Anglo-Indian Identity, Knowledge, and Power
Western Ballroom Music in Lucknow
Bradley Shope
Beginning in the first half of the 20th century, Western ballroom and dance music began to make its way into Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, as well as other cities in North India. It was imported via gramophone disks, radio broadcasts, and sheet music coming from Europe and America. In the 1930s, an increasing number of dance halls, railway social institutes, auditoriums, and cafe´s were built to cater to a growing number of British and Americans in India, satisfying their nostalgia for the live performance of the foxtrot, the tango, the waltz, the rumba, big-band music, and Dixieland. Influenced by sound and broadcast technology, sheet music, instrument availability, the railway system, and convent schools teaching music, an appreciation for these styles of music was found in other communities. Especially involved were Portuguese Goans and Anglo-Indians, defined here as those of European and Indian descent who were born and raised in India.1 For these two groups, it served to assert their identities as distinct from other South Asians and highlighted that their taste for music reached beyond the geographical boundaries of India. Numerous types of media, institutions, and venues contributed to this vibrant Western music performance culture in Lucknow in the early 20th century. James Perry, an elderly Goan musician, and Mr. John Sebastian and Mr. Jonathan Taylor,2 two elderly Anglo-Indian ex-railway workers, were involved in its performance and appreciation.3 By drawing from multiple field interviews in North India conducted with these individuals between 1999 and 2001, and by describing the character of the performance culture, I will highlight the role of music in creating socioeconomic mobility and a distinct identity among Anglo-Indians in Lucknow, and address issues of power relations and colonialism with reference to the consumption of the music. Just before and during World War II, Lucknow was considered a strategic military defense location because of the fear of bombing campaigns in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) by the Japanese military. A large portion of the Allied Eastern Command was moved inland and established in Lucknow to counter
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this threat. A large cantonment area built in the early 19th century greatly increased in size during the war, which generated a growth of businesses in an area adjacent to its periphery (see Llewellyn-Jones 1985). Beginning in the 1920s, this locale, known as Hazratganj, was considered a center for the sale of European goods and services. By the time the British left Lucknow after India won independence in 1947, a number of dance halls, cinema houses, sheet music and instrument stores, and cafe´s were built there to cater to a growing British, Goan, and Anglo-Indian population celebrating the popular and ballroom music
1. The Mayfair Cinema and Ballroom featured pop- ular music and English- language films during the 1920s to 1940s. The audito- rium is currently abandoned and the ballroom is a caf e ´. Luckno w , I ndia. (Photo by Bradley Shope)
originating from America and Europe. Cafe´s and dance halls with names such as Magnolia’s Cafe´, the Ambassador, the Mayfair Ballroom, Melrose, the Soldier’s Club, the Silver Snow, and the Royal Cafe´ catered to the performance of the music. Cinema halls such as the Mayfair Cinema (plates 1 and 2), Capitol Cinema, Nishat Cinema, Prince Cinema, Wesley Cinema, and Plaza Cinema showed English-language films from Europe and America. Godino’s Music Shop in Hazratganj was selling and distributing sheet music and instruments. All of these venues supported the economic growth of the music. The styles of music performed were the jazz foxtrot, the popular waltz, the popular tango, big-band jazz, swing, cabaret songs, and Hollywood war-film songs. Dependent on technology and trans–regional/global economic networks for their dissemination, these styles were mass-mediated, and as such were heard by large numbers of people in multiple and often times distant geographic locales. The music was produced, performed, and recorded in Europe and America. But because unique local performance techniques were employed in Lucknow, the performance and consumption of the music was “Indian” in character, especially with reference to improvisational skills taken from North Indian classical music. The performance of the music was “Western” only inasmuch as it was learned by Anglo-Indians and Goans from gramophone discs, films, recorded radio broadcasts, and published sheet music coming directly from Europe and America. Examples of recording artists found in gramophone collections of residents of Lucknow include Glen Miller,
2. Still intact, the lobby of the Mayfair Cinema and Ballroom. Luckno w , I ndia. (Photo by Bradley Shope)
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Survey of 78 RPM Collections in Lucknow
The following is an abbreviated list of 78 RPM disks found in the collections of Raja “Jimmy,” a wealthy man of royal descent living just off Hazratganj in Lucknow, and Mrs. D’Costa, an Anglo-Indian woman. These are all from the 1930s through the 1950s. This list includes only music recorded in Europe and America, but many of the labels included here, including larger labels such as HMV, also pressed songs in Hindi and Urdu. Most of the ballroom music found in both collections was distributed by HMV, which built a factory in Dumdum outside of Kolkata in the early 20th century, and Columbia records.
Raja “Jimmy’s” 78 RPM Collection
“Dance Away the Night.” Leo Riesman and His Orchestra. HMV. “Livin’ in the Sunlight, Lovin’ in the Moonlight.” Ambrose and His Orchestra. HMV.
“You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me.” Ambrose and His Orchestra. HMV.
“To Be in Love.” Warring’s Pennsylvanians. HMV. “Mr. Blackman Cakewalk.” H.M. Goldstream Guards. Gramophone Concert Record-London.
“Silvery Moon and Golden Sands.” Henry Jacques and His Correct Dance Tempo Orchestra. HMV.
“Scotch Country Dance.” Bohemian Orchestra. HMV-London. “The Waltz Dream.” The Black Diamonds. Gramophone Concert Record. HMV-London.
“Following the Sun Around.” Jacques Benard and His Orchestra. HMV- London.
“Too Romantic.” Glen Miller and His Orchestra. HMV-London. “Falling in Love Again.” Jack Hylton and His Orchestra. HMV-London. “You’re Always in my Arms.” Ben Pollack and His Dixieland Central Orchestra. HMV-London.
“Blue Sky’s Are Around the Corner.” M. Pierre and His Strict Dance Orchestra. HMV-London.
Mrs. D’Costa’s 78 RPM Collection
“Easter Parade.” Bing Crosby. Columbia. “Bells of St. Mary’s.” Bing Crosby. Columbia. “Voices of Spring.” Boston Promenade Orchestra. HMV. “Where Is Sometime?” Frank Sinatra. Columbia. “Wish Me Luck.” Gracie Fields. The Twins. “Trees.” Nielson Eddie. HMV. “Dancin’ Banjos.” Multiple Performers. Gramophone Company of India.
“Ballroom Favorites.” Multiple Performers. Spectrum (Holland). “Hello Young Lovers.” Ray Conniff. Hallmark.
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Leo Riesman and His Orchestra, Ambrose and His Orchestra, the Bohemian Orchestra, The Black Diamonds, Jacques Benard, Ben Pollack and His Dixieland Central Orchestra, and Frank Sinatra.4 All are recordings of waltzes, foxtrots, big band, or other pieces that are appropriate in a ballroom or formal dance environment in an auditorium, dance hall, or other establishment with a stage and dancing area. The boxed sidebar gives an example of the styles of music that were available in the 1930s through the 1950s in Hazratganj. One of the main orchestras performing frequently in and around Lucknow beginning in the 1930s was the Savoyans Orchestra (plate 3). Many orchestras had multiple performers playing on diverse instruments such as the ukulele, banjo, trumpet, double bass, saxophone, clarinet, flute, violin, and drums. The number of musical groups and venues increased beginning in the 1930s with the buildup of American and British military personnel during WWII. A testament to the vibrancy of the music scene at this time, a number of elaborate halls were constructed to accommodate the British, Americans, Goans, and Anglo-Indians willing to pay a significant amount of money to attend an evening of dancing.5 An example of one such venue is the Mayfair Cinema and Ballroom constructed in 1939 in Hazratganj in Lucknow. This hall has remarkable art deco characteristics such as “sunburst” hand railings, upward protruding columns, and a streamlined and symmetrical box office design in the lobby of the cinema. Much effort and money was put into constructing this building in a style that mirrored architectural trends in America and Europe. Though only a small fraction of the people in the city at this time were participating in the consumption of this music, they had the power and finances to support an enthusiastic celebration of the music by hiring full orchestras to perform in elaborate halls. These performances continued until Indian Independence.
Constructing Anglo-Indian Musical Knowledge
Formal knowledge about and appreciation for ballroom music and dancing was supported by the convent educational system in India. Many convent schools throughout North India were teaching music, and some even encouraging students to learn jazz. Sheet music was widely available in most cities with well-known schools, and an efficient network of distribution was organized out of Kolkata. Some students were also learning to dance to ballroom music. There were often formal school-sponsored dances that were an outlet for a public appreciation of the music and a forum for social interaction among youth. Students with British ancestry were allocated space at many of the best British-run schools before 1947, and children from a young age were developing an aesthetic for the music both at home and in the school setting. In Lucknow, there were also a small number of private music schools run largely by Goans teaching piano, violin, and ballroom dancing (Advani 2001). For musicians, radio broadcasts and gramophone discs had the most direct impact on the styles of music being performed, musical techniques employed, and the development of virtuosity in musicianship. Consider James Perry, an elderly Goan man who came from a musical family with a Portuguese father who played violin and mother who sang European folk songs in the home. He was exposed to music through his parents and initially learned to play the ukulele. As a young child, he used to take lessons from his father, but when he became exposed to popular music on BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) coming from Europe, his taste in music shifted. He attended La Martinere Boys School in Lucknow, a highly regarded boarding school, where he was exposed to other musicians listening to this music and frequently attended the school-sponsored dances. Perry commented on how he learned to play the guitar in the 1930s:
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The first radio that came into Lucknow was my father’s. We used to play BBC then. [It was] all BBC in the 1930s. We also had Columbia and HMV [gramophone companies]. My father was crazy about [music]. Only because of him I learned music. You could get [sheet] music in [Hazratganj]. Any bloody thing. You could go to the shops. My father taught all bloody music. Then what happened? We started to improvise. My father didn’t like this. Then what happened was that we made our own radios, and listened to what we wanted. My father didn’t like it. Then after that gradually we learned to play the real jazz, I mean the improv. (Perry 2001)
Perry and his brothers made their own radios, and were able to listen to jazz and other Western music via BBC, and probably VOA (Voice of America) and Radio Ceylon, which his father did not approve of. He also had the capacity to buy gramophone disks in the Hazratganj area of Lucknow with money he made working on motorcycles in the early 1930s. All standard ballroom music recordings were available at this time, and people were buying them, especially Anglo-Indians and Goans. Many advertisements for radios and gramophone records and players can be found in The Pionee r , one of the main Englishlanguage newspapers in Lucknow at the time (plate 4).6 Several stores sold them, and multiple brands were available, testament to the influence of technology and media in supporting shifting aesthetics and new performance styles. The radios or gramophone discs that brought ballroom music to India were a luxury people in Lucknow did not have prior to this time. One defining characteristic of these styles of music was improvisation. An ability to improvise in a manner unique to Lucknow and North India was appreciated by the British and Americans living there (Perry 2001). Because of the improvisatory qualities found in the formal structure of the music, there was an outlet for creative expression during a performance. Again consider James Perry. Here he comments on the presence of solo improvisation in the performance of the music:
It was some of the best music [...,] solid. We had some really gifted chaps. And people who used to dance. Good dancers. Starting in the
3. The Savoyans Orchestra performed in Lucknow dur- ing the 1930s. (Courtesy of Barbara Antonis)
4. Advertisement for a G.D.R. Radio in the Pioneer Newspaper in Luck- no w , 3 J anuary 1942. (Courtesy of the Pioneer Newspaper)
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early 1920s there was Louis Armstrong, [then] Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw, [and] Jack Teagarden. I studied all this, I played all this, I listened to their records. I started by playing guitar. I used to solo, and solo over chords, unlike people these days. (2001)
During this interview, Perry continued on by demonstrating improvisatory techniques he used under complex chordal movements. He and other AngloIndians living in Lucknow during the first half of the 20th century took pride in the fact that they could recognize, understand, and appreciate the complexity of improvisation. Perry and the other Lucknow musicians employed classical Indian ragas and other Indian classical music performance techniques in the improvisation, as well as in the ornamentation of the melodic and rhythmic structure. There was also an effort to learn how to properly perform the music in a large dance hall or outdoor setting, which was the context under which British and Americans would have most appreciated its performance. Consider Perry’s remark about the amplification of instruments at this time in Lucknow:
We used to make our own amplifiers. My brother was an electrical engineer. He was always working to make better amplifiers, [to] fine tune them. The sound and depth are spectacular now. But there is something missing. They’ve taken out the essence [with amplifiers now]. Then we made [guitar pick-ups]. I could work with magnets [to make guitar string pick-ups]. And you could make the best transistors: clarity. And you could get Phillips radios. And we got BBC. (2001)
Audio amplifiers were not available in Lucknow at the time, so it was important that the technical knowledge necessary to make audio amplifiers and “pick-ups,” the equipment used to amplify the instruments in a large hall or for an outdoor performance, was appreciated and pursued. Amplification was necessary for the performance of the music on occasions where people were dancing and conversing at a large evening social event, as well as outdoors. The concept of balance and multi-instrument performance practice was also vital. The balancing of instruments contributed to a virtuosic performance of the music, especially because improvisation was involved. Building amplifiers and other equipment demonstrated knowledge of music beyond individual skill and into group performance practice. As plate 5 illustrates, there were often performances involving multiple performers and instrumentations. This advertisement is for a venue in Hazratganj in Lucknow called the “Ambassador,” which was commonly known during World War II as the “American Club” because, according to Perry, American military personnel frequently attended. In this case the orchestra, Boris and His Boys, was performing with a fourmember sax team, a four-member brass section, a bassist, a rhythm man or drummer, a pianist, and a singer, all conducted by Boris, the band leader. Knowledge of group performance practice would have been difficult to grasp by only listening to sound recordings. It was spread in a number of ways in the first part of the 20th century, and most notable here was the modern and efficient railway system. Handsomely designed social clubs at most large and midsize railway stations played a role in passing on techniques and styles of performance, as well as other logistical concerns such as how to build and perform with an amplified sound system. These railway social institutes had large, elaborate dance halls where groups throughout North and Central India performed for railway workers, many of whom were Goan and Anglo-Indian. The larger institutes in Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai on occasion had perfor-
174 Bradley Shope 5. Advertisement for Boris and His Boys at the Am- bassador Club, 29 October 1944. (Courtesy of the Pio-
neer Newspaper) mances by foreign big bands from Britain and America (Sebastian 2000). The railway system throughout North India created a network of musicians and performance venues for local and foreign performers that was an efficient way of connecting musicians with similar interests. Once again, modern technology played a large role in the celebration, development, and consumption of the music.
Constructing Anglo-Indian Musical Identity
Arjun Appadurai (1996 and 2001) addresses globalized cultural forms in a more contemporary light with reference to, for example, Indian cricket, the internet, and an efficient and inexpensive air travel system. Appadurai’s thesis here maintains that various local media, products, and technologies are often global in origin. As such, our knowledge of them may be partially determined by the imagination, as we may not have directly experienced the circumstances under which they were created. In a globalized world, the construction of our social reality is often inseparable from ideas, images, and sounds that come from elsewhere (Appadurai 2001). Modern technology does not necessarily only belong to the latest stage in globalized processes. For decades technology and other institutions have been heavily influencing local sensibilities by creating what Appadurai calls a “global imagination.” In this instance, beginning in the late 1920s and early 1930s, communities of musicians in Lucknow were learning to play new styles of music brought to them by a technologically mediated, nonindigenous source. The sound technology had a significant impact on the Anglo-Indian population, who were enthusiastically appreciating the music and, in Lucknow, were often the gatekeepers at the dance venues, policing the type of patron entering the establishments (Advani 2001). Anglo-Indian identity can be characterized with reference to music, table manners, dress, language, etc., or, more importantly here, the shifting perception of these characteristics among others, both those in power before 1947 and those not. Though all groups, communities, cultures, societies, etc., are characterized in some way by hybridity, Anglo-Indians were shaped under very specific conditions (see Erasmus 2001:21).7 Primarily, their place in South Asian society was determined by the British authority. The British sometimes gave them preference for
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high-level employment, sometimes not. Sometimes they were given positions in the British-run school system, sometimes not. Anglo-Indian identities have been constructed in this context of British power, which at times left little control over self-representation. Once the British left, those who chose not to receive an education, or those who received their education in the British-run schools for the less wealthy, were left without an opportunity for jobs. Many were either uneducated or educated outside of the Indian school system, which also made it difficult to enter Indian universities (Roychowdhury 2000:291–92). Thousands of Anglo-Indians were left impoverished or without employment opportunities after 1947. The scholarship on “hybrid” or “mixed races” most often highlights the idea that people have produced their own identities within the context of their relationships to contrasting groups between which they are considered situated (see Erasmus 2001). Here there is also an emphasis on the production of identity that is marked simultaneously by continuity and change, and the power of individual agency in its construction. In the Anglo-Indian example in the 1930s and 1940s, they were actively appreciating the music through performance, which was a move away from any self-description or self-history with reference to British colonialism, and into the outward celebration of their distinct identities. By saying “this is what we do” in the performance of popular music in Lucknow, Anglo-Indians were also claiming that “this is who we are.” An overwhelming majority of those living in South Asia during the first part of the 20th century did not appreciate Western popular music, but Anglo-Indians did. The British (and Americans during the war) listened to the music and went to clubs and cafe´s, but did not perform it in Lucknow. Most of the musicians were Goan (who again are generally considered Anglo-Indian in Lucknow), with a few non-Goan Anglo-Indians. In their appreciation and mastery of music, Anglo-Indians were distinct from both the British and other Indians. Robert Armstrong, when speaking of aesthetics and taste, maintains that the art and music
