition, certain themes and motifs that often built on traditional formulae became attached to bhangra dance. The imagined subject of these lyrics is a Jat male whose patriarchal gaze either completely elides female presence or allows room for her only as an extension of the self. The lyrics that include themes like bravery, courage and risk-taking, patriotism, family, friendship, love, women, and hedonism uphold traditional patriarchal values and have been appropriated in the construction of new patriarchal structures. Through its turning to Punjabi folksong formulae or cannibalizing folk lyrics, contemporary bhangra inherits the sexist, casteist legacy of these songs in which traditional Punjabi cultural values have been enshrined.

An analysis of the song lyrics of legendary Punjabi folksingers reveals the extent to which they have been shaped by the Punjabi patriarchal ethos and socially sanctioned behavior. The Punjabi folksong defines typical male Jat behavior and pursuits that have become normalized as quintessential Jat attributes. These include indulging in carnal pleasures including eating, drinking, chasing women, making merry with friends that coexist with strong family values, patriotism, and piety. If folk legend Hazara Singh Ramta's satirical take on the Jat's proverbial love for drinking in "*Ramte peeni chadd diti hai* [Ramta has given up drinking] (Ramta 2015b)" indirectly celebrates his inability to resist alcohol as epitomizing Jat machismo, "Charhi jawani Ramte nu [Old man Ramta relives his youth] (Ramta 2015a)" adopts a tolerant stance towards the lusty elderly Jat's virility and "*Ramte da dusra viyah* [Ramta's second marriage] (Ramta 2004) justifies polygamy as a reaction to the Jat custom of early arranged marriages.

The Jat's love for alcohol is equated with that for women in another legendary folksinger Lal Chand Yamla Jatt's imagination where the comparison of a young woman with a bottle of whiskey who the Jat can pull out of his heart and have a swig from exhibits the collapse of the twin objects of the Jat's adoration and endorses the complete reification of the woman

*Whiskey di botal wargi main ik kudi fasa layi ae*

*Mere dil da bojha khali si ohde vich pa layi ae*

*Jad jee kardae main datt kholke haarha la laina*

I have been able to catch a young woman who is like a bottle of whiskey

girl

I have put her away in my heart that was free of all baggage

Whenever I feel like I uncork it and take a swig. (Yamla Jatt 2011, "*Whiskey di Botal Wargi*")

In formulaic folk lyrics, the beloved's beauty has an intoxicating e ffect on the Jat as in Asa Singh Mastana's popular song,

*Mele nu chal mere naal kurhe Ho, ho Tere nain jo peeti bhang kurhe Tere nain jo peeti bhang kurhe Te waang tamaater rang kurhe Koi nazar na tenu laa deve Jaadu na akh da paa deve* Come along with me to the fair,

*laung gawacha'*, she shows that the way "bhangra most clearly reconsolidates hegemonic patriarchal constructions is in its deployment of gender and sexuality" (Gopinath 1995, p. 316).

Ho ho ho Your dopey eyes, girl Your dopey eyes, girl And tomato red complexion, girl Hope none casts an evil eye on you And cast a spell on you (Mastana 1999b, "*Mele nu Chal Mere Naal Kurhe*")

Traditional folksong's gastronomic imagery has been standardized in bhangra songs to describe female beauty as an aphrodisiac that whets the male appetite,

*Ni mitran di loon di dali Ni tun mishri borobar jaani ni Sajna di gadvi da Mitha sarbat warga paani ni* You are like my lump of salt but are known as a cube of candy Like the water as sweet as sherbet in my ewer. (Dhuri 2009, "*Mitran di Loon di Dali*")

Alternatively, the male Jat fetishizes the beloved through fixing his gaze either on the female body or an object worn by the beloved,

*Kali teri gut te paranda tera laal ni Kali teri gut te paranda tera laal ni Roop deeye raniye paraande nu sambhaal ni Ho* ... ... *.. Kanna vich bunde tere roop de shingar ni Mithe tere bol moohon bol ik vaar ni Pailan paandi e ni teri moran jehi chaal ni* Your braid is black and the *paranda* is red Oh, Beauty Queen, mind your *paranda* Your dangling earrings adorn your beauty Your speech is sweet, say something You wear anklets, you have a peacock's gait (Mastana 1999a, "*Kali teri Gut*")

Paralleling pleasure-seeking as an important rite of passage in the Jat's journey is the Jat's recognition that his true calling lies in serving his family, particularly his parents,

*Ma piyo naalon duniya utte na koi hor sakiri Aenan di seva te wadi nahin koi hor fakiri* There is no one in the world More near and dear than one's parents Nor is there any pious deed Greater than serving them. (Yamla Jatt 2006, "Maa diyan Asisan")

The hypermasculinist Jat's devotion to his mother makes him a devoted son and a complete Mama's boy. Since the feminine is fetishized either as an object of male desire or affection in the Jat's imaginary, a woman who poses a threat to patriarchal authority must be disciplined through prescriptive labelling.

It is the folksong that performs the function of the construction of the idealized female of the Jat's imagination through its prescriptive overtones. "*Ik ran asli and ik ran nakli*" polarizes the authentic and inauthentic female/wife through the degree to which she guards family honor and makes sacrifices for the sake of her husband and his family,

*Ik ran asli te ik ran nakli Solah baat utaraan Asli chundi kakh liyave Nakli kare baharaan Asli suchhe khandan chon neki niyat akhvave Andar baithi bhuki pyasi apni laaj bachave Nakli ai khudgarj mijaji Jide yaar hazaraan* The real wife and the fake one What I am saying is completely true The real one picks and fetches the fodder The fake one whiles away her time The real one is known for being good-natured in the entire family She remains inside hungry or thirsty shielding her family's honour The fake one has a selfish disposition And thousands of male friends. (Yamla Jatt n.d., "*Ik Ran Asli*")

Jat masculinity may be constructed as strong, fearless, aggressive, arrogan<sup>t</sup> and amorous as an alterity to weak, helpless, submissive, self-abnegating femininity. The paradoxical sexualization and eroticization of female bodies in folksongs that is accompanied with the strict regulation of female sexuality through prescriptive behavior replicates the binary of the mother and the whore through which patriarchy has traditionally represented women. Although the sexualized body of the object of the Jat's desire that is used to accentuate Jat virility is contrasted with the apotheosized figures of the beloved and the mother, neither the whore, nor the beloved or the mother, can escape being fetishized.

#### **4. Bhangra and Sikhism**

Locating the making of modern Sikh kirtan to the Singh Sabha reformation, Bob van der Linden argues that "music was certainly part of the Singh Sabha redefinition of the Sikh self (van der Linden 2008, p. 2)." However, unlike julli that is associated with Sufi pirs and gatka with Sikh practices, bhangra, which emerged as a rural Punjabi dance, particularly in West Punjab, by the 19th century and came to be associated with the annual Baisakhi festival, was not an official Sikh tradition (Schreffler 2013, pp. 389–90). As van der Linden points out, Punjabi popular culture was considered "morally repulsive" by the Singh Sabha who opposed female dancing, censored the sexual content that originally was part of Punjabi qissas, bhajans, and ghazals, and were highly critical of bhangra (van der Linden 2008, p. 10). However, bhangra has become synonymous with Sikh culture in the popular imagination through its appropriation in the construction of a transnational Jat Sikh identity, which is a cause of grea<sup>t</sup> concern for both Sikh religious organizations and dance scholars. Reversing East Punjab Jat Sikhs's dismissal of dancing and singing as an effeminate vocation traditionally assigned

to derided lower caste Muslims before partition (Brard 2007, p. 312), the self-conscious mapping of Sikhism on bhangra dance and music has made it a signifier of Jat Sikh subjectivity.

Rajinder Dudrah, Nicola Mooney, and Harjant Gill have thrown important light on the connection between bhangra's agrarian origins and "the rural imaginary" that defines Jat Sikhs. Mooney defines Jat Sikhs as "a caste of farmers and landlords with significant regional status" and views them as embodying "the autochthonous Punjabi identity" despite their leading urban and transnational lives. She ascribes Jat Sikhs' symbolic association with the region to their "landed attachments to the region, whether expressed in actively agricultural practices, emotive rural nostalgias, or religiously nationalist Khalistani aspirations (Mooney 2008)." Maintaining that "the jat [sic], and his female counterpart the jati [sic], are portrayed through respectively stereotypical notions of male strength articulated with farming skills and youthful prowess and a feminine beauty that is 'sharp' in looks and allegedly unique to this caste", Dudrah notes the privileging of the Jat subject in bhangra (Dudrah 2002, p. 376). Mooney avers that "Bhangra is thus understood, practiced and represented as a primordially Jat phenomenon, related to both language and beat, as well as to the organic embodiment of Jat identity in its performance (Mooney 2008)." Gill's emphasis is on bhangra's articulation of a certain kind of masculinity or hypermasculinity that is both mapped on the Jat Sikh body and appropriated by the caste in its self-constitution (Gill 2012). Mooney demonstrates that bhangra "privileges a Jat-centric hierarchy of caste, gender and ethnicity" (Mooney 2013, p. 279) and explores "how Jat Sikhs, or specifically Jat masculinity, exercise particular dominance in bhangra themes, performances and discourses (Mooney 2013, p. 280)."

Yet, bhangra's translation of 'the rural imaginary' of the Jats does not quite explain its articulation to Sikhism or Sikh identity (Mooney 2011). A careful analysis of bhangra texts reveals that although the Jat caste can be found across religious boundaries and bhangra is reported to have been performed by the Jats (Schre ffler 2013, p. 390), the dance is increasingly used for the articulation of specifically Jat Sikh masculinities. The most telling cue about the collapse of the Jat with the Sikh is the frequent substitution of the term Jat in the song lyrics with Singh or Sardar. In the Bhangra vocabulary, the frequency of the terms Jat, Singh, and Sardar is matched with the frequency of their interchangeability. A random sampling of the songs of some of the best-known Punjabi singers reveals that they constitute eulogies to the Jat. From Kuldip Manak's "*Jat ho giya sharaabi peeke poori vodka [*the Jatt go<sup>t</sup> drunk having gulped down a full bottle of vodka] (Manak 1984)" and "*Ni putt jattan da halh wohnda vatte tadke da* [Oh, the son of Jats begins ploughing at the crack of dawn] (Manak 1979)" to Pammi Bai's "*Do cheeza jatt mangda, daaru ghar di bandook baran bor di* [The Jat asks for only two things, country liquor and a 12 barrel gun]"(Bai 2002) and "*Jatt jattan da te bholu narayan da bai gallan sachian kare* [The Jat of Jats might be a simpleton but tells the truth]" (Bai and Tharika Wala 2003), Surjit Bindrakhia's "*Ni toon jatt di pasand, jatt ne vihauni hai* [Oh, you are the choice of the Jat, the Jat wants to marry you (Bindrakhia 2011) or Jazzy B's "*Kehra jamm piya soorma jehra jatt di charat nu roke* [Which champion is born who can dare to stop the Jat's rise?]" (Jazzy B 2006), the Jat is praised in hyperbolic terms. Out of the songs recorded between 2014 and 2019, an overwhelming number of titles include the term Jat.

The Jat is further produced as Sikh rather than Hindu or Muslim through his sporting specifically Sikh bodily signifiers and symbolic markers such as the sword, the *khanda*, the *kada,* and the *dastaar*.

*Dushman v hove bhave dastaar kade ne lahi de*

*je khud chahiye satkar, ta sabh di ijjat karni chahidi*

Give respect to one and all, if you wish to be respected!

Never take o ff the turban, even when confronted by an enemy! (Sartaaj 2011, "*Dastaar*")

Additionally, allusions to Sikh religious icons and concepts particularly to the Sikh gurus in bhangra songs reveal the appropriation of bhangra music and dance in the consolidation of Jat Sikh or even Sikh identities. Sartaj's invocation of the figure of the *sant sipahi* in "*Dastaar*" is an unambiguous allusion to the Sikh guru Gobind Singh,

*Jihna bacheya izzatan te jo sabh kujh tetho vaar gaye Maaf jamir ne karna nai je oh vi dilon visaar gaye Hai mehangi ai kurbani* ... *Mehangi ai kurbani bhul na jaiyo sant sapahiye de* The one who saved your honour and sacrificed his everything for you Your conscience won't forgive you if you were to forget him too. Priceless is the sacrifice of the Saint Soldier, don't you forget his sacrifice. (Sartaaj 2011, "*Dastaar*")

Instead of perceiving material success and consumerist ethics as incompatible with deep piety, the Singhs' success in the material realm reflected in their display of conspicuous consumption is attributed to the blessings of the Waheguru in Jazzy B's song "*Singhan diya Gaddian*".

*Satgur diyan mehran ne Singhan diyan gadiyan rehn sada ladhiyan Chap de note poora kam loot te mouja laggiyan Babbe diyan meheran ne Singhan diyan gadiyan rehn sadah ladhiyan.* The Almighty's blessings are with us! Let the trucks of the Singhs always be laden Let them mint money, bag all the jobs and enjoy life BabaGuruNanak'sblessings!(JazzyB2014,"*SinghandiyaGaddian*")
