Critical Review Set 2/Review 2

In his article “Drum n’Dhol: British Bhangra Music and South Asian Identity formation”, Raijinder Dudrah presents an interesting account of Bhangra. After laying out a brief historiography of the different accounts given by academics on the ascendance and character of British Bhangra, Dudrah lays out his thesis and methodology. He seeks to answer primarily three questions, namely how British Bhangra is used to formulate the “South Asian” identity in contemporary UK, how listeners negotiate often culturally dissonant conservative lyrics, and finally how Bhangra is used as a conduit for and obstacle to intergenerational connection. To do this Dudrah relies slightly on academic work but largely interviews with participants of the Bhangra Beat scene. Furthermore he does a textual analysis of lyrics to gain more insight into how expressed lyrical sentiments match up to the cultural values of listeners, and if not, how this gap is dealt with.

A question arises. Dudrah describes the traditional account of the ascendance of Bhangra that claims that 2^nd generation British Bhangra musicians naturally incorporated dub, hip-hop and British black music through technological mediums into the sound. This account makes the invention of “Bhangra beat” seem almost historically inevitable. It seems that there is a broad pattern of second-generation music, notably in Diasporic cultures, incorporating music. Is this mainly a function of the way in which the technology of music production itself intrinsically leads towards this, is it a characteristic function of Diaspora music-making, or is it a genuine innovation?