The Trajectories of Transplants: Singing Alhā, Birhā, and the Rāmāyan in the Indic Caribbean

Indo-Caribbean music culture includes a stratum of traditional genres derived from North India’s Bhojpuri region. This article discusses three such genres: Alhā-singing, an archaic form of birhā, and an antiphonal style of singing the Tulsidas Rāmcharitmānas. Despite the lack of supportive contact with the Bhojpuri region after 1917, these genres flourished until the 1960s, after which the decline of Bhojpuri as a spoken language in Trinidad and Guyana, together with the impact of modernity in general, undermined their vitality. A comparative perspective with North Indian counterparts reveals illuminating parallels and contrasts.