Caribbean Beat — November/December 2021 (#167)

Indian classical music in Trinidad has no younger, formally
trained musicians and singers. Most are still students.
Unlike Western musicians, who can attain formal
qualifications by sitting the Trinity College or other
internationally recognised examinations, Indian classical
music studies have to be done in India, as there are no
formal examination bodies in the West. Furthermore,
job prospects as music teachers at formal institutions
in Trinidad are near to absent for anyone trained in
Indian classical music. The University of the West Indies
is perhaps one of the few bodies that provides a small
window of opportunity.
The Internet opened the world of Indian classical dance to
her. Rajah’s research in Bharatanatyam brought up names like
E. Krishna Iyer, Balasaraswati, and Rukmini Devi, a group of
artists who were commonly known as the Revivalists. They
were responsible for introducing Bharatanatyam to a public
stage. In previous centuries, Bharatanatyam was practiced only
by the Devadasis, women who lived within the inner sanctums of
the temples of Tamil Nadu and were considered to be the brides
of the gods. Among the Revivalists, Rukmini Devi Arundale,
founder of the Kalakshetra Foundation in Chennai, was the one
to whom Rajah was most attracted.
“She was a Brahmin, so she went against all of her cultural
conditionings and beliefs to learn this artform, and created this
huge institute for Bharatanatyam,” Rajah explains. “There were
flocks of students who went to specialise in the artform, and left
Kalakshetra as budding artistes. That is something I wanted to
do. Not only go to her institute, but do the exact same thing that
she did for her country, because I felt when I was young I would
have loved to have a Rukmini Devi as my mentor . . . I would
have felt so much better existing with the passion that I had,
because this was something that was not mainstream.”
Rajah’s quest took her on scholarship to Kalakshetra, an
institution that is “like military camp for dance,” as she describes
it. There, after four years of intense study to earn her Diploma in
Dance, it was back in Trinidad that her trials would begin.
“After doing all of that, and coming back to Trinidad to try
and share your knowledge or add that artform into the cultural
community here, you are then labelled with, ‘You feel you know.
You is it because you went away and study’ — which is so
unfortunate. It really breaks down all of your spirit . . . So you
really have to crawl into a hole and create magic again, just to
escape the ole talk.”
Additionally, Bharatanatyam is linguistically and musically
different to most other Indian classical forms in Trinidad. The
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