Brooklyn-based musician Sonny Singh has resigned himself to the possibility that he may not get a warm welcome to India if his new song, Koi Bol Ram, gets significant traction. The reason: the song about religious unity features visuals from the the anti-CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) protests that took place earlier this year, and has been released at a time when a number of people who participated in the agitation have been arrested and charged under draconian laws like the UAPA, or Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
“If this video gets circulated a lot, am I going to get a visa when I come down to India? I don’t know, but I can’t make decisions based on fear. I do realise I have the privilege to operate like that,” said Singh, who plays the trumpet and dhol, and also sings. “Would I make this song if I lived in India? I really hope I would,” he told
HuffPost India via video.
Koi Bol Ram, a single from 40-year-old Singh’s first solo album Chardi Kala, takes lines from a 16th-century shabad on religious harmony by the fifth Guru of Sikhism, Guru Arjan, and sets it to a contemporary musical arrangement. So far so uncontroversial, but the song begins with chants of Azadi and the music video (directed by Nadia Awad) includes powerful footage of the protests at Shaheen Bagh and Kolkata, interspersed with visuals of Singh’s own dhol-wielding presence at an anti-CAA demonstration in New York City. This is his attempt at drawing attention to the bravery on display during the countrywide anti-CAA protests, and to build awareness among the Indian diaspora, claims the trumpeter, who is also inspired by radical Sufi poets like Kabir, Bulleh Shah and Shaikh Farid.
″It’s not merely an issue of Muslim’s civil rights, it’s a much bigger. So when I decided to do my solo stuff, I figured this deserved a mention. I want more and more people in the US to understand what’s happening (in India). Especially those who think it doesn’t affect them, including the Sikhs living here. A lot of these guys have been commenting on my tweets, saying, ‘how can you be against the CAA, especially since it allows persecuted Sikhs from Afghanistan to come to India’ — but that’s rubbish. The rise of fascism has been global, so the call for unity needs to be global too,” Singh said.
Born to parents who moved out of Pune and settled in North Carolina (NC) in the mid ’70s, the themes of inclusion, exclusion, identity, and politics resonate with Singh at a personal level. Growing up as one of two (turban-wearing) Sikh boys in the predominantly White town of Charlotte, he was from an early age subjected to various forms of racism and bigotry. “I remember being bullied pretty much every day in school, having my turban pulled off on the playground, being asked where I’m from in an almost threatening way,” he recalled.
Singh was nine years old when he picked up the trumpet “arbitrarily” for the band in his elementary school, and music soon became an important creative outlet for him even though no one in his family had similar inclinations. However, it was a while before he began using music as a cultural bridge of sorts. “When I got to college, I started a ska band, but we didn’t really start experimenting with South Asian music till I was in my twenties,” Singh said, adding that it was only after he moved to Brooklyn and joined the critically acclaimed and rather politically charged bhangra-fusion band Red Baraat in 2008 that he began to fuse his Western influences with the sounds of the Punjabi heartland.
It’s audible in Koi Bole Ram too, where a trumpet-and-dhol riff reminiscent of traditional baraat (wedding procession) music punctuates the song, and mirrors the celebratory nature of the protests. Incidentally, the melody was composed almost a year prior to the anti-CAA agitation but the idea for the video was sparked after Singh got involved in the cause. “As I started going to these protests and learned more about the CAA, I figured it was an important issue to highlight in my music. And what better song to do it than this one? The meaning of this song seems directly in touch with the rise of Hindu nationalism… it’s troubling how relevant this song is even today,” he said.
The ascent of Hindu nationalist sentiments, according to Singh, is not a phenomenon only in India but also among the diaspora. He also says that he has been witnessing a rise in Hindu nationalism for close to two decades, although this accelerated when the BJP came to power in 2014.
“In the US there are a lot of upper-caste Hindus who have accumulated a lot of power in Indian-American circles. Many of us with South Asian ancestry have been troubled by this. I’ve been trying to create alternative spaces for South Asian youth, because the Hindu nationalists have been doing a lot to bring the young people into the Hindutva fold, by organising these Hindu summer camps and student associations. If you dig deep, many of these have links to the VHP or RSS. A lot of us in the US have been working to counter these efforts,” Singh said.
As for the political turmoil in India, he stays clued in with the help of a reliable network of friends who he says work as organisers and activists on the frontlines. A regular accompaniment to his morning chai is a radio broadcast called Democracy Now! that covers American politics and important stories from all over the world, and he is also educating himself on caste. “Of late I’ve been going to this portal called Velivada. I’m learning so much about caste oppression, the struggle of Bahujans. There are caste dynamics in the Sikh community too, which I’ve been trying to learn more about. Velivada carries a very specific anti-caste narrative, which is something that we seem to lack in our ‘progressive’ discourse,” Singh said.
According to Singh, he saw “frightening parallels between the rise of Modi-ism in India and Trumpism here — empowering Hindu nationalists on one side, and empowering white nationalists on the other”.
His emotions around the political turmoil in the US and towards the CAA, he said, are not dissimilar. “I wanted to release this video — and this message of unity and resistance to fascism — now. I stand in solidarity with Muslims, Dalits, and other marginalised groups in India who are directly impacted by Hindu nationalism — not only through government policy but through interpersonal violence and harassment. It’s something I have experienced a great deal as a Sikh in the United States. Our struggles are intertwined,” Singh said.
Yet, he remains hopeful. The name of his album is Chardi Kala after all, he pointed out, which is “a Sikh concept of eternal optimism”. This optimism has, at least, been rewarded on one side of the globe. When it finally became clear that Joe Biden had won the US presidential elections, Singh took to the streets with his trumpet in celebration. “It was cathartic! We are not celebrating neoliberalism, centrism, or surface level identity politics — we are celebrating the defeat of an authoritarian tyrant,” he said. He is also delighted about Kamala Harris’s ascent. “My mixed race Black and desi niece and nephew will now have a Vice President who shares their racial identity. Symbolically that is a really big deal.”