Bhojpuri music scene - Bidesiya in Bambai

New documentary looks at how the music is helping migrants make themselves visible in Mumbai.

Produced and Directed by: Surabhi Sharma

Cinematography : Avijit Mukul Kishore

Additional Cinematography: Ajay Noronha

Sound : Suresh Rajamani

Editing: Monisha R. Baldawa

Sound Design: Mohandas V.P.

Titles and Poster Design: Chitra Venkatramani

Special thanks to Sudheer Palsane, Shanti Bhushan Roy, Indranil Mukherjee and Setu

                       

There’s a concert taking place in Nallasopara, Mumbai — there’s a stage, lighting, speakers and a few thousand people in the audience. The songs sung are of home, of living in a strange city and of the perils of migration and the singers voice merges with the the audience as they sing along. 

These scenes are part of a new, about-to-be released documentary, Bidesiya in Bambai, that is looking at highlighting how music is helping the Bhojpuri community in the city find a sense of identity. “Bhojpuri musical performances have become a space for these migrants to talk about complex issues and make themselves visible in a city that doesn’t want to see them,” says director Surabhi Sharma, 40, a documentary filmmaker. 

The stars 
Unaware to a city that is at constant war with its migrants, Bhojpuri music is a steadily thriving industry that is constantly releasing new VCDs, albums and CDs and spawning new singers and making stars out of ordinary people. The music is produced and recorded in small studios. The bigger stars are called for concerts all over the country while the smaller ones —  from taxi drivers, garment workers to bus conductors — can be found entertaining small groups within Mumbai. Bidesiya in Bambai follows the life of two singers: a taxi-driver chasing his first record deal and Kalpana, the star of the industry. 

Bhojpuri music in the city is more of the popular kind, broadly divided into holy songs, risque songs with heavy sexual undertones, and songs that talk about migration (of people going away). Sharma’s film begins with a taxi driver narrating how migration is the focus of many songs but now includes references to a mobile phones.

Even though there are many Bhojpuri singers — the biggest name right now is Kalpana Patowari — majority of them are male. The performances are largely attended by men and are very interactive, involving a lot of banter with the audience. People cheer and yell, there is a lot of recording happening on mobile phones and there are constant calls for encores. 

A migrant’s city:  
Sharma’s interest in Bhojpuri music began during her work on her 2008 film Jahaji Music: India in the Caribbean. She has spent the last three years researching Bhojpuri folk music, research that has taken her from a taxi colony in Bandra to under-construction buildings in Nallasopara and Andheri. She has attended concerts held in slums, in single-room houses, on open grounds and during the Chatthh Puja. 

It was during her research that the Bhojpuri migrant’s city became visible to Sharma and locations started imposing themselves on her recordings. There was a show in Thane, in a new slum settlement, where local leaders kept trying to boost people’s spirits. “Bhojpuri musical concerts are usually held during difficult times..it’s a way of mobilising support and telling people that things will be all right,” she says.

In Andheri, Sharma filmed a top Bhojpuri singer who was recording an album in her studio at Adarsh Nagar. The place was once the centre of the Bhojpuri music and video production before it was demolished. Despite these setbacks, the music continues. 

Music, so central to Bhojpuri culture helps the community connect and create a presence in the city. It is about making themselves visible but with an aggression which would explain the huge turnouts seen during the concerts. There’s no sloganeering, radical speeches or political overtones in the music, and even when the attacks began against the North Indians, the focus remained unchanged.   

Bidesiya in Bambai is as much a story about Bhojpuri music as it is about a constantly churning city. At times the music is the hero, at times the city. It is a look at Mumbai through the lens of the migrant worker and his music. 

“Their music is all around us,” she says. “We just have to look hard enough.”

SHE SWAYS her midriff playfully to the tune of Beedi Jalayile, as one of the young men in the audience smacks his lips, entranced. The camera lingers on him before sweeping through the rest of the crowd. Most of them are holding up mobile phones to film the performance.

It’s a scene from Bidesiya in Bambai, a new documentary feature by Surabhi Sharmathat explores the flourishing Bhojpuri music industry in Mumbai. Occasionally appropriated by Bollywood to pander to what used to be its core constituency, the real action in the industry lies in live shows: boisterous performances with the erotic dance moves greeted by cheerful hooting and banter, which motivates the performers to raise their game and egg the crowd on further. The live act is also big business. An estimate by Ratnakar Tripathy in the Economic & Political Weekly pegs the total market for live shows at a few thousand crore rupees, which is supplemented by the sales of cds and its use in Bhojpuri (and Hindi) films.

A major reason for this success is the profusion of mobile phones, through which Bhojpuri songs are routinely recorded, downloaded, shared and played back to each other. Naresh Fernandes, a consulting editor for Time Out, believes that mobile phones have freed up young men and women from these conservative belts to engage in covert romances. ‘Mobile phone’ has even entered the lexicon of the songs, with many lyrics pleading with their lovers to call them on the phone, to give them a kiss since they gave them a miss(ed) call. The mobile phone conceals within it, and stands for, the intense desire for connection, so much so that they insist on calling rather than sending the conventional love letter. Longing trumps romanticism. Indeed, these phones have even flipped gender equations in some respects, leaving the migrant men longing for their wives back home, who may or may not be cavorting with a paramour, again using the discretion offered by mobile phones.

Sharma, who tells her story through two unlikely protagonists — a taxi driver on the verge of getting his first record deal, and Kalpana Patowari, the current singing sensation — says that music for the migrant worker in Mumbai, one out of four of whom is a Bhojpuri, is “a way to mobilise identity. An identity sometimes bereft of love, at times filled with longing, at others spewing aggression. Thousands of people gather in tiny clearings in the city after a hard day’s work and immerse themselves in these performances.” The 40-yearold, whose 2008 film Jahaji Music: India in the Carribean documented the chutney music traditions of the Bhojpuri community in Trinidad, made this film, she says, to track how the community in Mumbai is changing. “I worked on the film for four years, tracking various migrant workers in the city — taxi drivers producing albums, security guards trying to write songs, bus conductors recording music.” The themes of migration, identity, loss and belonging are as much present in the community in Mumbai as they are in Trinidad.

She also wanted to focus on the spaces around which the music is performed. “Where the shows were being performed, the physical space in a city that is notoriously hostile to the migrant communities from Bihar and Eastern UP, makes for an interesting narrative,” explains Sharma. In doing so, she makes this as much a film about Mumbai as it is about music. The ecosystem required by these thriving assemblies depends, in large part, on the political parties. “They make promises that their houses will never be demolished. But a backlash from parties like the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena always hangs over these performances like a cloud,” Sharma says, talking about the hurdles they face, the taxis that have been burnt some occasions, and the beatings that followed.

In Sharma’s able hands, Bidesiya in Bambai captures the power of music as both a political tool in sustaining the hardest-working migrant populations in India, and the fulfilment of the great Indian dream.

Press Coverage:

“Just like the sound of Bhojpuri music is transformed after entering the cellphones, so too does the meaning of what you are watching shift constantly from observation to interpretation, ethnography to philosophy.”  Mint

“Bidesia in Bambai is as much a story about Bhojpuri music as it is about a constantly churning city. At times the music is the hero, at times the city. It is a look at Mumbai through the lens of the migrant worker and his music.” DNA

“Bidesia In Bambai then doesn’t contain an in-depth analysis of the workings of Mumbai’s Bhojpuri pop scene, but rather places you front and centre in a typical music concert” Mumbai Boss

“In Sharma’s able hands, Bidesiya in Bambai captures the power of music as both a political tool in sustaining the hardest-working migrant populations in India, and the fulfilment of the great Indian dream.” Tehelka

“The film explores the Bhojpuri migrant experience through their music, taking us to the hidden corners of the city where this community lives, works and celebrates. It takes us to makeshift stages running on stolen electricity and to bigger events like the annual Chhath Puja celebrations on Juhu Beach. “ Yahoo! News

“Bidesia in Bambai is the latest example of a growing trend — that of looking at music as more than just a cultural artefact. It is now viewed as a carrier and capsule of that very culture from which it emerges.”  The Sunday Guardian