Dr Sat Balkaransingh pays tribute to musician, teacher, researcher and bandleader Narsaloo Ramaya, who died last month.
Part I
Narsaloo Ramaya was born on December 25, 1919 to poor immigrant parents from India.A product of the barracks of the Hermitage estate in south Trinidad, he lifted himself above his inherited meagre circumstances and went on to make fundamental contributions to creating Indo-Trinidadian pride and national self-respect through his artistic and literary pursuits. He was one of the pioneers in the development of the culture of the national community as an artist, a teacher and mentor, a researcher and an organiser.
By his origins Narsaloo differed from the majority of Indians in Trinidad. His parents originated from South India–his father from Hyderabad and mother from Vishakhapatnam–and spoke Telugu. Researchers usually know only about North Indian Bhojpuri speakers, but there were other ethnic groups and languages brought from India, and Narsaloo's story belongs to the history of the others.
His first ten years were spent in the sugar estates, but when the first Indian film, Bala Joban, reached Trinidad in 1935 and was screened in Port-of-Spain, Narsaloo was already living in the city, at No 34 Queen Street.
The arrival of Indian films significantly changed how Indo-Trinidadians saw themselves and how they projected themselves. Before 1935 Indo-Trinidadian music lived in sarges, small, intimate performances in which the artistes and their small, select audiences all sat on paals; jute bags covered by white flour bags on the ground. Those were the days of the baithak ganas.
That was the musical culture of rural Indians when Narsaloo's family lived on the estates, but they moved to Port-of-Spain in 1931, in search of a better life, just before Indian films shifted the centre of Indo-Trinidadian gravity to the urban areas and country towns. The film songs performed by Chook Cham's (Ahmad Khan) pioneering Modern Indian Orchestra, of which Narsaloo was a founding member, and its successor Naya Zamana, changed things significantly.
The small gatherings of aesthetic communion, the mehfils, were replaced by larger, more public shows. The musicians graduated from paal singing to sitting on chairs on the stage and wearing jackets and ties or orchestral attire or "band clothes"–similar coloured shirts and pants.
You no longer held your dholak (double-mouthed drum) under the crook of your knee, as was the norm when sitting flat on the ground. You put it on a specially prepared stand in front of you and played it. Ramsamooj Gosine notes that during this period: "Orchestras worked feverishly to perfect their pieces and rehearse their singers. It was in this era that names like Myodeen Ackbarali, King Ratiram, Jagan Pandohie, Rhoda Asgarali, Tarran Persad and Lakshmi Rampersad filled the hearts of many people."
The singers stood up and with microphone in hand, delivered their renditions. Sophistication had entered stage, musical presentations. Unlike earlier village forms of Indian music and dance, the new Indian orchestras were more town creations.
Narsaloo, who had some western vocal music training from his primary school, Nelson Street Boys' RC, and his friends knew what was taking place in a wider social context and abroad. They had already begun to recognise the changes from the western movies. They played more modern film music on the cinema stages.
During the "cooking night" events prior to Hindu weddings, there were Indian orchestra performances. These performances of modern film music were usually followed by some traditional folk and local Indian classical music and dancing that had been preserved in the estates and villages.
The impact of the orchestras that Narsaloo co-founded (Naya Zamana and later Triveni Orchestra) was considerable on the local Indian population. They attracted the best talents, the best singers, the best instrumentalists, each artiste being a big name in his or her own right. Artistes such as Tarran Persad, AM Mohammad, Ganga Persad, Sonny Chandi, Sewbalack and singer-dancer Champa Devi (Fatima Rahim) were the pride of the local Indian population.
Naya Zamana played film music. The Indian films had changed the successive generations of Indo-Trinidadians' concept of India and Indian culture. Naya Zamana and a few other large and popular orchestras, were central to that growing Indo-Trinidadian self-awareness and self-confidence.
The Naya Zamana orchestra performed to an audience of over 40,000 people at the Indian Centenary celebrations in Skinner Park, San Fernando in 1945, which was marked with pomp and pageantry. It was again in the forefront of the launch of the first Indian radio programme in 1947, Indian Talent on Parade, hosted by the then 20-year-old Kamaluddin Mohammed on Radio Trinidad. Thereafter he featured regularly on the show.
Narsaloo also filled in as a singer in his own right, on this programme, whenever other scheduled artistes failed to show. In addition to performing, he travelled widely throughout Trinidad with his new friend, cultural enthusiast, radio host and impresario, known among his peers as Kamal, functioning as a talent scout for Kamal's radio programme featuring local artistes performing Indian music.
With Kamal, later affectionately referred to as Chaarch (short for Cha Cha, meaning father's brother), they "discovered," among others, Isaac Yankaran in Barataria and Harry Mahabir is San Juan, two artistes who were later to rise to national prominence.
Ramaya functioned more or less as Mohammed's secretary in planning and implementing his public artistic programmes. He did regular performances of Indian music on Radio Trinidad for more than 30 years on the programme Sunday Morning Indian Hour, which carried a substantial number of local artistes and their local inputs.
The cinema industry was also growing rapidly, from the 1940s up to the 1970s. Cinemas were known as theatres and indeed each cinema had a large stage in front of the screen. The cinemas-cum-theatres hosted regular and full concerts with orchestras such as Naya Zamana, Dil-e-Nadan, Solo Sangeet, Nau Jawan, Jit Seesahai Melody Makers Orchestra, Indian Art Orchestra, Dindial Kanik and his orchestra, and many others.
Sometimes an orchestra would be billed alongside a single Indian movie but such events were, however, usually for fundraising charity concerts. The stage shows involved singers, backed up by full orchestration and dancing.
The cinema shows were also socialising venues, for in those days there weren't many entertainment areas in which Indians could meet socially, boys interact with girls or old friends exchange gossip and jokes. There were only weddings and the theatre. Birthdays weren't very important social events, and there were no public fetes that attracted the Indians in large numbers, until much later, after Independence.
So, the sole regular event was at the theatre, whose Hindi movies appealed to the whole family. People socialised before the show, at the intermission and again after two long movies. And when Naya Zamana "clashed" with other orchestras in the same concert, the theatre was full. Promoters like the Mohammed brothers particularly arranged these clashes of the "giants," the orchestras and their performers.
Narsaloo straddled a third development, after Independence, when Indians sought to establish themselves, to leave their mark on the social, political, cultural and religious fabric of the new T&T. In this period Indian artistes were beginning to be included in national culture, and Narsaloo was in the forefront.
In 1964 he took leadership of the Naya Zamana Indian Orchestra from the ailing Naseer Mohammed. That same year he co-founded and was appointed the vice-president of the National Council for Indian Music and Drama, with Bisram Gopie, a music patron from South, as its president. The organisation was later renamed National Council for Indian Culture. Hansley Hanoomansingh later succeeded Gopie as its president, with Ramaya remaining vice president.
The Naya Zamana under Narsaloo's leadership performed in the country's premier concert auditorium, Queen's Hall, which at that time didn't host many Indian shows.In 1965 he led the Indian segment of the T&T contingent to the Commonwealth Arts Festival in Britain. Two years later he was again representing T&T, this time leading the Indian section of T&T's contingent to the World Fair in Montreal, Canada, Expo '67.
Torrance Mohammed and James Lee Wah, members of that contingent and contemporaries of Narsaloo, remember that the Indian segment comprised seven artistes, five musicians and two dancers; dholak, concertina (accordion), dhantal, harmonium and violinist, with lead singer being Tarran Persad.
The dancers were Harry Sampath from the Raas Mandal group in Penal and Nizam Mohammed, former dancing partner of Champa Devi. Narsaloo was the violinist. Torrance and Cyril St Lewis (deceased) were choreographers, and Lee Wah was stage manager.
The T&T contingent performed daily at the T&T in Montreal, from April to October of that year.
Part II of this tribute will be published in next week's Sunday Guardian.