Cabaret Travels: Response to assignment 1
The geographical region with a history of cabaret that intrigues me greatly is Mumbai, India. Having been a very important port and place of trade during the British Raj, Bombay, as it was then called, has always had a very cosmopolitan spirit. The influences and confluences of the many cultures, some transitional and some that have inhabited the city over centuries are still very vibrantly and visibly present. One such legacy that Bombay now Mumbai, still maintains is that of its nightclubs and nightlife. Mumbai till date, boasts of a nightlife that is not only an interesting mix of times and cultures, but also has something to offer across age groups and social stratas.
From the early 1900’s to 1970’s Bombay had many nightclubs that hosted Jazz nights and cabaret performances. http://www.tajmahalfoxtrot.com/?page_id=7
Even though dance bars that targeted a certain kind audience possibly replaced some of those nightclubs, Mumbai’s elite however still have not been able to give up their club culture. Though activities like a game of bridge, billiards, wining and dining remain as part of the clubbing tradition, cabaret performances however have made an exit from their entertainment charts. One of the main reasons for this could be that all these clubs, until very recently, were open to men alone. And cabaret which never really had any social acceptance, had to be probably taken out of these spaces, which then became recreational spaces for families. But could this be the only reason? Could the entry of cabaret dances into cinema be another reason for the cabaret to have exited the nightclubs?
Narrowing down my view and focusing on a specific area that sort of documents this vast landscape of Mumbai’s nightlife, I would like to look closely at Hindi cinema and the depiction of Mumbai’s nightlife and cabaret clubs in it. Celebrating its centenary this year, the Hindi film industry can be seen as an archive that has stored, in the form of its cinema, the journey that cabaret probably took in India. These films not only map the changes in the presentation style, aesthetic and politics of the form, but also, show the change in the position of the performer and her metamorphosis from being a social outcast/vamp/fallen woman to becoming an object of desire, who in today’s Hindi cinema has gained a kind of social acceptance and even become one of the highest paid performers in a film.
Within the Hindi film industry, I would like to focus on Helen who I feel not only maps these change, but also became an icon and maybe even initiated the creation of the Bollywood dance genre. The Hindi film industry has called her their ‘dancing queen’, but Helen, I feel is much more than that.
According to Jerry Pinto’s book Helen: The life and times of a Bollywood H-Bomb, Helen Richardson, better known as Helen, comes from a mixed parentage. Her father was a Frenchman and her mother, Marlene, was half-Spanish and half-Burmese (13). Helen gets her surname ‘Richardson’ from her mother’s second husband, who was a British officer posted in Burma (13). Post the declaration of war on Burma by Japan, during the Second World War, Helen at the age of 3, had walked from Rangoon, Burma to Assam, India, with her mother and baby brother seeking refuge (14).
She had an unhappy and difficult childhood that was spent in grave poverty. Helen credits her entry into films to her love for dancing and her poverty. She started at the age of 13, as a chorus girl, with the help of the then dancing sensation Cuckoo, who was also her mother’s bridge partner. It was on Cuckoo’s insistence that Helen was sent to train in the dance forms of Manipuri, Bharatnatyam and Kathak under several Gurus and dance masters (16-17). After many performances as a chorus girl in films, she got her first solo dance in a film called Alif Laila in 1953. This probably lead to the beginning of what was then to become a long professional and personal relationship with a film producer called P.N. Arora (16-17).
P.N. Arora produced several B-Grade films almost all of which starred Helen but none left a mark on her career (19). Her first big break however that brought her to limelight was a song and dance number in a film called Barish in 1957 and Howrah Bridge in 1958 (20). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDfcXtIsgR8
From then on there was no looking back for Helen. She then not only established herself as a dancing sensation, but also started become a part of every major film project in the Hindi cinema industry. Some of her most popular song and dance sequences are:
Mera naam chin chin choo, HowrahBridge,1958
O haseena zulfon wali, Teesri Manzil ,1966
Aajane jaan, Inteqaam 1969
Piya tu, Caravan 1971
Mehbooba Mehbooba, Sholay 1975
Yeh Mera Dil, Don 1978
What excites me most about a performer like Helen is the stylistics variety present in her performances and the contradictions inherent in the way she is presented by the film industry. Despite being categorised as the ‘fallen-white woman’, she was loved by one and all. She on the one hand became the personification of desire, was labelled as a glamour doll, and on the other hand performed comic roles partnering with comedians like Mehmood and Johnny Walker. She could very comfortably handle comedy and combine it with her dance numbers, like she did in ‘Dil na Kahin lagana’ in Ghunghat, 1960 and ‘Hum kale hain toh kya hua dilwale hain’ with Mehmood in Gumnaam. She was presented as a foreigner who stood for everything that was not Indian and yet she was able to convince the audiences with her costal fisher woman look in songs like ‘Mungda’ from the film Inkaar in 1977, to being the ‘Bharatiya naari’ of modern India in films like Hum Hindustani.
Though she mostly played the role of the fallen woman, her dancing style was and still is well followed by the leading ladies of Hindi cinema. It is interesting that her cabaret numbers in particular have been described as being seductive but never cheap, sensual and never vulgar.
Since my childhood I was most fascinated by her dancing styles. As I grew up, I felt that that there was much more to her songs and dances than just entertainment.
Just watching her dance sequences I feel, one can graph the changing grammar of Mumbai film industry’s dance language. It also appears that the changes in Hindi cinema for example moving from black & white to colour, and with that the explorations and experiments that began in Hindi cinema like creation of newer plots, moving from family dramas, patriotic cinema to the more entertaining suspense thrillers, exploring new and different locales, all could be mapped via the reading the positioning of her dance sequences. The change in the position of the vamp, which in many ways defined modernity, in a very negative light, and was pitted against the image of the ideal Indian woman, also speaks about the times when a nationalistic image of India and Indian-ness and thus the Indian woman were being curated. Studying her cabaret songs alone one could read the kind of racial and gender politics that existed in the Hindi film industry,
and perhaps see them as a reflection of the Indian psyche?
In many ways, through her costumes, mannerisms etc. the change in the social, political and cultural scenarios in Indian cities, especially in Mumbai, pre and post independence could also possibly be studied.
Keeping all theses aspects in mind, I would like to look closely at Helen’s cabaret dance numbers to see the interrelationship between a city-performer-performance form and research, whether the body of a performer becomes a site where the social-political-cultural changes that develop with time can be/are projected and documented?
I just learned so much from your research and am so excited we have Helen in common. I had not thought about the socio-political implications reflected throughout the dances she performed throughout her Bollywood career. In all the clips you posted and that I've ever seen Helen perform in, she does always perform Western influenced dances. Did she choreograph the pieces she performed in? In many of the pieces she is wearing blond or brown hair color wigs and is dressed very provocatively. Almost all her movement is in stark contrast so any classical Indian forms as she uses her hips alot. I'm still intrigued by the power of her sexuality...clearly stereotypical feminine ideal with mainly male audience reflective of your research of Mumbai night life where women were not permitted (only as performers, right?) Interesting differences in gender roles from Mumbai Cabaret to say French, German, or even American
ReplyDeleteI was so excited to check out the first website you site about the book Taj Mahal Foxtrot! It says: "In 1935, a violinist from Minnesota named Leon Abbey brought the first “all-negro” jazz band to Bombay, leaving a legacy that would last three decades. Only a few years after Abbey’s arrival, swing would find its way to the streets of India as it influenced Hindi film music – the very soundtrack of Indian life. The optimism of jazz became an important element in the tunes that echoed the hopes of newly independent India."
ReplyDelete-http://www.tajmahalfoxtrot.com/?page_id=7
This is interesting because I always assumed jazz was spread soley from Hollywood films to Bollywood films...through listening and copying. It is surprising that an African American group who probably faced a lot of discriminatory difficulties in travel were there. I wonder what brought him there? Did they have previous contact with Indians in the U.S. along the "Bengali Harlem" lines but in Minnesota?
And several of the videos of lectures on the book's page might be good links from my research on jazz to Bollywood: https://vimeo.com/35495326
As to your question about why cabaret disappeared from the clubs, I remember a book Snangita shared with me that talked about the political bans on dance clubs at different times in Mumbai's history. I recall that it was partially due to the stigma of dancing girls related to sex work. I will post the name of the book when I remember it. It is an amazing journalistic novel about a bar dancer in current times.
I didn't watch all of the videos you linked yet but am totally fascinated by Mera Naam Chin Chin Choo. The simultaneous orientalist representation of what some sort of Asian costume with the fan and the name "Chin Chin Choo" mixed with the jazz band in the club and the swing inspired movements into a sort of Bollywood hodgepodge...
And then the song "aa jane ja"which I assume is a reference to Tarzan and Jane. The shocking depiction of the black (is that black face?) man, savage like in the cage and the exotic cabaret (is it supposed to be belly dance?) dancer performing for a largely white audience has me reeling. Yes there are many gender and racial issues to be dissected in these examples.
Sangita reminded me the name of the book about the bar dancer/s in Mumbai - Beautiful Thing by Sonia Faleiro.
DeleteThe Amazon description is not as good as some of the descriptions the customer reviews give:
http://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Thing-Inside-Secret-Bombays/dp/0802170927/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
It follows Leela, a bar dancer (bar dancing was banned in 2005 according to one of the reviews). I wonder if bar dancing the closest thing to actual cabaret setting in India or is there some other equivalent?
I enjoyed reading your research on Bombay cabaret and Helen! Like Shy, I was also interested in the African-American/Indian connections documented in Taj Mahal Foxtrot and curious about the racial discrimination that they may or may not have faced. It seems like Leon Abbey toured extensively (and he had relocated to NYC from Minnesota) in Europe and South America as well as India.
ReplyDeleteUnderstanding the roots of jazz music in the Bombay cabarets made me wonder whether there was an equivalent movement of dancing bodies and traditions to the cabarets. If only men were allowed in the cabarets, then it seems that the social dances (lindy hop, swing, Charleston) associated with the era's big-band and jazz music could not have been practiced in the same way in Bombay's nightclubs. What kind of dance is understood as "cabaret dance" in India?
With this in mind, I found myself trying to dissect the movement influences in the links of Helen's dances that you sent. (Are all her dances considered cabaret dances - or only when the film portrays a cabaret scene?) I was surprised to hear that her training was in Manipuri, Kathak, and Bharatanatyam, as most of her dancing is not very classical, though she does demonstrate an articulateness of her hands, and I wondered if she had other training. Mr. John and Mera Naam Chin Chin Choo show clear swing and lindy influences, underlined by the music. She also does shoulder isolations in Mr. John that remind me a little bit of bhangra. In other videos, such as "O haseena zulfon wali," her dancing has obvious flamenco references (underlined by her costume), while "Aajane jaan" seems to have some vague connection to bellydance. Other than that, she often seems to dance in a frenetic, somewhat spastic style, exuberantly flinging her limbs and energy in multiple directions, filled with shaking and vibrating, which I cannot locate within a specific dance tradition.
ReplyDeleteI was glad to read of the hardship and poverty that Helen survived, if only to remind me of her status as a dancing laborer. The economic necessity for her to embody these roles serves as a helpful counterpoint to my sometimes visceral reactions to the racial and gender representations in her performances. I am fascinated by the way her racial ambiguity was mobilized by the Bollywood film industry: she seemed, as you point out, to be able to “[stand] for everything that was not Indian” and yet to also embody Indian roles upon occasion, changing wigs, costumes, and sometimes movement to suit the role.
In the links I watched, I was particularly intrigued by “Mera Naam Chin Chin Choo” and "Aajane jaan" for their representations of racial otherness. It was funny to me that they had French-Spanish-Burmese woman playing a Chinese character in a qipao (with fringe added), who then switches to more western garb by the end. And the awful stereotype of “Chin Chin Choo” as a name leaves me both amused and slightly speechless. I’m not too sure of the plot of the movie – where is this scene set? If in Shanghai, that would explain the swing and lindy references, given that city’s westernized reputation and the history of jazz clubs there in the 1920s-30s. "Aajane jaan" is, to me, a pretty disturbing of a representation of the black savage (played by an Indian in blackface? Is there a minstrelsy connection?), and Helen’s relationship to him seems ambiguous – sometimes seductive, sometimes controlling, domesticating, and recaging his dangerously “barbaric” energy, sometimes suggesting that she is equivalent to him, also part animal. Sexual violence always seems just around the corner in the video, and the whole scene seems to be played out for Indian and western male gazes.
The website http://www.tajmahalfoxtrot.com/?page_id=7 is truly fascinating. I don't actually have too much to add right this moment to Cynthia's and Shyamala's thoughts regarding the themes and trajectories and connections that open up through Helen as a personality and the Bombay Jazz scene's history. As far as today is concerned, I actually think there is more of a jazz scene in Hyderabad -
ReplyDeleteThe stories of the bands coming reminds me of Priya Srinivasan's concept of "kinesthetic connections" which she formulated, e.g. in the context of Ruth St Denis' encounters with dancers from India at world fairs.
We all know how more coincidence and personal webs of itineraries and connections are involved in artists touring, and how much encounters with other artists shape us-- why do we keep forgetting to consider that when looking at "FORMS" and their "HISTORIES"?
In any case - I started wondering about the current sweeping popularity of Hip Hop, which after looking at the influences of jazz in Bombay have a more solid historical continuity that seems worth exploring-- and I would love to see how they connect in particular to Cynthia's queer blues singers :)
And of course, as I mentioned in response to Anjali's post, I am excited about the connections to my own assignment response. If at all possible- which I do not know it is will be-- I should look into the history of "Le Gourmet nightclub" in Karachi, where Princess Amina performed.
Oh AND, the website http://www.tajmahalfoxtrot.com/ seems amazing to explore also in terms of a model to present research online!
DeleteHey Sandra, love your emphasis on coincidence and interpersonal connections in thinking about the histories of artistic traditions. Just to clarify - when you refer to the "current sweeping popularity of Hip Hop," are you referring specifically to India? And to hip hop music or dance, or both?
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