If you en­joy the stir­ring, high-en­er­gy mu­sic and cheer­ful dance moves of bhangra, then you can look for­ward to The Asian Pun­jabi Folk Dance Club who are now in Trinidad on a vis­it. They will be per­form­ing this Wednes­day in Debe, this Thurs­day in San­gre Grande, this Fri­day at UWI in St Au­gus­tine, and this Sat­ur­day at the Di­vali Na­gar site.

Led by the fit, en­thu­si­as­tic dance teacher and chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Shri Ash­wani Ku­mar Shar­ma, the Asian Pun­jabi Folk Dance Club does sev­er­al kinds of dance, in­clud­ing folk, bhangra, jhu­mar, jin­d­ua, gid­dha, mal­wai gid­dha, and the In­di­an har­vest dance called "Kir­ti Di Kuli".

The 12-mem­ber troupe par­tic­i­pates in cul­tur­al and so­cial fes­ti­vals in In­dia as well as in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, and their vis­it here is spon­sored by the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia. The T&T con­certs are a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi In­sti­tute for Cul­tur­al Co-Op­er­a­tion (which is the cul­tur­al arm of the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion) and the T&T Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and the Arts.

A re­lease from the Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi In­sti­tute ex­plains that bhangra, orig­i­nat­ing from the Pun­jab in north­ern In­dia, dates back many cen­turies. Vil­lagers al­ways danced and sang as part of their way of life in this area which his­tor­i­cal­ly was a strong farm­ing area. It has been said that bhangra and its mu­sic orig­i­nat­ed from the farm­ers who sang while tend­ing their fields, sow­ing the seeds and cut­ting the crops at har­vest time to take to the mar­kets.

Af­ter 1947, mil­lions of peo­ple were re­lo­cat­ed be­tween the new na­tions ofInd­ia. The Sikh and Hin­du peo­ple moved to Pun­jab,where the free form of tra­di­tion­al bhangra de­vel­oped in the 1950s. Free form tra­di­tion­al bhangra de­vel­oped dur­ing stage per­for­mances which in­cor­po­rat­ed tra­di­tion­al bhangra moves and al­so in­clud­ed se­quences from oth­er Pun­jabi dances.

The Ma­hara­ja of Pa­tiala re­quest­ed a staged per­for­mance of bhangra in 1953. The first sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ers of this style were a dance troupe led by broth­ers from the Deep­ak fam­i­ly of­Sunam(Manohar, Av­tar and Gur­bachan) and the dhol play­er Bhana Ram Suna­mi.

Tra­di­tion­al bhangra was per­formed on the na­tion­al stage for the first time in 1954 on In­dia's Re­pub­lic Day cel­e­bra­tions. Bhangra grew in pop­u­lar­i­ty dur­ing the 1950s and at­tained a stan­dard­ized form by the 1970s. There­after, tra­di­tion­al bhangra was ex­port­ed to oth­er coun­tries by Pun­jabi em­i­grants.

By the 1990s, mod­ern bhangra was be­ing staged in the Pun­jabi di­as­po­ra, of­ten char­ac­ter­ized by a fu­sion with West­ern dance styles and the use of pre-record­ed au­dio mix­es. Since the 1990s, uni­ver­si­ties and oth­er or­ga­ni­za­tions have held an­nu­al mod­ern bhangra dance com­pe­ti­tions in many places, in­clud­ing the Unit­ed States, Cana­da, Eng­land, and Aus­tralia. At these com­pe­ti­tions, young Pun­jabis, oth­er South Asians, and peo­ple with no South Asian back­ground at all, com­pete for mon­ey and tro­phies.