Performing Bollywood Broadway: Shillong Chamber Choir as Bollywood’s Other

Abstract

This article attempts to explore the performativity that surrounds choral music in contemporary India.¹

Choral music was discovered in Western civilization and Christianity. As a starting point, it had the Gregorian reforms of the 6th century. Choir primarily refers to a vocal ensemble practising sacred music inside church settings as opposed to chorus which indicates vocal ensembles performing in secular environments. Multiple singers rendered sacred polyphony 1430 onwards. By the end of the century a standardized four-part range of three octaves or more became a feature. The vocal parts were called superius (later, soprano), altus, tenor (from its function of ‘holding’ the cantus-firmus) and bassus (Unger 2010, 2–3).

Moving beyond its religious functions, the Shillong Chamber Choir locates itself within various sounds. Hailing from Meghalaya in the north- eastern part of India, the Shillong Chamber Choir has many folksy and original compositions in languages such as Khasi, Nagamese, Assamese and Malayalam. However, what brought them national fame was the Bollywoodisation²

Bollywood refers to the South Asian film industry situated in Mumbai. The term also includes its film music and scores.

of the choir.

With its win in the reality TV Show, India’s Got Talent³

India’s Got Talent is a reality TV series on Colors television network founded by Sakib Zakir Ahmed, part of Global British Got Talent franchise.

in 2010, the Shillong Chamber Choir introduced two things to the Indian sound-scape—reproducing and inhabiting the Bollywood sound within a choral structure, and introducing to the Indian audience a medley of songs that could be termed ‘popular’, but which ultimately acquired a more eclectic framework. Medley is explored as a genre. The purpose of this article is to understand how ‘Bollywood Broadway’ is the mode through which choral renditions and more mainstream forms of entertainment are coming together.

Keywords

Shillong Chamber Choir Bollywood Broadway refrain medley choral music ethnography performativity India

Introduction

Harmony and choral groups are a timeless feature of Bollywood music. Genres were set free as early as the 1930s, when amongst many other forms, western harmony and swing jazz came to be incorporated into Bollywood by Goan arrangers and musicians (Shope 2014; Fernandes 2012; Booth 2008). How is the Shillong Chamber Choir different? I would like to introduce the idea of a ‘Bollywood Broadway’ in the performativity of the choir. Through video illustrations, live acts and personal interviews, recorded as a part of my larger ethnography, I will also look at the ‘emergent sounds and performativity’ of the Shillong Chamber Choir.

For my larger ethnography, I made two trips to Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya: once, during the month of April in 2014 and another time when I stayed there from September 2014 to January 2015. Between 2016 and 2018, I went back for shorter periods.

I will address three main questions in this article:

How does a medley of popular, classical and sacral sounds, in various intensities, bring out the elements of a choir?

Why do the Shillong Chamber Choir portray Bollywood sounds as a marker of their performativity?

Does the form of the choir with its niche sounds try to emulate a Broadway feel?

In the first section, I explain how I am using Bollywood Broadway as a concept which finds expression in the ongoing experimentations of medley. In the next section, in an attempt to understand the logic of performativity adopted by the Shillong Chamber Choir, I use Steven Feld’s concept of ‘Schizophonic mimesis’ and Deleuze’s idea of refrain and territorialisation of sound’. I also talk about the Shillong Chamber Choir and the forms of choral music associated with Shillong and its neighbouring spaces. In the final section, I try to tease out what comprises a Broadway feel. Here, the emergent sounds of Shillong Chamber Choir are discussed at length whereby I locate the process of ‘territorialisation’ of sounds. The introduction engages with the category Bollywood Broadway and builds on the theoretical registers necessary to understand its structuring.

Framing Bollywood Broadway

This concept Bollywood Broadway looks at how a few Bollywood songs get adapted to a musical live act format by a choir using the framework of a medley. In the article, ‘Repetition, Improvisation and Tradition’, Roma Chatterji (2016) uses the Deleuzian framework of repetition and time to understand how the embodied artisan becomes a machine or automation, a receptive vehicle, and at the same time responds to the continuity and events in the environment. My interaction with the choir members initiated me to their performance code, which has an imbibed idea of discipline and consistency. Their idea of expression is geared towards the production of a sound that travels from modes of a singularity (here, medley is seen as a singularity) to that of an anticipated aurality (Deleuze 1994). Deleuze’s notion of ‘refrain’ and ‘territorialisation of sound’ helps grasp as to how Bollywood sounds are the primary qualifiers to ascertain medley as a genre. The inward and exterior particles work towards a collective articulation, in this case, vocalisation. The motif that returns, acts as a qualifier. Nonetheless, its inclination towards change and further exchanges impact the idea that it symbolizes. ‘Schizophonic mimesis’ (Steven Feld 2000) becomes part of the choral⁴

Following Barnwell, whose ideas coincide with Thomas Turino’s features of Participatory music throughout the world: Choral singing is rehearsed, performances are often conducted, the sound and the use of voice tends to be more European, and the arrangements tend to be more “classical”, although in the case of gospel music there is still space for improvisation and movement in performance (Barnwell 1987 quoted in Bithell 2014, 125).

repertoire. He points towards a host of interactive and extractive practices generating traffic in the absorption and circulation of sound recordings. The latter forges an indexical relationship to the place and the people that they hold and circulate. New possibilities surface due to material and commodity conditions, leading to a new context and a re-imagined materiality. I look at this schizophonic mimesis adding to the idea of inter-textuality. Inter-textuality is an integral part of understanding the Bollywood industry as well as Broadway musicals.

Inter-textuality in Bollywood and Broadway

Indian cinema has been around for about 70 years, easily traced to the post-Second World War boom in production. Film was dominated by State policy until about 1992. The Bollywood industry of the 1990s has a different story to tell.⁵

The term ‘Bollywood’ was in all probability invented in a self-critical manner by the journal Screen in Bombay to bring out the regional essence of the Indian film industry. Presently, its usage maybe linked to Britain’s Channel 4’s ethnic programming (Rajadhyaksha 2003).

The Bollywood industry circulated through websites, cassettes, television shows, radio and so on has been gaining momentum not just in the realm of export, but within India as well. Ashish Rajadhyaksha (2003) talks of the cultural insiderism expected of a citizen in a diasporic situation and also questions how the new corporate economy concentrates on the supplementary aspects of Indian cinema, such as the film Jeans (1998) demonstrates the software Pentafour’s special effects and the movie Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani (2000) advertises Swatch watches (Rajadhyaksha 2003).

In the context of the Shillong Chamber Choir, I argue that the search for a certain cultural insiderism takes place in the realm of the national mainstream. Questions as to why a film song from the movie Jhankar Beats ‘Tu Aashiqui hai’ (you are the object of my adoration), sung by KK, set amid a Church background (2003) and the classical song ‘Lord of Hope’ from Handel’s Messiah (1741) comprise a medley in the ‘reality TV’ show⁶

Reality TV shows such as Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, Voice of India, Fame Gurukul, Indian Idol, Coke Studio and India’s Got Talent have been crucial in introducing distinct talent, appeal and physical appearance of the artist and altering ideas of intimacy and distance with an omnipresent mass media in a globalized environment (Kvetko 2008 quoted in Kvetko 2014).

reflect on circulation of Bollywood industry in current times. The Shillong Chamber Choir medley example shows how songs from two different centuries, 18th and the 21st, alongside two diverse musical genres depict synchronicity⁷

The temporal registers speak about a diachronic register: Time as sequence and synchronic—events take place simultaneously (Lévi-Strauss 1977 quoted in Chatterji 2016, 116).

in the spiritual realm. Ideas of inter-textuality and synchronicity are discussed by Veena Das (1995) while trying to understand the phenomenon of soap opera. Taking Hum Log as an example (1994), she says that the inter-textual element of the soap opera was retained due to the presence of Ashok Kumar as a discussant towards the end of the episode, a famous actor of the Hindi films, through whom characters of the film world were accessible to the audience, in a fresh role. Further, naming of the characters: Badki (the eldest), Majhli (the middle) and Chutki (the little one) established inter-textuality with folk tales.⁸

The prime time screening of the show indicated that the representation of the social values was in sync with the bureaucratic apparatus. The letters sent out by the viewers, probably coming from lower middle-class background, were at times using the tele-screen as a space to vent out the discomfort, threat and aspirations induced by family as an institution (Das 1995).

Bollywood motif becomes a marker of the Shillong Chamber Choir performativity. The medleys draw on intertextuality in the realm of different musical genres and the synchronicity of time interjected by repetition adds to this framework, albeit differently. ⁹

Drawing examples about the synchronicity of time, observable in folk theatre or sacred myth, she explains that the logic of repetition does not work with soap opera. This is because the flow of time in the order of narrative and the order of life run parallel. Also, the popularity that Hum Log enjoyed during its initial days of screening was never revived again (Das 1995).

Repetition, in this case, acquires legitimacy when the Bollywood motif presents itself. In another circumstance, to understand the vocalizing of Songak in Korea, a feature of the Church sociality, Nicholas Harkness (2015) draws on the Bakhtinian notion of ‘chronotope’ to qualify the vocalic sounds as either moral or immoral, clean or unclean and traditional or modern. He talks about an ‘ethno-national aspiration’ undergirded by spirituality. In the case of Shillong Chamber Choir, by incorporating Bollywoodised aspirations within the format of the choral rendition, they are speaking with the cosmopolitan, mainstream, social and the musical world.

Indipop arrived in 1993. Despite having distinct personalities such as Baba Sehgal and Alisha Chinai, indipop’s public life gained legitimacy only when juxtaposed to Bollywood (Kvetko 2014).¹⁰

Satellite Television for the Asian Region (STAR) in May 1991 introduced international programmes. Globalized media giants such as CNN, HBO and MTV brought news, films and music from the United States, alongside the effect of liberalisation on lifestyle. Artistes such as Bally Sagoo and Apache Indian became popular on the mainstream music charts with their ‘disco-bhangra’. They impressed upon few international music labels. Reliability on ‘chords and riffs’ instead of ragas or singular notes made way for Indipop. Musicians, producers, executives from Sony, BMG and Virgin record companies attribute it to the influence of the western rock of the 1960s and 1970s. While the founders of indipop such as Biddu, Alisha and Daler Mehndi preferred to use synthesizer because of their disco influence, for the newer artists such as Colonial Cousins, Lucky Ali, Silk Route, Euphoria and Strings, guitar and drums were more popular expressions. After it evolved as a genre, Indian instruments and rhythms came to be used to evoke a sense of ‘authenticity’ and ‘tradition’. Suited to the interiorised sensory perceptions of the Indian middle class, Indipop focused on clear, soft and deep sound of the bass. The treble sound and women’s voice at a higher register prominent in the Hindi films did not appeal to Indipop practitioners (Kvetko 2004).

Joseph Getter (2014) explains how the sound film in 1930s enabled various songs to engage with western and Indian musical elements, eventually producing a hybrid sound incorporating local, regional and international sources. Inter-textuality of different genres and Bollywood has been ongoing.¹¹

The song ‘Shakalaka Baby’ by AR Rahman, from the Tamil hit film, Mudhalvan (1999) had a Telugu version as well and was later used in the Hindi film remake titled Nayak: The Real Hero (2001). The song became a global rage after it was incorporated in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical production Bombay Dreams in the year 2002. This shift from Indian cinema to the western musical theatre with a well-known figure in the Broadway musical genre saw Rahman’s music encountering a new audience in the United States (Getter 2014).

DJ remixes rose in response to the ‘urban dance club culture’. Remixing began in the mid-1990s and gained momentum in 2000s.¹²

It altered the public life of Bollywood songs, both within the country and the diasporic communities in the United Kingdom and United States. Also, in case of Bollywood remixes, the nostalgia and mood of the original song gets re-emphasized. The performativity of the DJs stems from their handling of the DJ console which comprises two digital turntables that play CDs. It imitates the potentials of the LP turntables. This apart, they rely on their personal computers, better known as digital audio workstations. Beatmixing, fading, transitioning, rhythm and groove are mostly the aspects that they choose to focus on. For some, the ability to work with harmony and chords are also necessary. The trick is to keep the sonic experimentations short, simple and clean. It is perceived that the audience is not always in favour of ‘tweaky sounds’, ‘scratches’, ‘extra samples’ and so on. It is important to feel the vibe as DJ Aqeel says. The vibe contributes to spreading the popularity of an existing song. Paul D. Greene agrees with DJs Vikram, Megha and Akhtar that South Asian popular music places a special value to the vocal line (Greene 2014).

Bhangra took root in harvest festivals to express sacrality and went on to incorporate western stylistic categories such as reggae and hip-hop. Later, it foregrounded itself in film-dominated Indian popular culture scene. Again, digitized small studio recordings and a different vocality emerged assimilating global genres (Getter 2014; Greene 2014; Roy 2010; Sarrazin 2014).¹³

Rahman’s compositions in the film Roja (1992) put forth the idea of immediacy, produced aurally as well as visually. In the post-fusion era, the processes of creation, rather than the film song in itself becomes interesting (Sarrazin 2014).

All these instances reiterate how the Bollywood industry always had an ‘other’ in the imagination of a national entertainment scene.

The Broadway entertainment industry, which is the other mainstream inspiration, for the Shillong Chamber Choir, has its own logic of inter-textuality. Scott Warfield’s From Hair to Rent: Is ‘Rock’ a Four Letter Word on Broadway’ (2008) gives a sense of Broadway¹⁴

Broadway is one of the oldest streets of New York. It started as an Indian trail and then ran north, through Manhattan and Bronx. The southern part became a place of theatres and other entertainments during the early 18th century. The Broadway entertainment industry attained a peak during the late 1920s (Sutcliffe 2000).

vis-à-vis rock musicals. John Rockwell defines both rock opera and rock musicals as a departure from their parent genres, except that their grammar is rock and roll. Few examples of rock musicals in New York provide an insight into its association with Broadway. Hair (1968) and Your Thing (1968) were outlined as rock musicals by the creators and the producers. Concept albums such as Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) were sold to the rock connoisseurs prior to being staged. Then, there were works like Godspell (1971) which resorted to the use of rock styles partially or in its entirety, but the creators did not approve of its ‘rock musical’ label. In some instances, the so-called rock musicals did not really incorporate the rock idiom. Then there were musicals like Grease (1971) where earlier styles of rock and roll were used as references. Smokey Joe’s Café (1995) appropriated old songs for their nostalgic element. After the 1970s the category rock musical was dropped by the critics. Wiz (1975) came to Broadway where it was punctuated by the flavours of soul, gospel, black pop and rock styles. When Dreamgirls (1981) arrived a few years later, with a Motown sound, the critics chose to focus on the extra-musical aspects such as the ‘show’s lavish costumes, big dance numbers and high-tech stage crafts’ (Warfield 2008, 231–239). Shillong Chamber Choir intersperses their presentations with many genres, mostly adhering to the grammar of choral music. Thereby, portraying medley as a genre, Shillong Chamber Choir shows affinity towards Broadway’s inter-textuality. ¹⁵

Broadway turned to Hollywood for inspiration 1990s onwards. After losing the lingua franca that cut across European operetta, ragtime and early jazz of the golden age of Broadway musicals, with the arrival of rock and roll in the 1960s, Broadway was removed from its comfort zone., Terry Teachout refers to Broadway Musicals as ‘commodity musicals’ 2007 onwards indicating the well-remembered and successful movies as the source materials (Teachout 2014).

In July 2014, Terry Teachout wrote about the Broadway musical crisis in the Commentary magazine. He says that ever since the rendition of Show Boat by Oscar Hammerstein II, based on Edna Forber’s best-selling 1926 novel, most successful Broadway musicals have been adaptations of novels (The King and I), short stories (Guys and Dolls) and memoirs (Gypsy). The makers claimed that they were producing original works of popular art and audience’s knowledge of source material made no difference. The originality was established by their titles. It was only in 1968 that a musical was based on a relatively recent Hollywood film, Promises Promises derived from Billy Wilder’s 1960s film The Apartment. Like Bollywood, the deliberations that facilitate inter-textuality lie at the heart of Broadway, especially in recent times. Shillong Chamber Choir establishes connect with both Bollywood and Broadway by embodying medley in its rendition.

The Choir

The popularity of the Shillong Chamber Choir has brought Meghalaya at the forefront of vocal talents. The nature of my ethnographic encounters with the choir have largely been in the ‘green rooms’ of the concert spaces across different cities—Guwahati, Shillong, Kolkata and New Delhi, over a span of two years throughout 2014 and 2015. The choir members even had a meeting regarding my PhD research proposal, before I was invited to visit their home-cum-studio. In order to unpack the ideas around medley, Bollywood and Broadway, I will be using a few of their medleys as illustrative examples. Most of these are available on YouTube, uploaded either by fans or clips of telecasts of reality TV show episodes. Officially, the production team of the Shillong Chamber Choir releases a set of videos on their YouTube channel. Before delving deeper into a few of the processes that help in understanding the choir—its form and mode of performativity, it is necessary to discuss the historical and political background of Shillong and its neighbouring states.

Political Atmosphere in the North-east Region with Special Reference to Meghalaya

Meghalaya, a federal state in the Union of India, is located between Bhutan, China, Myanmar and Bangladesh on the far eastern border. The Khasi and the Garo are the two main tribal groups. The non-tribal groups are migrants from other parts of India and neighbouring countries, mainly from Bangladesh and Nepal. The Sixth Schedule legitimises the village councils, which are known as Dorbars. It has also generated powerful political and economic elite. Ethno-national politics in the civil society has excluded the migrants and a few other tribal communities who are unable to access a few special privileges and rights (Mc Duie Ra 2007, 364). The matrilineal system advocates property rights and clan lineage through female family members. The youngest daughter, ‘khadduh’ inherits customary rights over the house and land. However, consent of male members is needed if one wants to sell or lease it (Mc Duie Ra 2007, 369). Recognising the powers of patriarchal norms within a matrilineal society, gender studies scholars have discussed how women’s bodies are looked upon as a site of identity politics claimed by the particular tribe or ethnic group (Mc Duie Ra 2007, 372).

The Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958 (AFSPA) is a feature that pertains to all the seven states in the north-east region and is one of the major impediments in the growth of an effective civil society (Mc Duie Ra 2007; Barbora; 2002; Kikon 2005). In the case of Nagaland, the electoral system practically shaped the language of political participation. The participation and rights were actually under the purview of security institutions that extended to include the National Security Act, AFSPA 1958, the Nagaland Security Act 1962 and the Disturbed Areas Act 1955 (Kikon 2005, 2834–2845).

The Look East Policy modelled on the post-Cold War foreign policy of the Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral, makes Imphal a region of new economic opportunities and the region received plenty of media coverage and political speeches. It is seen as the gateway to south-east Asia and from south-east Asia to India. In 2014, after Modi’s visit to Myanmar, the Look East Policy was re-launched as Act East Policy in 2014 (Mc Duie Ra 2016, 125).

Government responses to control internal protests in the north-east regions are usually in the form of a promise of dialogue or an apparent solution to an ongoing problem. There was the November 2003 march that protested against violence against women in Meghalaya. The cause had united different ethnic groups and included tribal and non-tribal groups from Meghalaya—the Khasis, Garos, Bengalis, Nepalis, Tibetans, Karbis, Mizos and others. Later, the Meghalaya State Commission for Women Bill was passed and approved by April 2005, but it was only a part of the Department of Social welfare, having no real autonomy, and was therefore completely depoliticized (Mc Duie Ra 2007, 374–375). The ASEAN-India Car Rally that began in 2004 was meant to secure economic prospects. It was almost blocked by the Kuki State Demand Committee (an unarmed Kuki organisation formed in 2010, comprising Kukis from Manipur, who wanted a separate federal state) before it reached Imphal. The blockade however never took place as the government promised a high level dialogue by February 2013. That too did not happen leading to future blockades (Mc Duie Ra 2016, 143).

Brief History of Christianity and Music Scene in Khasi and Lushai Hills

Wales and Meghalaya have a long association. The Celtic Christianity or Christianity in Wales goes back to the 4th century. Wales and England were both affected by the Evangelical Awakening in the 18th century. In 1811, The Presbyterian Church of Wales was established. It involved itself in the organisation and aid of the London Missionary Society (LMS). Jacob Tomlin, a protestant missionary with the LMS, remembering his brief stay in the Sohra region during his return from China to Wales via India, suggested Khasi hills as the site for spreading gospel. He also said that the Khasis will be keener to learn about the gospel than the Hindus. Upon request, Thomas Jones, the first missionary of the newly formed Welsh Calvinist Methodist Foreign Mission Society (WCMFM), was sent abroad. He left Wales in November 1840 and reached Kolkata in April 1841. After a brief stay in Kolkata, he moved to Sohra on 22 June 1841. Most importantly, Jones came up with the Roman script instead of the Bengali script and created Khasi alphabets, framed around the Sohra dialect. He even published the first Khasi literatures in Roman script (Nongbri 2017).

Shaped by the British imperial processes, and the policies and approaches of the post-colonial Indian state, Meghalaya today, struggles to make meanings of the tribal situations,¹⁶

A few examples are: murder of Nido Tania in 2014, Dimapur lynching in 2015 and the EyeamIndian campaign launched by the North East Today magazine in 2015 to fight discrimination.

archival silences, locally-relevant notions of tradition (ka riti) and custom (ka dustur), and Christianity, informed by intimate cross-cultural encounters. The popularity of Christianity has been enabled by the missionaries of the early colonial period. In the process of transliterating dialects, they created tribal elites. Apart from this, the missionary print culture has also had a major influence (May 2016).

In a 2017 article by K. Mark Swer, some Khasi musical history comes to the fore. W. R. Laitphlang, a deacon of the Khasi Jaintia Presbyterian Church and one of the older music chroniclers said that folding organs found its way into the Church during 1900s, piano came 30 years late. During the 1960s, acoustic guitar became a part of the church instruments reluctantly. Shillong also had a Jaiaw Orchestra led by Webster Davis Jywra. It was formed in the year 1948 (Swer 2017).

Evan Roberts, a missionary who arrived in Cherrapunji in the beginning of January 1874, had set up a tonic sol-fa class for the youth in Shillong. Missionary Hugh Roberts taught the old notation but the guidelines were devised by Evan Roberts. Despite opposition, he also did similar work in Shangpung in the Jaintia hills. He even prepared an elementary text book in Khasi language that explained the principles of tonic sol-fa. This was based on the book prepared by Eleazor Roberts of Liverpool (Rees 2002, 44–45).

In one of the many letters to her sister dated 23 September 1945, Ms Marian Pritchard, one of the Welsh missionaries working at the Welsh Missionary Hospital in India, talks about a few hymns that were sung at one of chapel services at Jaiaw. The hymns that she mentioned were ‘For his mercy aye endures’, ‘Ever faithful’, ‘Yr. Arghwyddywfy mugail’ (The Lord is my Shepherd) and ‘Diolch iti yr Hollalu - og Ddew’ (Thanks to you my almighty God). She even mentions where to find them in the Hymn book: (a) Harts 290 (b) Morgannwg 112 (c) Bethel 222 (d) Diolch Iti 38. She mentions that the Khasis always liked to end with ‘Diolch Iti’ after a special meeting. This letter gives an idea about the hymns that were in circulation amongst the Khasis while the Welsh missionaries were there. In the 1980s, one of Khasi choirs had travelled to Wales and had sung the Hallelujah Chorus; a copy of which is available in the Calvinist Methodist Archive at the National Library of Wales.¹⁷

Source: Calvinist Methodist Archive, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, accessed on 15 November 2016.

The tribe of the Lushais were musical and thus got along well with the Welsh. Choirs became an important feature of Mizo society. By the 1920s, the touring choir was formed. In 1929, the first Mizo Choir gave concerts at Sylhet, Kolkata, Calcutta Radio, Patna, Varanasi, Allahabad, Lucknow, Delhi, Ludhiana and Agra.¹⁸

The choir was led by Rev. Lalla Ram and was accompanied by Katie Hughes. The repertoire comprised pieces from Handel’s Messiah, Alfred Gaul’s The Holy City and hymns and songs by Mizo composers. A Mizo translation of Messiah was included in the choral repertoire. Open-air singing of Christmas carols by youngsters in the neighbourhood, which was less formal in nature, also emerged (Pachuau and Schendel 2015).

The impact of colonialism urged the Mizos to engage with a cultural re-orientation. Although, the outer forms were Western, the inward meaning and expressivity was ‘Mizo-ized’.

Music continued to be important even after they took on a new religion. The Churches and chapels in the hill villages had a large drum. The gong was used to call people to the service. These two instruments found its way into the Christian fold. Other instruments which enjoyed popularity were violins, trumpets, organs and flutes (Pachuau and Schendel 2015).

Despite having a remarkable Christian stronghold, Seng Khasi, an organisation that celebrates Khasi religion, culture and identity was set up in the year 1899 by U. Jeebon Roy and continues into the present. Amongst its many activities, every year, Seng Khasi organises Ka Shad Suk Mynsiem (thanksgiving dance) and archery competitions. The Pnars had set up Seinraj after 1947 in order to highlight the cultural and religious rights of the Jaintias. U. Pati Laloo, U. Pati Ryngad, U. Sahan Lanong, U. Harison Kyndiah, U. Wikin Shullai, U. Kistobin Rymbai and a few others provided the leadership. Seinraj organises Ka Beh Dein Khlam festival, an important cultural and religious festival for the Pnars (Jyrwa 2011, 153,154,158). La Riti, an organisation that crafts cultural miniatures and weaves traditional shawls and dance costumes of the Khasis, was set up by Helen Giri in 2006. It has provided jobs to those who suffer from financial instability and the ones who are specially challenged. There is also a La Riti printing press. It is an organisation that seeks to preserve traditional artefacts. It is free from a sense of religiosity (Personal Interview, January 2015).

Code of Performativity

The term ‘performativity’ has its origins in literary and linguistic studies. In the realm of music, it implores one to study what is embodied as well as foregrounds the socio-cultural environments where the performances take place (Davidson 2014). Shillong has to deal with its own set of queries. For whom is the performance? What are the specifics that capture the theme of the show? How to move beyond the framings of a north-east and mainland identity? One of the things that come across rampantly in the making of a repertoire is the application of a shifting mechanism while trying to locate oneself. A medley of songs is the art form embraced by the Shillong Chamber Choir. These are written into the mainstream, pointing us towards the musical properties that are being re-imagined. There is yet another aspect to this whole enterprise: The institutions which acquire different forms, aiding in the decision-making about the schemata of performance. The Shillong Chamber Choir has a specific institutional trajectory. It started out as a home school in 2001 and even today, maintains that set-up, whereby the members of the choir live in the same house. A common code of performativity stems from this collective experience of learning, creating as well as exchanging individual dispositions.

In April 2014, I met all the choir members, along with the founder-director Neil Nongkynrih, in their home, ‘Whispering Pines’ at Pohkseh. They narrated to me their daily routine: Each morning, while a few of the members take care of shopping, the rest of the members take charge of cooking and cleaning. There are clear-cut divisions of responsibilities within the team. This marks a sense of discipline in their everyday life. Some of them are in charge of legalities. Also, they have a doctor who travels with them during the tours. The members have a specific time dedicated to worship. Members also have a delineated time for socialising and leisure. In the evening, they rehearse at the studio. Each member practices her/his assigned vocal parts whilst the other members supervise and work on their intonation, diction, pitch and vocal embellishments that would enrich the performance. Since, on stage, we find the choir adept at putting together a Broadway-like representation, there must be some dedicated practice hours for learning dance movements and expressions.¹⁹

I haven’t witnessed their dancing, exercising or styling sessions but conversations with them have revealed that they have specific timings for each activity.

The routinised discipline gets embodied in the performance.

During an interaction with one of the choir members before a show at one of the auditoriums of the North Eastern Hill University in October 2014, I realized that dancing, grooming and certain tropes of presenting themselves were an essential part of projecting the Shillong Chamber Choir’s identity. Saira told me that they have a production house that grooms local talent from Shillong and around the north-east to develop a performance ethos. They give them voice lessons as well as training in fashion, etiquette, dancing and theatricality. The idea is to inculcate a performer persona modelled on the showbiz-Broadway outlook, synonymous with the choir. The sociality of the Shillong Chamber Choir is therefore structured around a modernized Broadway, where voice is one of the many components. What is this showbiz-Broadway outlook? In the context of the article, it refers to the components of gesticulating and articulating musical attributes pertaining to the medley in question. This medley, despite displaying multi-genre characteristics, gives primacy to Bollywood songs (Green room conversation, October 2014; respondent’s name changed).

Padmashree Neil Nongkynrih, founder–conductor of the Shillong Chamber Choir quite purposefully blended his art form with mainstream inspirations to cater to a particular audience.

NN: …and you think of this whole arena of Bollywood music, why we did it is because, by accident actually we ended up on this TV show, which I was never keen on in the beginning, because I never thought choral music and mainstream TV would go together! That was my perception. But it just shows that life doesn’t go the way you think. We are going to harmonize; we are going to give every song we sing, even a popular Hindi song a treatment of the choral style. And somehow or the other this has struck a chord with the nation, this has struck a chord with the people. (Personal Interview, April 2014)

In Neil Nongkynrih’s interview with host, Aled Jones, of BBC Radio 3 programme: The Choir, in the year 2012 similar ideas are communicated.

Neil Nongkynrih said that based out of north east India, the Shillong Chamber Choir wanted to serve a multi-cuisine buffet. It was aimed to be a family act, directed towards different sections of people in India. He told that before 2010, choir music formed a limited part of the music industry in India. When Aled asked if they saw themselves as trailblazers when it came to choir music, Neil agreed. Although, he added that they are a small section, with just 18 people forming the choir.²⁰

Source: Sound Archive, British Library, London, accessed on 24 November 2016.

Towards a Bollywood Broadway

Taking Shillong Chambers Choir’s adaptation of ‘Dil Tadap Tadap’ (heart’s longing) as an illustration,²¹

The original song was directed by Salil Chowdhury. ‘Dil Tadap’ (longings of the heart) is from the film Madhumati (1958) which was inspired by the Polish folk song ‘Szla dzieweczka do gajeczka’ and sung by Lata Mangeshkar and Mukesh.

Bollywood Broadway can be viewed as an expansion of what was popularly known as the star programs in India during the late 1950s and in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada and so on in the 1960s. Gregory Booth in his book, Behind the Curtain: Making Music in Mumbai’s Film Studios (2008), talks about these ‘star programs’ which involved the movement of the film stars—the playback singers, dancers and an orchestra beyond the Bollywood film industry. Despite the lure of foreign travels, most musicians during those times did not want to be part of the shows for two reasons. First, the shows were irregular and sustainability for the most part of the travel turned out to be difficult. Second, when they returned, studio recordings would already be in process and this divorced the musicians from the booming work scene in the film studios. What is of course different in case of the Shillong Chamber Choir is that they themselves make up the whole team, the protagonist actors/playback-singers, the vocal ensemble, dancers, choristers and the orchestral support is provided by the Viennese Chamber Orchestra.

One noticeable aspect about the Shillong Chamber Choir performances is that mainly three singers (one male—tenor/baritone and two females—one soprano and one alto²²

Tessitura refers to the range of frequencies that can be expressed without difficulty and is within the zone of optimal intelligibility that is below 312 Hz. While the bass lies within the zone of optimal intelligibility, only one fourth of the soprano tessitura and one fifth of the coloratura soprano (highest female voice) fall within this zone (Poizat 1992, 42).

) alternate between the leading roles. In the shows during 2015, a fourth male singer (bass) also took the centre stage, for a few songs. The live act pays careful attention to the costume, small hand, leg, and hip and shoulder movements that complement not only the rhythmic and melodic component of the composition but also weave in a certain kind of play acting to formulate a storyline to go along with the performance. Staying on this particular song, in the video that I am referring to, one sees women in the choir, dressed in beautiful white gowns and men in the choir and the orchestra, dressed in black. The performance takes place against the luxurious backdrop of Udaipur Palace with esteemed personalities as the audience. Shillong Chamber Choir specialises in medleys, unless it is a cover version of a certain song. The other half of this song sees the lead voices sing (the song) ‘Somewhere my love/Larah’s Theme’, in keeping with the waltz tempo. The storyline quite easily emerges as one where the talks of love, desire and light flirtations come to be expressed.

As a part of the same series, they also did a live recording of the medley songs that guaranteed Shillong Chamber Choir’s win in the reality TV Show back in the year 2010. I also find the fragments of the chosen song lyrics for this set, hinting at the way the choir functions. The medley that I am talking about comprises Shankar Jaikishan’s 1960 song ‘Ajeeb Dastaan Hain Yeh’ (this is quite an absurd chronicle) and R. D. Burman’s 1975 song ‘Yeh Dosti Hum Nahi Torenge’ (we will never end this friendship). The song ‘Yeh Dosti’ talks about friendship’s promise of being able to do the basic things such as eating, drinking together and eventually formation of a lifestyle shaped by the association, which will break only if death comes to one of them. The choir functions as a unit, whereby training, teaching, performing and travelling affects the unit as a whole. Here, one interesting anecdote about the way old Bollywood functioned needs to be mentioned. The musicians had an informal manner of playing for and belonging to a group of a particular composer and his associated circle. Ernest Menezes reminisces about his involvement with the Burman family in terms of consistent work but attributes his actual allegiance to Shankar–Jaikishan. The latter, Booth (2008) figures, comes more from an ancestry and the cultural affiliation of the Goans. This often makes one wonder how lineages work in the world of western music in India, that too, in different areas. Now, looking at the choral soundscape in Shillong, Shillong Chamber Choir works as a reference point for anyone dabbling with the idea of choral music. Anything from traditional, experimental, adult, to even a children choir, the Shillong Chamber Choir is a source of inspiration, alongside the scepticism and the grandeur it encompasses. The idea of lineages and affiliations require a separate space for argument. For the moment, in the discussion on Bollywood Broadway and medley as a genre, it is sufficient to look at the way the choir functions in shaping discourses about sounds and socialities.

Another medley ‘Baar Baar Dekho-Hazaar Baar Dekho’ (Look, again and again. Look, a thousand times) and ‘S’Wonderful’ by the Shillong Chamber Choir highlight some more particularities of their sound and visualisation. The group has uploaded a video version of this medley on YouTube, shot in black and white. The way they dress and emote definitely transport the viewers to a jazz studio of the 1950s or a temporality akin to the year; except for the sound. This is not to say that the sound does not embrace the elements of the jazz ‘style’. It does, but the interpolation ushered in by the protocols of Bollywood and Hollywood, attribute to it a certain degree of newness. The Bollywood baggage is portrayed by the male tenor, William, loosely framed around the enactment and tonalities of the filmy persona of Shammi Kapoor. The Hollywood shadows are internalized into the performance ethic of the female Alto, Donna, when she traverses the imaginations foregrounded by Ella Fitzgerald on one hand and Audrey Hepburn on the other. The song was featured in the 1927 Broadway Musical Funny Face by Adele Astaire and Allen Kearns. It later featured in the movie by the same name in the year 1957 that starred Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn. This for one, is not a live act but an official video, available on YouTube, delineating one of the ‘many sounds’ brought forth in the Shillong Chamber Choir medleys.²³

Written by Ira Gershwin and composed by George Gershwin, this song was recorded by Ella Fitzgerald in the year 1959.

Emergent Sounds of the Shillong Chamber Choir

In the introduction to the book Genre in Popular Music Fabian Holt (2007) talks at length about the importance of genre in understanding American popular music. The idea of genre surfaced in the mid-19th century when new popular cultures were coming into existence and modernism was in full swing. Genres are formed through certain repetitive gestures and conventions, always, ordered around a collective. Genre boundaries stem from cultural as well as musical practices, rooted to a defined social space.

Fabian Holt brings to fore the problems of theorizing around genre. Unlike films and photography, where there are certain standardized protocols that determine a specific category, types of music, despite belonging to particular record labels, are not permanent. Record labels are formed according to certain ideological assumptions. Also, hybridity is viewed as a shift away from genres. Having said that, the author also mentions how genre crossovers become relevant in the cases of music of a particular culture area. He mentions, amongst others, choir societies and celebrity fan cultures as examples. In his book, Music Genres and Corporate Cultures, Keith Negus (1999) explains how broader cultural formations form an industry; the latter do not simply emerge from a corporate environment and its capitalist underpinnings.²⁴

Among music genres, European and American art music has a stable, standardized position due to its contribution in the field of education, with a body of timeless masterpieces. Not to forget the constant sustenance provided by the social elites. In the 19th century, American art music, drawing upon the European bourgeois model incorporated ideas of nationalism in its discourse. This, in a way, gave them legitimate claims to maintain certain distance from other genres (Holt 2007).

Hybrid musical forms are commonly associated with popular music genres.²⁵

Collection of American folk music, which later influenced popular music to a large extent, dated back to the early 20th century (Holt 2007).

It is located on the other end of the spectrum because it has the quality of surpassing genres. At the same time, it runs the risk of being reduced to a chaotic exchange. Beaster-Jayson Jones (2014) explains inter-textuality through ‘stylistic mediation’ of indipop, sufi or the return of melody once they are a part of a film song. ²⁶

He asserts that the genres classify the musical elements and the discourses built around it whereas the style simply refers to the musical sound and the performativity necessary to highlight it (Beaster-Jones 2014).

In the context of the Shillong Chamber Choir, I look at inter-textuality in the realm of both Bollywood and Broadway, formulating medley, as a genre in itself. Medley in this case, embraces the nation building project at large, and at the same time, on a global scale, opens up the possibility of alternative repertoires for classical music. Holt also directs his readers to the problems between the mainstream and the genre. Indeed, there is a gap between the dominant culture and the marginal culture (informed by distinct traditional attributes). In case of Shillong, however, ‘medley’ tends to unite the aspects of standardisation, innovation and performativity. I argue that medley appears as an extension of the ‘genre culture’ rather than being posited on the opposite end. Mainstream, in this case, Bollywood music joins other musical genres that highlight the ‘classics’ of a particular genres such as pop (songs by Abba), rock (songs by the Beatles and Queen), and so on besides western classical music. Being a choir society of a sort, medley has been strategically used to harbour ‘classical across genres’ while foregrounding Bollywood.

References from Bollywood songs act as the emergent sounds or refrains. Refrain refers to the territorial assemblages and their underlying expressiveness. Breaking away from the ritualistic notions, it begs negotiations with the internal emotions and the external circumstances. One has to mark specific motifs and counterpoints that determine the development of a style. In case of Shillong Chamber Choir,²⁷

In an article by Deepa Gupta in Firstpost dated 24 April 2016, the headline pops out ‘Medley makers: Shillong Chamber Choir on how they come up with their winning repertoire’. Tenor William explains that the songs in the medley are screened as per the choir’s old fashioned family values. Padmashree Neil Nongkynrih comes up with a medley that suits the sound of the choir. The size of the ensemble varies and may go upto 50, if the Shillong Chamber Orchestra joins them on stage. He explains how the choir organises a musical journey around the world for 90 minutes.

for instance, the opening orchestral score for ‘Dil Tadap Tadap/Larah’s Theme’ introduces the three to four beats of Waltz. ‘Baar Baar Dekho/S Wonderful’, too, divulges the grammar of jazz with its drum rolls, double bass pull and the free style piano playing, right at the beginning.

There is also the catalytic function of the refrain which allows it to bring together elements that do not conform to a natural affinity. ‘The Train Song’, an original by the Shillong Chamber Choir, sets out to describe the daily imageries within a train compartment in India, bringing together disconnected musical ideas. One of the imageries that the choir belts out is a quarrel scene between the passengers and the beggars. For that scene, one of the phrases from Handel’s ‘Let Us Break the Bonds Asunder’ and the chorus of Abba’s ‘Money Money Money’ are followed by Hindi lyrics. There is an old practice amongst the Khasis to put Khasi words to western melodies. Perhaps, here, they carry out the same formula, with another language.

In a general sense, refrain comprises collective expressions which form a territory. That leads to the formation of territorial motifs and landscapes. With time, after the intensities have been adjusted, a sense of consistency gets written into the functions, motifs and the placards of territoriality. Due to various Bollywood assimilations in their repertoire, across time, the medleys often get structured around those. The whole process further experiences de-territorialisation–re-territorialisation (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 311–312). The latter reminds one either of not coming home to a familiar set-up or of a new layout within a familiar space. This Bollywood encounter juxtaposes the popular music label to the choir, despite having the four part vocal harmonisation and training specifically garnered towards a western voice suited to ‘classical’, ‘jazz’ or ‘gospel’. The performance-centric model of the choir makes them role models for aspiring artists who want to develop a persona that overlaps the mainstream aesthetic category. Re-territorialisation may lead Bollywood Broadway emerging as something outside of and beyond Bollywood. With time, other styles within the medley might gain resonance.

One also has to take the fragments or black holes into consideration that roots itself in the process of a becoming. In the illustrations discussed, Bollywood exists like a shadow, particularly because of the reality TV show influence. While the medleys are in the process of being composed, combinations of units that feed into the imagination of a distinct theme are considered crucial. Finally, there are the ‘machinic statements’ which interrupt the consistency in the process of becoming and add to it certain degrees of variations. The power of medley as a genre with conspicuous Bollywood motifs grounds itself in the face of the Shillong Chamber Choir performativity. The daily routine of the choir members, points towards the discipline and habit necessary to understand the process of performance. Medleys run the risk of becoming repetitive as a musical act. It is important, time and again to assert its distinctiveness from the era of remixes and indipop. Also, medleys incorporating Bollywood sounds are common amongst few other choral groups such as the Penn Masala, Choral Riff and Berkeley Music Ensemble. What makes Shillong Chamber Choir stand out, for now is its existence as the Bollywood’s other. Of course the group receives patronage from certain prominent Bollywood Film personalities and renowned singers of the Hindi film industry as an extension of the Reality TV show fame. Nonetheless, what makes the Shillong Chamber Choir different from the other choral groups is that the latter mostly comprise participants from the mainland Indian diaspora, while the former come from the marginalised north-east India.²⁸

Shillong Chamber Choir opened the inaugural episode of Kaun Banega Crorepati, season 9. They have been invited to perform at the Jaipur Literary Festival; they were part of one of the biggest musical shows that featured Coldplay at a concert in Mumbai in the year 2016. Since they are well known for Bollywoodised medleys, they are part of many Bollywood ventures outside the film world.

Bollywood songs are viewed as one of the prominent mainstream musical affiliations for India as a whole. However, it hardly comes as a surprise that there is not much representation of north-east India, musically or thematically in the Bollywood industry.²⁹

In 2014, the film, Mary Kom was released. It is based on the life story of the Olympic boxer from Manipur. In 2013, the Shillong Chamber Choir composed four songs for their debut Malayalam movie, Goodbye December; one of the songs, Madi was aired live by BBC Radio.

Shillong Chamber Choir as a part of their diverse repertoire also has a Khasi opera, Sohlyngngem. The theme of the opera is that of a Khasi girl’s grief for her lost lover; broiled in contemporary Khasi socio-political circumstances. The composition won the group a silver medal at the 2009 World Choir Championships in South Korea. The choir performs this particular composition, in parts or whole, selectively.³⁰

I had seen Shillong Chamber Choir perform a snippet from the Khasi opera at NEHU, Shillong in October 2014.

Steven Feld (2000) concentrates on the asymmetrical relationship in the process of pygmy pop’s schizophonia. Pygmy music belongs to Central Africa’s rainforest people and it largely focuses on sounds used to communicate with the forest. When the latter is imagined within the framings of global pop, fragments like a ‘single untexted vocalisation, falsetto yodels and hunting cries’ get represented and are often referred to as ‘Pygmy like hoots’ (Feld 2000, 263, 273, 274). The medleys of the Shillong Chamber Choir bring different musical genres and ‘stylist mediations’ together from varied contexts, and only in fragments, cutting across the larger frameworks of classical music and popular music. The regional story also directs one to the substantial musical borrowings from Bollywood, which itself is considered to be ‘schizophonic’ in nature (Kvetko, 2014).

In the manner of formulating the sound of the choirs from Shillong, I argue that Bollywood sounds are being territorialised to attract a certain kind of mass appeal. I am using the plural ‘sounds’ to refer to final product of the ‘stylized mediations’, without decoding the musical structures of the chosen illustrations per se. What they have managed to establish visually is a western classical genre setting, with a vocal ensemble performing the Bollywood Broadway, an orchestra playing at the backdrop and the presence of a concert pianist with a page turner. In terms of sound, which too, follow the protocols of a professional, digital sound, they are trying to experiment with Bollywood, even though the latter itself is an amalgamation of various other sounds.

When I say Bollywood, I try to harp on the sounds incorporated in the medley, easily recognizable by the Indian subcontinent. Bollywood music (Bombay-produced film music) enjoyed an undaunted popular status in India 1940s onwards till the cassettes became popular, as already explained to us by Peter Manuel in his book Cassette Culture in India (1993). The medleys sung by the choir, discussed so far, are ‘classics’ belonging to particular genres. Therefore, not just the style of representation, what emerges here is a pattern of the shifting ideas of the classical component across multiple genres. Shillong Chamber Choir quite fits the description of a multi-genre choir which anchors itself to Bollywood sounds to cater to the general audience of the Indian subcontinent.

Conclusion

At the outset, medley surfaces as a singularity. It carries a quintessential element of ‘schizophonia’, knitted together, every time projecting an overall familiar Bollywood motif. The performativity, in this case, is rendered through a Broadway perspective. The storyline develops from the fragmented song texts, which eventually become the script. Keeping the basic temperament of the song, different musical styles are brought together. The Bollywood association is what makes the repertoire of the Shillong Chamber Choir part of many musical others. Amongst its stylistic predecessors, there are ‘indipop’, ‘remixes’, ‘bhangra’ and so on. This also makes room for the choir’s future endeavours.³¹

Shillong Chamber Choir has announced on their social media pages that they have been chosen by the Austrian Government to premier Franz Schubert’s unfinished opera. It is based on a German libretto inspired by Kalidasa’s Shakuntala. The opera will be conducted and orchestrated by Mr Gerald Wirth, director and president of the Vienna Boys Choir. It will be performed across Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai in the early days of October 2018.

Nonetheless, territorialisation of sounds implies that as Bollywood’s other, the chamber choir pitches a new aurality, attempting to re-interpret existing musical categories, both in local and global imaginations. This re-interpretation makes a strong case for expanding the public life of a musical genre. The performativity allows several regional, national, popular and international ideas to come together.

In the given context, when medley is looked at as a singularity, it is imagined within a specific sort of repetition: that which includes within it an alternative, adding to an idea. The harmonic phrasings across vocal registers, despite their brevity, exist in a covert manner. These are played out in the process of what I have termed ‘Bollywood Broadway’. Repetition essentially represents the infinite captured in a single moment or the nth power. What is the authentic idea within an idea in the medley representations of Shillong Chamber Choir? It is organising their repertoire around select territorialised sounds in a harmonic fashion.

This ‘schizophonia’ is the kitschy aspect in sounds that are brought forth by the choir. In the songs discussed, more than one stylistic form presents itself, altering the conventional mono sound. The newness lies in their unique format of Broadway, where they re-invent their indigenous and global identities through a popular, mainstream sound. Ultimately, it promises more than the aural and this is made prominent through the Shillong Chamber Choir’s aesthetic and theatrical representations.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I am thankful to my PhD supervisor, Professor Roma Chatterji for her constant encouragement and suggestions. I am also thankful to the Tokyo Foundation for granting me the Sylff Research Abroad Award 2016 to access archival materials in various libraries of the United Kingdom and enabling me to have discussions with relevant scholars. I also thank my friend, Radha Kapuria for helping me with proofreading and for providing some useful inputs.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

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