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Original Articles

“Looking for ah Indian Man”: Popular Culture and the Dilemmas of Indo-Trinidadian Masculinity

NOTES

  • See Rhoda Reddock, “Conceptualizing ‘Difference’ in Caribbean Feminist Theory”, in New Caribbean Thought: A Reader, ed. Brian Meeks and Folke Lindhahl (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2001), 196–209.
  • Trinidad and Tobago Population and Housing Census, 2011, Demographic Report, 15
  • Bridget Brereton, A History of Modern Trinidad (Kingston: Heinemann Caribbean, 1981), 114.
  • Audra Diptee, “Indian Men, Afro-Creole Women: ‘Casting’ Doubt on Interracial Sexual Relationships between the Indo and Afro Communities of the Late Nineteenth Century Caribbean”, Immigrants and Minorities 19, no. 3 (November 2000): 1.
  • Ibid., 14.
  • CO 571/4 West Indies 22528, Petition of Indentured Labourers in Trinidad, 1916, to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 17 July 1917.
  • Ibid.
  • CO 571/5 Trinidad 60843, Grievances of Certain Destitute Indians. Further letter to Under-Secretary of State requesting repatriation to India.
  • Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (London and New Delhi: Sage, 1997), 220.
  • Sarah E. Morton, ed., John Morton of Trinidad: Pioneer Missionary of the Presbyterian Church in Canada to the East Indians in the British West Indies; Journals, Letters and Papers (Toronto: Westminster, 1916).
  • Quoted by Patricia Mohammed, in Gender Negotitations among Indians in Trinidad: 1917–1947 (Houndmills and Basingstoke/The Hague: Palgrave/Institute of Social Studies, 2002), 192.
  • Ibid.
  • See Sangita Chari, “‘One Together and One Apart’: Interracial Marriages between Indo-Trinidadian Women and Afro-Trinidadian Men” (MA thesis, University of Florida, 2005). One Indian woman whom I interviewed recently stated that whereas she grew up hearing that marriage or sexual relations between an Indian woman and a ‘negro’ man was abhorrent, distasteful and low, she never once heard any admonition against Indian men for relationships with ‘negro’ women. See also Catherine M. Douillet, “A Contradictory Callaloo: Ethnic Divisions and Mixing in Trinidad” (PhD diss., University of Iowa, 2005).
  • Chari, “One Together”, 186, 187.
  • Patricia J. Saunders, “Mapping the Roots/Routes of Calypso in Caribbean Literary and Cultural Traditions”, in Music, Memory, Resistance: Calypso and the Caribbean Literary Imagination, ed. Sandra Pouchet-Paquet, Patricia J. Saunders and Stephen Steumpfle (Kingston: Ian Randle, 2007), xx—xxii.
  • An attempt to create a counter to the political calypso was made with the establishment of pitchakaree by the Hindu Prachar Kendra. This, however, has never emerged as a truly popular form. See Ravi-Ji, “Calypso and Chutney: Parallel Development and Integration”, Caribbean Dialogue 3, no. 4 (October/December 1997): 73–76.
  • Rhoda Reddock, “Jahaji Bhai: The Emergence of a Dougla Poetics in Trinidad and Tobago”, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 5, no. 4 (1998): 569–601.
  • See Zeno Obi Constance, Tassa, Chutney and Soca: the East Indian Contribution to the Calypso (San Fernando, Trinidad: Z.O. Constance, 1991).
  • Gordon Rohlehr, “Man Talking to Man: Calypso and Social Confrontation in Trinidad from 1970 to 1984”, Caribbean Quarterly 31, no. 2 (1985): 1.
  • Gordon Rohlehr, “I Lawa: The Construction of Masculinity in Trinidad and Tobago Calypso”, in Interrogating Caribbean Masculinities: Theoretical and Empirical Analyses, ed. Rhoda Reddock (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2004), 343.
  • See Tina Ramnarine, Creating Our Own Space: The Development of an Indian-Caribbean Musical Tradition (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2001); Tejaswini Naranjana, Mobilizing India: Women, Music and Migration between India and Trinidad (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2006).
  • See Naranjana, Mobilizing India; Jocelyne Guilbault, Governing Sound: The Cultural Politics of Trinidad's Calypso Musics (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
  • Aisha Mohammed, “Love and Anxiety: Gender Negotiations in Chutney-Soca Lyrics in Trinidad”, Caribbean Review of Gender Studies, Issue 1, April 2007, https://sta.uwi.edu/crgs/april2007/journals/aisha_mohammed.pdf, 1.
  • Drupatee Ramgoonai is the most successful and well-known female chutney and chutney-soca performer.
  • Mohammed, “Love and Anxiety”, 10–12.
  • Ibid., 18.
  • Neil M. Sampath, “An Evaluation of the ‘Creolisation’ of Trinidad East Indian Adolescent Masculinity”, in Trinidad Ethnicity, ed. Kevin Yelvington (Knoxville: University of Tennesee Press, 1993), 239.
  • Ibid., 247.
  • Partha Chatterjee, “The Nationalist Resolution of the Women's Question”, in Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History, ed. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989), 233–53.
  • Sanatanists are the dominant Hindu group in Trinidad and Tobago, the central institution being the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha.
  • Shalini Puri, “Race, Rape and Representation: Indo-Caribbean Women and Cultural Nationalism”, in Matikor: The Politics of Identity for Indo-Caribbean Women, ed. Rosanne Kanhai (St Augustine: University of the West Indies School of Continuing Studies, 1999), 234–81.
  • Perceptions of Afro-Trinidadian male (and female) racialised hypersexuality derive from colonialist constructions of black sexuality dating back to the seventeenth century. See Ann McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995), 51.
  • See Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis, Racialized Boundaries: Race, Nation, Gender, Colour and the Anti-Racist Struggle (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 113.
  • Rohlehr, “I Lawa”, 374.
  • Soca is a modern genre of calypso, also native to Trinidad and Tobago, which in contrast to traditional calypso, focuses more on dance music than lyrics.
  • Naranjana, Mobilizing India, 189.
  • Ibid., 216.
  • Newsday, 7 January 2004.
  • Trinidad Express, 16 January 2004.
  • Indeed, at many of the public events they leapt unto the stage with new pride to join Denise in ‘wining’ on the stage. (Wining: dance movements using waist movements; derived from ‘winding’.)
  • Ramlogan was appointed attorney-general in the new People's Partnership government that assumed office on 25 March 2010.
  • Trinidad Guardian, 18 January 2004; my emphasis.
  • Lady Gypsy is a member of a leading calypso-soca family. She is sister of calypsonian Gypsy, who is a member of the People's Partnership government 2010–2015, and mother of Fay Ann Lyons, former monarch of the Road March and Soca Monarch competitions.
  • Chutney is a Trinidadian popular musical style derived from the integration of calypso and Indian folk music forms.
  • Trinidad Guardian, 30 January 2005.
  • See Arjun Appadurai's chapter “Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a Transnational Anthropology”, in his book Modernity at Large in Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 48–65.

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