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Introduction: A Dance Without a Noun
Ask a hundred people what bhangra is and you will get a hundred answers. A wedding. A drum. A fitness class. A song from a film. A costume. Something your auntie does at a party. Something a university society does on a stage. Something you saw once on television and tried to copy in the kitchen.
Every one of those answers is partly right, and that is the problem. The word has been stretched so far that it now covers a farmer's celebration, a chart hit, a workout, a competition and a costume party. When one word means everything, it stops being able to mean anything in particular. People argue past each other, teach each other the wrong things, and sometimes hurt each other without meaning to.
This book makes one claim, and then spends its pages testing it: bhangra is not a thing.
I do not mean that bhangra does not exist. It exists, and it is wonderful. I mean that the English word makes it sound like a single object with fixed edges, something you can own, brand, package and hand over. It is not that. It is a way of moving and celebrating that grew from particular people in a particular place, and it keeps changing in the hands of everyone who does it. It is closer to a verb than a noun. It is something people do.
That difference sounds small. It is not. If bhangra is a thing, then it can be a product, and a product can be improved, simplified, renamed and sold by anyone who gets hold of it. If bhangra is something people do, then the question changes. Who is doing it? Where did they learn it? Who did they learn it from? What are they passing on?
Who this book is for
I have been working in group exercise for a long time. I began training as a certified fitness instructor in 2007, and in 2012 I founded Pungra, a group exercise concept built around Punjabi music and dance-fitness. Since then I have watched the same misunderstandings turn up again and again, in classes, on social media, in marketing, and in my own head.
This book is for three kinds of reader.
If you are Punjabi, it is a way of putting words to things you may have felt without being able to name: the small wince at a mispronounced word, the irritation when your music is called "Bollywood", the odd feeling of watching your own wedding dance sold back to you as a workout.
If you are not, it is an invitation, not a telling-off. You are very welcome here. Most people who get this wrong were never given the right version, and the aim is to give it to you plainly, without shame.
If you teach or want to teach, it is a working guide. You will find questions to ask, habits to build and a standard you can hold yourself to, whoever you are and wherever you teach.
What this book is not
It is not a scholarly history. Where I rely on published sources I say so, and where the evidence is thin or disputed I say that too. Bhangra has been written about by historians, musicologists and ethnomusicologists who know far more than I do, and the notes at the end point you towards them. It is also not a rulebook from a governing body. It is one practitioner's attempt to put a lot of scattered, hard-won understanding in one place.
It is also not a claim that there is one correct way to do bhangra. The whole point is the opposite. Because bhangra is not a thing, there is no single version to defend. But there are better and worse ways of describing, crediting, teaching and respecting it, and those are worth getting right.
How the book is organised
The first part is about words and roots: the name, the harvest, the map and the family of dances bhangra belongs to. The second part follows the movement of people and music from the villages of Punjab to Southall, Birmingham and beyond, and explains why bhangra and Bollywood are not the same thing. The third part is about the modern meeting of bhangra and fitness, and about respect: what appropriation means, who gets to teach, and how to teach well. The last chapter gives you something to take away.
You can read it in order, or jump to the chapter you need. Where one chapter leans on another, I name the chapter rather than number it.
If you remember only one idea from the whole book, make it this one: say it correctly, credit it generously, and keep learning. Everything else is detail.