In Mauritius, ‘the political nature of the term Creole suggests several things. Creole and creolization in the Mauritian context are distinct from their West Indian counterparts. In this regard, the innovations brought into the choreographical dimension of the chutney groups will be taken as a key to understanding the adaptation of Indian rural migrants to a new ‘Indian-oceanic’ way of life through the experience of diaspora. 3 On this music, see O’Henry (1988) and Servan-Schreiber (1999, 2003).ģAs a result of the African influence on an Indian folk genre, 3 chutney music embodies the transformation of a music for listening into a music for dancing.Thirdly, it is linked to the redeployment of a new schema of migration towards the Western countries which especially affected the youth, aggravating the frustrations of an entire generation. Secondly, it has to do with the industrialization of the rural sector and the experimentation of the system of ‘ l’usine aux champs’ (the factory in the fields). Firstly, it comes from the introduction of indentured labour of Indian origin into the sugarcane economy and the world of colonial plantations (1834-1884). While studying the chutney music of Trinidad and Surinam, Peter Manuel (2000), Helen Myers (1998) and Tina Ramnarine (1996) explored the relation between Indian folk music, Guyanese kaseko 2 and Trinidadian calypso, but little is known about chutney as a Mauritian musical expression.ĢIf we examine the historicity of this musical form, we can see that it is linked to three transitional periods in the development of Mauritius as a nation. Arrival in Mauritius, cohabitation with the Creole population, working in the sugarcane factory, discovering sega music and the ségatier musician completely changed musical perception, practice and technique of composition. Whereas bhangra music comes from Punjab, the origin of chutney music lies in the rural folk music of Eastern India, namely in the Bhojpuri-speaking regions of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. This term, which connotes a ‘spicy’ music, is also referred to as chatkar (flavour, explosive) or dhamaka (big sound, explosion). 2 Kaseko is a Guyanese dance whose name comes from the French language casser le corps (breaking the (.)ġ In the Indian Ocean, the meeting between Indian and Creole worlds, through the migration of the indentured labour which followed the abolition of slavery in 1834, gave birth to a style of music called ‘chutney’.

Indian bhajans lyrics