Schreffler, Gibb (University of California, Santa Barbara)

Desperately Seeking Sammi:

Re-inventing Women's Dance in Punjab

A paper delivered at the conference of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Southern California Chapter, La Jolla, California, 5 March, 2006

Since India's Independence and the consequent formation of a new state of Punjab, folkloric dances have been one of the main vehicles for showcasing that region's cultural identity. In particular, it seems that no Punjabi cultural event is "complete" without their famous dance, bhangra. An invented tradition born in the 1950s, bhangra at once embodies both traditionality and modernity. Yet while bhangra continues to highlight the presence of Punjabis in modern contexts, its globalization and extensive commercialization in the last decade have robbed the dance of some its effect in evoking traditionality. Concurrently, culture promotion in Punjab has shifted towards an approach that better recognizes dances that had previously been marginalized. In recent years, these factors have created an environment where a few marginalized dances have begun to thrive. Most notably, the confluence of certain events and conditions in the last few years has lead to the emergence of the dance jhummar as a competitor with bhangra for the stakes of traditionality (Schreffler 2005). Both bhangra and the newly popular jhummar, however, have failed in the respect that, being exclusively men's dances, they cannot evoke the traditional aspect of Punjabi women. As if to fill that void, another dance, called sammi, is being promoted alongside jhummar, piggybacking on its successes. Sammi provides performance opportunities for Punjab's growing number of educated young women. In so doing however, a sammi dance has had to be essentially reinvented, which bears a questionable relation to the past form. This paper, which critiques aspects of the dance's modern development, is based on original fieldwork among professional performing artists, interviews with culture promoters, and observation of unfolding events since 2000.

The current atmosphere for folkloric dance in Punjab has its roots in a paradigm shift where promoters of Punjabi staged culture began to conceive of a cornucopia of dances. The variety of forms, or at least the appearance thereof, has come to support clichéd platitudes about the "richness" of Punjabi culture. A milestone in this shift was the 1985 inauguration of the government-funded North Zone Cultural Centre in the city of Patiala. For its subsequent opening ceremonies, The Centre made a conscious effort to include several of the lesser-known performing traditions of the region. Since then, Punjabi dances appear like a sort of pantheon—a spectrum of almost mythic, yet supposedly ubiquitous dances, to which are attributed moods and genders. Like gods and goddess have their "consorts," so seem the dances. In this scheme, jhummar dance (popularly gendered as male) has its consort in the female sammi.

Since at least the mid-18^th century[1] a dance called sammi existed in certain interfluvial forest regions of the Western Punjab (now contained within Pakistan). Exclusively a women’s dance, it typically occurred on joyous social occasions such as weddings, circumcisions, and tonsure ceremonies (Daler 1961?:43). Scholars have suggested that sammi was originally connected with the propitiation of a goddess by the same name (e.g. Bedi 1978:518). Sammi of recent centuries seems to have been mainly danced for recreation, and in its song the word "Sammi" is understood to be a girl's name. The dance was practiced by pastoral, tribal people known collectively as Jangli, as well as, in an exhibitional style, by an itinerant performer tribe called Bazigar. The practice of sammi was greatly disturbed by the 1947 Partition of the Punjab between Pakistan and India. While the mainly Muslim, Jangli people remained in Pakistan, the dance specialists and accompanists, the Hindu Bazigar people, had to leave the area, whence their families got dispersed in India. The Bazigars' arts fell into disuse as they were cut off from their patrons, audiences and patterns of migration. They were integrated into para-village colonies, where their lifestyle substantially changed from that of traveling showman to wage laborer. Those among them who continued the artistic tradition shifted their focus towards bhangra dance accompaniment. While the communal practice of bhangra and jhummar dances also began to vanish after the Partition, these were almost immediately given a life support system in the form of staged performances. However, for several decades there is no record of any similarly staged performances of sammi.

The first modern staging of sammi after Partition seems to exist almost in myth. Officers in government archives had no documents or personal recollection, and doubted the event ever occurred. But a few folk artists tell about a performance they witnessed in 1968,[2] in which the dance performers were older Bazigar women, accompanied by male drummers from their specific tribe. It is considered to have been a reasonable facsimile of sammi as it was danced pre-Partition. Biru Ram, a Bazigar drummer closely related to the performers of that day, proudly claims that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi attended the event, and was delighted by this dance that she had not known existed (personal communication 25 Nov. 2004).

After that occasion, however, sammi did not immediately appear on stage again. When it did appear, it had already begun to transform under the cultivation of a few Bazigar drummer-accompanists from the capital of Chandigarh. Each was a male from a Bazigar tribe that had not specialized in the dance and who took it upon himself to develop a personal version of sammi for teaching college students. One of these, Ustad Garib Dass, was witness to the historic 1968 performance, after which he was inspired to learn more about sammi. But rather than seeking out senior women of his community who may have known the dance, Garib Dass approached his wise old uncle. Garib Dass remembers how, whenever he presented sammi throughout the 70s and 80s, the audiences were enamored of it yet generally puzzled, not knowing what dance they were seeing (personal communication). During this same period professional artists inserted a sammi-inspired step (called sammiaan) into modern bhangra dance's variety routine. It is ironic, therefore, that among laypersons, men who had danced bhangra in college would have been the most aware of sammi at that time.

The next government-sponsored endeavor involving sammi did not occur until 1988. J. S. Ahluwalia, the director of Punjab's Cultural Affairs Department, made a special effort to present and promote a performance of the dance. The Cultural Affairs office is located just adjacent to the area where the sammi-specialist Bazigar drummers live.[3] However, this performance—as all other subsequent performances—included not Bazigar women, but rather local college girls.[4] For the event the Cultural Affairs Department published a brochure by way of introducing sammi. Its photographs, which were staged in a nearby village,[5] appear to depict sammi "in context" as if it were actually practiced there. Girls in tribal attire are pictured gathering outside straw huts, and a decked-out drummer stands conspicuously, as if waiting to play at a moment's notice. The pamphlet's text about sammi is supplemented by an incongruous set of song verses, melodies, and rhythms, which reflect an effort to create a staged, variety routine for sammi analogous to other staged dances.

Sammi's first female director was Daisy Walia. While an instructor in dance at the Government College for Girls in Patiala, Walia introduced sammi to her students, no doubt motivated by the paucity of dances available to young women. Her first presentations of sammi were criticized for historical inaccuracy and certain contrivances. Between 1987 and 2000, the girls at the college presented sammi numerous times throughout India. Walia's presentations developed as she obtained knowledge through interviews with Bazigar women, and visited Pakistan (Daisy Walia, personal communication, 7 March 2005). In 1990, being now under the directorship of Walia's husband (S.K. Ahluwalia) the North Zone Cultural Centre finally sponsored a performance of sammi (Jagjit Singh, personal, 10 Nov. 2004).

Around this period, Prof. Rajpal Singh, a consultant to the NZCC, invited some village Bazigar women to his home. The women were not actively performing anywhere, but they consented a demonstration of some of their songs, of which Rajpal made an ad hoc recording (Rajpal, personal communication, 23 Dec. 2004). The session included the sammi song, and as such represents what is probably its only recording in the East Punjab; indeed this may have been the last time that the Bazigar women ever performed their arts on demand. They are totally absent from the contemporary world of sammi performance. I spoke with a younger-generation Bazigar man who felt strongly about the need for people to see the "real" sammi, and who recounted that his aunt had recollections of sammi. The aunt had been among the group that performed some two decades earlier. While at first the family acknowledged the benefit seeing her would be to my research, I was later discouraged from meeting her on the grounds that when she had performed on the earlier occasion it had angered her husband (son of Mukha Ram, 27 Feb. 2005).

Despite these minor precedents, major interest in sammi did not to grow until after the millennium. When former Cultural Affairs Director Ahluwalia became Vice Chancellor of Punjabi University in 2000, he continued to promote the dance. Fortuitously, Daisy Walia also became their Head of the University's Dance Department. Sammi was included in the University's folk-arts festival of March 2001, in which the Government College for Girls and Punjabi University teams took first and second place respectively ("GCG-Patiala girls shine," 8 March 2001). Afterwards, Prem Chand, a Bazigar drummer from Chandigarh and an infamous braggart, was hired to lead workshops. A performance of his interpretation of sammi was videoed and later transcribed by classical musicians to create a University-published book (Gurnam Singh 2001). Prem's version of sammi has been widely criticized for its contrivances and additions of bhangra-like sequences. Regardless, Prem had the clout to become one of the Patiala administration's relied upon "authorities" on sammi.

A 2002 hit film, Jee Aayan Nu, went on to thrust sammi into the limelight. Being placed at the start of a dance medley, sammi was an ubiquitous sight during the ensuing media blitz for the film. The soundtrack from the film was on continuous rotation for over two years in public places and events like weddings. When Jee Aayan Nu was to be first broadcast on television on Independence Day (15 August) of 2004, it was incessantly advertised, and the sammi sequence appeared in every commercial. Gill Surjeet, a Patiala-based bhangra-coach who created the choreography for the film, states that his rendition of sammi was based on the "sum of his experiences." These included research in books and the odd staged performance. However, much if not most of the sequence was Gill's own invention. He reasons that since sammi is not actively available for study, one learns whatever one can and, in a sense, becomes the closest one can to being an "authority" on the subject (personal communication, 12 April 2005). A further indicator of sammi's arrival occurred at a 2004 award ceremony[6] that honored the director of Jee Aayan Nu (Manmohan Singh). As if in homage to the director's big Punjabi film, the ceremony included a special performance by Ms. Manpreet Akhtar, who had sung the by-then-hit sammi song ("Mai Vari") for the soundtrack. A ridiculously dressed male backing band shouted along on the (women's) refrains. After finishing the song text that was included in the film, Akhtar moved on to add songs that are included in contemporary Patiala-style sammi dance presentations.

The annual Republic Day parade in Delhi has seemed to have the effect of "validating" regional dances, and establishing them as "official" state dances. With the infrastructure established by its promotion at Punjabi University and the release of Jee Aayan Nu, sammi was ready to be sent to the nation's capital to represent Punjab. The first Republic Day presentation of sammi, in January 2004 and organized by the NZCC, was marred by a minor scandal of identity impersonation (see Jupinderjit Singh and Mahesh Sharma, Tribune, 31 May 20). That my inquiries about sammi from the NZCC in 2004 were greeted with some suspicion may have been affected by this case. For 2005's Republic Day, an even larger group of 250 schoolgirls were sent to perform sammi in the parade (Jagjit Singh, personal communication). Daisy Walia directed the routine and Prem Chand was in charge of the drum accompaniment, each dependent on the other while their interpretations often clashed.

Since awareness of sammi has spread, it has also trickled down to the level of college youth festivals and similar functions. In November 2004, Panjab University inaugurated a separate, annual "Heritage Festival" to open up a space for sammi and other marginalized dances. Other events have followed, including special festivals dedicated to these dances.[7]

Several issues present in the contemporary practice of sammi. First to note is the dominant position of men in transmitting what was a women's tradition. The books to document it have been by men, who had limited access to information. The government performance in 1968 and most subsequent performances have been directed by male "experts." While Daisy Walia is the notable exception, I sensed a certain lack of acceptance of her authority among other professionals that was based at least in part on her gender. In this patriarchal environment, the realization of sammi, unlike its male counterpart jhummar, is clearly limited by the secondary, circumscribed status ascribed to its (her) role as a sort of wife.

Secondly, the contemporary dancers of sammi are young women who have not received the tradition from their family, and, in the vast majority of cases, whose ancestors probably never danced it. Bazigar women are economically, and to some extent, culturally prevented from attending college. Furthermore, they would not be performing for the public. Therefore, the original practitioners of sammi are now alienated from its practice, and the current dancers, while supposedly somehow representing "Punjab" are essentially performing the art of a foreign culture.

Thirdly: In its technical details, reconstructing sammi—for whatever purpose— has suffered from almost total lack of reliable information. So while college students are beginning to dance it, the problem of how they can go about actually learning sammi is acute. Unlike bhangra or jhummar dancers, sammi has no central figure with inherited knowledge to lead the movement, nor any standardized routine. With almost every detail of current performances being contested, each individual presenter, in doing so, becomes an "authority" on the dance, and practically reinvents sammi each time.

Culture promoters' self-consciousness of the fanciful nature of these performances may explain why obtaining any information or media documentation from them was always difficult if not impossible. They appeared unwilling to give out dates or names, perhaps feeling that I might take them to task. Records were non-existent, unless secretly coveted. I began to wonder whether events of which I had heard had ever really happened, and if contemporary sammi had any significant relation to older forms. Those who would speak about sammi do not know it firsthand; those who know it are not heard. Even as I became accepted as a friend to the Bazigar community, my position as a male prevented me from every meeting sammi face to face.

I cannot say in detail how the Bazigar women feel about the often very hollow representations that one sees in the current revival. Do they offend, or are they merely brushed off cynically as typical fabrications of the institution of culture production? The lay public and culture promoters, on the other hand, show no anxiety about sammi's admission into the pantheon of representative Punjabi dances. Rather, people believe in the simulacrum that is contemporary sammi. Asked to describe sammi the almost universal response can be paraphrased as: "Sammi is a ladies' dance from the West Punjab. The local college girls performed it last year." Many were genuinely confused as to why I would be seeking videos and photos of performances from two decades earlier when I could easily see "sammi" in the flesh at a contemporary performance.

Baudrillard asked, "[W]hat becomes of the divinity when it reveals itself in icons, when it is multiplied in simulacra?" (1988:168). Not only does the simulation of sammi create a representation of something that never was, it also replaces the memory of what was there. Sammi would not be the only invented tradition in Punjab. In fact, both modern bhangra and jhummar dances have their origins in the state-directed process suggested by Hobsbawm's (1983) use of the phrase (Schreffler 2002). What makes sammi striking is its nature as neither an obviously invented tradition nor a revival, but rather as a series of replacements. The lack of connection of its current practice to the past, at any level beyond the basic idea of "a women's dance," means that sammi must constantly be re-invented.

References

Baudrillard, Jean. 1988 [1981]. "Simulacra and Simulations." In Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, ed. by Mark Poster. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Bedi, Sohindar Singh Vanjara. 1978. Panjabi Lokdhara Vishvakosh. Vol. 2. New Delhi: Rajauri Garden.

Daler, Avt�r Singh. 1961? Panjabi Lok-Nac. Jalandhar: New Book Company.

"GCG-Patiala girls shine." 2001. Tribune (Online Edition). 8 March, 2001.

Jupinderjit Singh and Mahesh Sharma. 2004. "3 girls allege being duped into impersonation." Tribune (Online Edition). 1 June, 2004.

Gurnam Singh. 2001. Panjab de Lok Nac: Jhummar te Sammi. Patiala: Punjabi University.

Hobsbawm, Eric. 1983. “Introduction: Inventing Traditions.” In The Invention of Tradition, ed. by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Manmohan Singh, dir. 2002. Jee Aayan Nu. T-Series. Feature film.

‘Nijjhar’, Bakhshish Singh, ed. 2000 [1994]. Hir Varis Shah. Jalandhar: New Book Company.

Schreffler, Gibb. 2002. "Out of the Dhol Drums: The Rhythmic 'System' of Punjabi Bhangra." M.A. thesis, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Schreffler, Gibb. 2005. "'It's Our Culture': Standardizing Punjabi Jhummar Dance." Unpublished paper, read at 50^th annual National Conference of the Society for

Ethnomusicology, 19 November, 2005.

HOMEPAGE

[1] Waris Shah's Hir, wriiten circa 1768, includes the line: sami ghatt ke luDiiaa~ maariiaa~ ne: "[The ladies] do sammi and luddi dances" (as found in Nijjhar 2000:243).

[2] The location was in what is now the city of S.A.S. Nagar (Mohali).

[3] The office is located in Sector 38, while Garib Dass' relatives largely occupy the adjacent sectors 38-West and 40.

[6] The award was given by the Punjab Sangeet Natak Akademi and the ceremony was held at Tagore Theatre, Chandigarh, 15 Dec. 2004.

[7] The first of these was held in March 2005 at Talwandi Sabo.