Two of a Kind

Heavily influenced by the tunes brought in by migrant Indian workers and by rhythms from erstwhile African slaves, the unique music of Trinidad & Tobago could very well be a metaphor for the twin Caribbean islands themselves, where fusion and duality are found everywhere.

By Raul Dias

Never have I been made more aware of the currency of the phrase “Necessity is the mother of invention” than in the twin island nation of Trinidad & Tobago. Carelessly strewn across the shockingly blue waters of the Caribbean Sea like a pair of emerald danglers, Trinidad & Tobago that are part of the Lesser Antilles chain of islands may be a mighty trek to get to from India. But once there, this happy-go-lucky country shows off its ingenuity and adaptability in myriad ways. Most noticeably in its music.

Limein’ and Steelpanin’
Blessed with a unique vocabulary that is a fusion of everything from pidgin English to Bhojpuri and even old Hindustani, one of the favourite words used by the local Trinbagonians is limein’. This is one word that you’re sure to come across in conversation at least once every couple of hours here. Put very simply, limein’ is the art of hanging out just about anywhere with friends or family. All this, with a spot of music thrown in for good measure. Often, the choice of music is either that produced by a steelpan band or a unique hybrid genre called chutney soca.
To start off with the former, as the national musical instrument of Trinidad & Tobago, the steelpan is made from oil drums hammered on one end and divided into grooves and notes. The steelpan also bears the distinction of being the only acoustic musical instrument to be invented in the twentieth century. Panbands were said to have originated when erstwhile African slaves working on the sugar plantations were prohibited from participating in the annual carnival.
So, they came up with their own version that they called canboulay where most of the percussion instruments were crafted out of household utensils and other items like pans, oil drums, and garbage can lids. Today, panbands are a vital part of any Trinbagonian celebration—particularly carnival.
And one of the best ways to get an earful of steelpanin’, is by visiting a local pan yard. One such place is the Crazy Golden Eagles pan yard at the George Street Community Centre in downtown Port of Spain that is the biggest city on the island of Trinidad and the capital of the nation. What this yard basically is, is a sort of community centre where steelpan bands comprising of musicians of all ages—including kids—practice almost every day, honing their skills for their line-up of various performances across the country.

The Desi Connection
Yuh feel this Indian gyal cyah come and wine and wuk she waist
Take over the street make ah bacchanal in the place
Drop it to the ground and sh-sh-shake it all around
Push up on ah speaker beat it like ah Indian drum…
…go the opening lines of ‘Indian Gyal’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmPFOhkDTdI) a monster hit of 2015 by the reigning queen of Trinidad & Tobago’s chutney soca scene—Drupatee Ramgoonai. With its pulsating rhythms and a unique blend of pidgin English and Bhojpuri lyrics set to decidedly East Indian dance tunes brought in by Trinidad & Tobago’s Indian immigrants who started coming here from UP and more particularly Bihar in the mid-1800s, chutney soca is another national obsession of the islands. Particularly in Port of Spain’s raucous nightclubs and during carnival season. Taking on the drumbeats of the typically Caribbean ‘soul of calypso’ aka soca music and merging them with the sounds of tablas, shehnais, dhantals and sitars, is the hybrid Indo-Trinbagonian chutney soca music genre.
And while it may not have been born out of necessity and oppression, just like steelpanin’, chutney soca is very much a twentieth century invention. Late twentieth century to be more precise when pioneers of this musical genre like Lord Shorty gave it form in the early 1970s. However, it was only in 1987 that the term ‘chutney soca’ was itself coined by Drupatee with the release of her debut album simply titled Chutney Soca. Within one year, with the release of her next single ‘roll up de tassa’, this style of music got co-opted by the neighbouring, Indian immigrant-rich South American countries of Suriname and Guyana, where it is still insanely popular.     
Interestingly, chutney soca even finds a place for itself in worship in Trinidad & Tobago. The Port of Spain suburb of Carapichaima is home to a gigantic 85-feet tall Hanuman statue that occupies prime position at the saffron-hued Dattatreya Mandir. It is here that locals not just come to pay obeisance to the statue of the Monkey God that is believed to be the largest one outside India, but also to sit down to a rather sonorous chutney soca-style bhajan singing session every evening.
And just when I thought that I’d heard it all, en route back to Port of Spain from Carapichaima, my driver of Indian origin introduced me to the three newest sub genres of chutney soca that he insisted on playing on the car’s stereo. He called them ‘chutney rap’, ‘chutney jhumar’ and ‘chutney lambada’. ‘nuff said!


Travel log
Getting There 
As there are no direct flights from India to Trinidad & Tobago, one needs to fly to Port of Spain via New York, Miami or London on airlines like Jet Blue, American Airlines and Caribbean Airlines. Indian nationals do not require a visa to visit Trinidad & Tobago.

Stay
Despite being a relatively small city, accommodation options are abundant in Port of Spain catering to most budgets. Perched up on a small hill that overlooks the city’s iconic Queen’s Park Savannah, the centrally-located  Hilton Trinidad & Conference Centre (www3.hilton.com) is a good pick. Here, one can expect to pay around Rs 10,896 for a double room with breakfast. The Hotel Normandie (www.normandiett.com) in St. Ann’s is another great option. The tariff for a doble occupancy room in this 4-star property is Rs 8,911 without breakfast.

Tip
* As a protective haven for the scarlet ibis which is the national bird of Trinidad & Tobago, the Caroni Swamp sanctuary, a little out of Port of Spain, is a great place to commune with nature. A boat tour down the meandering swamp gives you a glimpse, not just of the habitat of the scarlet ibis, but also of snakes, spiders and other inhabitants of this vast ecosystem.


(An edited version of this article first appeared in the 23rd May 2020 issue of The Hindu Business Line newspaper's BLink section on page 20 https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/takeaway/music-of-trinidad-and-tobago/article31648003.ece)

May’s Missing Maushis

Summer in Mumbai just isn’t the same without the original ‘Spice Girls’—aka. groups of itinerant spice grinding ladies—whose rhythmic pounding of the many spices that go into the famous East Indian bottle masala blend are set to the tune of traditional work songs called ovis. 

By Raul Dias

Ever since I can remember, synesthesia has played a particularly important role in my life. Numbers for me have genders. Days of the week have a definite hierarchy, with Sundays leading the pack. And all my months are neatly divvied up to form a rainbow of colours.
May’s colour has always been somewhere on the spectrum between a buttery yellow and an earthy burnt Sienna. No big surprise there. Think bright summer suns, freshly baked lemon chiffon cakes and yes, that indescribable hue of a ripe Alphonso mango.
But there are two more shades in the family that truly define the month and by default, summer for me. The almost-neon tangerine shade of freshly pounded East Indian bottle masala that is always stored in amber coloured beer bottles for a longer shelf-life. Thus, the name—bottle masala.

Spicy Talk
While I am not an East Indian by birth, I have always been a big fan of their culture and most pertinently, their cuisine. Having lived most of my life, here in Dadar West, Mumbai, surrounded by a close-knit, strongly matriarchal community of East Indian families led by genial aunties who made it their mission to indulge the budding foodie in me with their yummy curries and succulent roasts. Almost all jazzed up with the ubiquitous East Indian bottle masala. From the coconut milk enhanced mutton lonvas to a spicy chicken moile, the bottle masala reigns omnipotent.
Just like the 36-ingredient Moroccan ras-el-hanout spice blend or the Ethiopian berbere mix, East Indian bottle masala is made up of a bewildering number and variety of spices from the more obvious Kashmiri chillies to the ‘Google-it-now’ nagkesar. The latter—I just learnt for the purposes of this piece—is also called Indian rose chestnut or cobra saffron, by the way!
Added to this, the complex dry spice blend has as many iterations with varying measurements and ratios of spices. I would not be exaggerating if I said that every East Indian family uses a different recipe for bottle masala—some use 20 spices, some 30, while the most elaborate of the lot use up to 40. But try asking any self-respecting East Indian cook to part with their recipe and they will sooner part with their lives. Such is the almost militant level of secrecy that shrouds the hallowed recipe for the masala.
In fact, I remember an old neighbourhood aunty once telling me that East Indian mothers never teach their daughters how to make their bottle masala for the fear of them taking their prized recipe out of the family after getting married. They have no such compunctions, I was informed, for incoming daughters-in-law. I rest my case.

Thump and Grind
This also leads me to a vital link, not just to the whole bottle masala supply chain, but also to my very synesthetically-heightened month of May—the masalawaali maushis. It is the rhythmic thumping sound that these singing, itinerant spice grinding ladies make while pounding the aromatic, roasted spices for the bottle masala that I associate with summer as well. But not this year. Thanks to the pandemic and the ensuing lockdown, my backyard will not be infiltrated by the pungent fumes and lilting melodies originating from my neighbour’s garden. The maushis will not be coming.
Mainly from the local Maharashtrian Agri community, these women are generally always much in demand and need to be booked months in advance. Always armed with their wooden pounding vessel called an ukli and its cohort the mussal which is a mace-like stick with a metal base to hit the ingredients. These groups of ladies travel from house to house from early March to the end of May to grind the family’s annual supply of bottle masala according to each family’s specifications. Making sure to finish up their important task before the monsoon season sets in.
Interestingly, though they may be experts at first sifting, then roasting and finally pounding the spices, they will never fully know the final recipe for the masala. Not only will the house matriarch weigh each ingredient separately and hand it over to the maushis for pounding, but as per tradition, she will also withhold one vital ingredient that she will pound herself that will later be added to the final mix.
Undoubtedly, one of the most enduring and endearing traditions of the maushis is the singing of ovis (which literally means ‘strung together’) while they pound the spices. More specifically, they sing jatyavarchi ovi that are specialised Marathi language grinding songs that are used as poetic metre for rhythmic prose.
One such ovi by Bahinabai who was an unlettered 19th century peasant poet from the Khandesh region of Maharashtra comes to mind and seems a perfect way to sum it all up in times like these. It says:
Get up at midnight, neatly set out the grain
begin working the grinding stone
be patient, don’t talk back, hold your tongue
let the memories of your old life comfort you!
   
SUNDAY RECIPE
Bottle Masala 
(Recipe courtesy Ann Dias)

INGREDIENTS:
1 kg dried red Kashmiri chilies
250 gm dried red Madras chilies
25 gm whole wheat grain
80 gm powdered turmeric
5 gm dagdaphool also called stone flower
200 gm cumin seeds
15 gm fenugreek seeds
500 gm coriander seeds
150 gm mustard seeds
250 gm poppy seeds
50 gm peppercorns
15 gm cloves
250 gm white sesame seeds
15 gm caraway seeds
14-15 green cardamoms
7-8 black cardamoms
10 gm cinnamon stick
10 gm asofoetida
25 gm bay leaves
1 nutmeg
5 gm tirphal also called Japanese pepper
5 gm star anise
5 gm nagkesar also called Indian rose chestnut
15 gm fennel seed
5 gm mace
50 gm whole Bengal gram
5 gm allspice

METHOD:
1. Precisely measure and dry out all the ingredients under hot sun for two days, making sure no moisture remains in them.
2. Over low heat, dry roast the Kashmiri chillies and the Madras chillies for 8-10 mins in a wide bottom pan making sure to not burn them.
3. Similarly roast the rest of ingredients for 7-8 mins on low heat or until they are aromatic.
4. Dry grind the roasted ingredients in several batches until fine, either in a large ukli or in a spice blender. You could also take the mix to a local mill to get it pounded.
5. To stick with tradition, tightly pack the bottle masala into amber- or green-tinted, sterilised beer bottles, sealing the top off with butter paper and hot wax. Otherwise, one can also store it in an airtight container or any other lidded glass container.
(This makes for an approximately 2.5 kg yield of bottle masala, so adjust according to desired quantity)


(An edited version of this article first appeared in the 17th May 2020 issue of The Hindu newspaper's Sunday Magazine section on page 8 https://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/food/mays-missing-maushis-a-mumbai-summer-without-the-itinerant-east-indian-masala-makers/article31589988.ece)

Driving Mr Lazy-Part II (in Turn of Speed.in)

https://www.turnofspeed.in/view_feature.php?b_id=driving-mr-lazy--part-ii