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Reviewed by:
  • From Africa to India: Music of the Sidis and the Indian Ocean Diaspora
  • Amelia Maciszewski (bio)
From Africa to India: Music of the Sidis and the Indian Ocean Diaspora, by Amy Catlin-Jairazbhoy (narrator), in close collaboration with Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy. Van Nuys, CA: Apsara Media, 2003. 74-minute videotape. ISBN 1-880519-26-7.$90.00.

This ethnographic video presents groundbreaking information about the music and dance of the Sidis, a heretofore virtually unresearched community in the western and southwestern Indian states of Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Karnataka. The Sidis trace their ancestry to migrations from East Africa, Abyssinia (Ethiopia), and Madagascar over perhaps millennia, with many permanent settlements founded in the seventeenth century along the perimeter of the Indian Ocean. An important settlement among these is Janjira Fort, on an island off the southern coast of Bombay. Janjira Fort was completed in 1701 and remained a princely state until 1850. There and in other princely states in the region, Sidis played a powerful role as royal warriors, administrators, and rulers during the late Mughal period. Most importantly for this study, the Sidis' ritual music, dance, and accompanying instruments reflect a remarkable array of African retentions. [End Page 132]

Sidis derive their name from the Arabic and Abyssinian (modern-day Ethiopian) honorific titles, syed and habshi, respectively. They venerate Malik Ambar, a diplomat and administrator who came from present-day Ethiopia to India in the seventeenth century. After he arrived in India, Ambar raised a formidable army and became very powerful in the western Indian region of Ahmadnagar. Over the centuries, the elites of the community, known as the Royal Sidis, have almost completely assimilated into upper-class Muslim society. Others have continued to conduct the gem trade up to the present but are threatened with a depletion of resources in the gemstone market. The least-privileged Sidis have faced social marginalization and, in many cases, abject poverty in the late twentieth century. Many Sidi villagers in Uttar (northern) Karnataka remained unaware until fifteen years ago of their African ancestry. In several cultural centers in this impoverished region, educated members of the community use music and dance as part of an initiative of education for empowerment.

The video begins with a montage juxtaposing archival paintings that depict the powerful roles of Sidis in the Mughal courts with on-location footage of Janjira Fort. Subsequently, it surveys the music and dance of Sidi communities in Karnataka, Hyderabad, Mumbai (Bombay), and, most numerously, sites in Gujarat. Ritual events shown in the video (some of them simulated, the narrators tell us) present the musical process, called maza, or "sacred fun," connected with rites of celebration and remembrance (damal and zikr). These rites include ecstatic trance, exorcism, and "play" as part of the ritual, such as participants smashing coconut offerings on their heads, and taking part in ecstatic dance, fire-walking, and fire-eating.

Throughout their unique form of Sufi worship, Sidi women, children, and men of all ages invoke their saints, such as the Nubian merchant Bava Gor (also called Mubarak Nobi) and his sister, Mai Misri, as they dance communally to vibrant rhythms played by drummers of the community and sing devotional songs with texts which sometimes include Swahili and Bantu words. The viewer is introduced to instruments whose morphology and names reflect African origins, such as footed drums (mogarman), coconut rattles (mai misra), armpit-held drums (damal; also the name of a group dance), andmusical bows (malunga).

The filmmakers point to musical elements throughout, highlighting in particular their African characteristics: singing in thirds, call-and-response singing, hemiola, and the use of "talking drums." They point out these features as well as metric cycles and tempo curves through subtitles that interact whimsically with the music. They also introduce the musical lineage of nangaassi, [End Page 133] the leaders of ritual musicians, who sing praise to Bava Gor to the accompaniment of nangaass drums. They present footage of the charismatic elder nangaassi Kamar Sidi (d. 2000) singing both at the Gori Pir shrine (visited by Sidis of all faiths) and in "court," the local maharaja's palace that now serves as a heritage hotel.

Through this project, Catlin and Jairazbhoy...

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