This is so true. Just so damn true that I had to bring it to the attention of SM readers. Just read what Jason Neffler has to say about a topic that doesn’t get nearly enough attention:
I’m really glad I decided to go to my current school. I can’t think of an American college with such balanced and complementary diversity. While any old school can boast of their Indian dance groups, few can say they have the perfect number of them. Well, this one can. Yeah, you could say I have it good when it comes to Indian dance groups. Or, more accurately, I have exactly the right amount when it comes to Indian dance groups.
Three.
I checked out a few other schools before coming here, and the choice wasn’t too difficult. Some of these schools have upwards of seven Indian dance groups. That undercuts the cultural importance of the dancing with petty competitiveness, and dilutes the experience with oversaturation. Meanwhile, a bunch of the other schools have only one or two, which is equally unacceptable. Try coming away with any informed appreciation of Indian dancing with only two Indian dance groups on campus. It’s completely ridiculous–insulting, even.
No, three is dead-on… [Link]
By the time most of the people who read this website have kids, I think that this elusive balance of three Indian dance groups per campus will be a thing of the past. I forsee a day when somewhere between 7-10 troupes have established themselves at every college (except maybe community college). This development, combined with the ever-quickening pace of global warming, has got me thinking as to whether children are even a good idea. Is this the world we want to bring them into? One where Bollywood-style dancing is done by everyone?
Like a proper Bharatnatyam, Neffler’s wisdom kept flowing:
… if I’m looking to take a break from my economics studies with a little Bharatanatyam or Odissi, I can always check out Eternal Bhakti when they perform at the commons. When it comes to bringing to life the ancient theories put forward in the Natya Shastra Of Bharata, I believe I speak for the entire student body when I say that there’s no room for improvement in that department.
Of course Eternal Bhatki’s not for everyone. But at this school, it doesn’t need to be. We also have Saraswati, for those who like their Manipuri slow and relaxing. No pressure here. Just Indian dancing with no frills. [Link]
Just share this with someone. The Onion continues to be America’s finest news source.
C’mon now, what about the Kuchipudi?
This will undoubtedly lead to West Side story/Thriller type dance fighting. Can’t we all get along ?
Oberlin has no Indian dance groups. So there.
Hey, watch your demographic! Some of us have kids applying to college as we speak. She doesn’t dance though, whatever will she do?
Definitely we would not like our children to be in a bollywood type dancing, we have such beautiful dances in india which reflect our culture and true indianism. Riya
Indimoto/blog.com
There is no way in hell I’m sending my kids to a college that doesn’t have a top-ranking bhangra team – so Harvard better shape up!
Dance groups and a capella groups are for suckers. When I was choosing a college I used the best criterion ever…basketball. I refused to apply to any schools that did not have a top 20 basketball program. Yes, this immediately eliminated most of the ivies from competition, but I probably wouldn’t have gotten in anyway. Thus, the remaining schools were all big state schools. That’s where it’s at.
To avoid a complete threadjack, I don’t recall Maryland having any indian dance groups in the mid-90s, let alone 3. That’s odd considering the ISA was so huge. I guess times have changed.
the brown chorus:
bhangra rankings are rigged! same with the competitions! judges are uncles, uncles are judges! registration fees go to a pro-________ (insert your favorite separatist movement or just “Indian gommint”) slush fund!
Is there an after party? I’m there.
I can stomach even the bad dance performances but it’s the fashion shows that feature 10 year old lehnga’s and ugly pink whatchamacallits that I can’t watch. For fashion shows, the party is backstage. Yeehaw.
I don’t necessarily think they’re rigged – you just have to know what you’re getting into it.
If you’re a bollywood-ized bhangra group that can do a bunch of acrobatics, but don’t have an idea what the words of the song are about, you’ll probably do well at UCLA’s Bruin Bhangra or at GWU’s Bhangra Blowout.
If you’re a traditional team with a live singer and dholi, you’ll probably do well at UC Berkeley’s Dhol Di Awaaz or San Jose State’s Nach Da Punjab.
Back in the day there were about 2 dholis and they played for every team except Stanford and SCU. It was a genuine monopoly in the dholi market. The “It was rigged!” narrative only deepened.
Man!!! the elitism. I sure hope harvard admissions ppl are reading this cuz. sure as hell, they are eventually going to go from ivy league to cobweb league. Now, it is this kind of unbiased reporting that we desi parents need in order to make informed choices on “guiding” our children in the hallowed path of education. However, I disagree with this “dance troupe” notion of seperating the has beens from the modern elite colleges. To wit, I would like to statistics regarding the number of FOB desis who are part of the Graduate Program. 1. Programs that have at least 1000 FOB desis of which no more than 200 may be IIT are the first filter. The IIT filter makes sense because we all know that IITians have virtually nothing to teach our UnderGraduate children concerning the realities of life and common sense. 2. Of the remaining 800, no more than three may be Tamil and no more than 1 may be Bengali. Again, this makes sense given the rationale that 1 Bengali is one too many and any more than 3 Tamils is a sure sign of Factionalism. 3. The rationale for cherry picking Programs on this basis is clear : where else can my lovely children who are my sole source of social security in retirement receive the facts of life, but in an apartment close to campus living 2 to a room. Here, they will be indoctrinated in the way of life known as Vedantism or Pedantism (synonyms) and will also be taught that a reasonable dinner can be constructed from cooked rice, thayir and appalam heated on the stove.
I find it hard to believe that The Onion can provide this level of accurate reporting and will eventually look to The Alternate Onion (Garlic) for further information. Let us not belittle the added advantage that Garlic is considered a sure sign of ManoDharma and is widely regarded in almost all cultures except the Brahmins as the single transforming ingredient. Haldi pshaw, Garlic I say!!!
Brick City bhangra in the house!! Bhangra Blowout is fun but there is always a fight at one of the “official” after parties. Last year, two got stabbed and one died.
the post is hilarious. I can’t wait when schools will have mandatory theater programs which teach “the overly melodramatic acting technique from bollywood”
Y’all are missing the bigger question.. Yes, they have their bollywood bhangra teams, but can they do garba?
That’s the key!
Aaah the nostalgia Ashi! Of course back in the day it was all garba garba garba. None of this techno bhangra garbage. Although things could get a lot worse.
Soooooo true. I feel like the fashion shows are all about hazing you, anyway. I mean, who gets stuck doing them? Unhappy female freshman who couldn’t get “in” with the dance team ringleaders and were told to do their time before being allowed to dance in other things.
The only downside of DDA is that at least 50% of the teams will dance to the same song, and in most years it’s some variation of “Aaj Mera Jee Kardaa.” I think my favorite DDA competition featured UC Davis’s (semi-new) GIDDHA team! I hadn’t seen full out giddha in so many years; it was great!
Shout to BCB. I was on it their first year out, even though I was like their aunty or something, since I was already a college grad.
Sidenote: I really wish the desi “fusion” groups would stop adding pseudo-hiphop into their routines. It’s usually former Bharat Natyam dancers who do hiphop moves as if they were still doing Bharat Natyam. No, you can’t dance like Sean Paul, and you mess up the C-walk everytime you do it. Please stop.
But can they do the worm?
i for one think the idea is cool, just not 99% of the kids who do it. I went to Hopkins, not ivy, not state school, very lame, and “Team India” who did the dances, well lets just say i’d rather stick a shiv in my eye.
this is by far the worst part of any bhangra competition, for example, the one time i went to an afterparty in DC after BhangraBlowout, turned out to be the worst night. Its an open invitation for all the creepy nasty gross desi dudes to come and try to molest some drunk girls. Seriously i went with some friends, a couple girls, if me or another one of our guy friends was not around them at ALL times someone would try to do something stupid. Seriously, what kind of assholes just grab girls bootys and shit for fun…. gross molesting desi dudes who don’t get laid and then try to fight me when i confront them about being a horrible human being.
Outside of this example, i recall the year after someone got stabbed at the ‘Official AfterPArty’ of BhangraBlowout. I love the tough Blindians who drive Benzs and act hard…hey buddy you have a benz cause your dad’s a doctor not cause you sell crack in the ghetto…
~minor escape for work~
LOL. I’ll remember that line.
they should switch over to Chalkayian for next year….oye chuk dey!
I hear ya cocoapuffs, they are just out there to copafeel and then brag to their friends as if they got laid. Blowout’s afterparties should be avoided at all costs but those germs are everywhere nowadays so basically any desi party. After two drinks, its just a big mess waitin to happen and then more lil tidis pop out of nowhere and start behavin like they own the joint.
I am short too but anybody under 5’2 should not be actin hard Period
is good too
When I was at JHU, there were no formal dance groups on campus. Various groups of “friends” would dance at the fall and spring semester cultural shows (like yours truly; donÂ’t hate me).
About halfway though my undergraduate years, a competitive raas team and a competitive bhangra team were organized under the auspices of the “Indian Cultural Dance Club.”
By the time I left, there were more desis on campus and thus, more dance groups.
These guys blow them all away.
The “editorial” is hilarious and surprisingly well-informed. I wonder if the Onion recently hired this guy.
Razor Ramon is a little confused by who is doing Banghra? Are desi’s of all background doing Bhangra or is still mostly a punjabi desi thing.
Also unless Razor Ramon is mistaken, the punjabi population in the United States is not as big as it is in Canada?, so How could bhangra be so big in the States. Last year when Razor Ramon was in Vancouver, Razor Ramon want to bhangra festival and there was over a 1000 people there. Razor Ramon was blown way at the size of the events.
Why does Razor Ramon have to shit all over other people’s conversations?
Took the words right outta my fingers 😉
sakshi –
i can talk shit for days to those kids.
Pooja –
i don’t know what year you graduated, but i prolly came in when you were leaving, In honesty, the vast majority of the students were okay, but my beef with “team india” or TI for short was that they were hella arrogant and shit,a stench which would smell up the cultural shows. By this i mean the show turned into a bloody popularity contest, and it was all about the outfits, who came to the show….nothing to do with real culture.
It was also these same arrogant TI kids who would talk shit about me cause i didn’t want to participate and call me white-washed. Normally this wouldn’t bother me, but the fact is that copying a bollywood dance doesn’t constitute being indian/desi to me. Once again it was all good because these same idiots all took Intro to Hindi, which i was the TA for(they couldn’t believe the white-washed, pot smoking kid knew hindi, let alone TA the class…some of these grimey kids would cheat too, i guess they are desi afterall!)
long story short, i don’t hate you, i’m sure you’re a great person, and not one of those stupid TI people
I’ve found Razor Ramon and then after he abandoned his dancing/DJ career and focused on wrestling
Wow. That was so neccessary.
I have a question. Why is it bhangra, and not other regional dances? I have to start worrying about which colleges to apply to soon. I’ll be sure to keep the indian dance ratio in mind 🙂
I went to Cornell and it had exactly three Indian dance groups. There was a lot of conflict between them…bhangra claimed it was better/cooler than raas and tried stealing its dancers, raas was trying to be more traditional than bhangra, Sitara was trying to do Bharatnatyam, Bollywood, and hip-hop at the same time, and thus they were confused.
The ideal college? Probably not if you want to do Indian dancing, hah.
Did you catch his debut match against Yinling the Erotic Terrorist broadcast on WWE yet?
Is Bhangra have anything to do with sikh religon, or is something related to more of punjabi culture.
usc didn’t have a dance group when i was there..they didn’t have acapella groups (brown,white,purple) either (which i submerged myself in when i was on the east coast…and then penn masala went up in 1995-96…and the rest they say is history)
i actually went out of my way to look at colleges that had less indians and more diversity… (oops.. did i just say that aloud?)
Oh man, cocopuffs, I’m having a parallel experience in the Hopkins area….
Well said. Graduation will be a sweet relief.
USC is about as diverse as there parking lot- Benz, Benz, Beemer, Benz, Lexus, Hyundai, Beemer, wait whoa! Hyundai? WTF?
sorry ms. pea, i just love jabbing usc. all in good fun =)
yeah that hyundai was a visiting ucla student 🙂
I was watching this classic song from the Beatles, when I realised there’s actually a SINGH in the video (he comes in around 3:15 or so, and is in the left half of the screen). This song is from 1968!
Then he comes back around 4(min)15(sec). Pretty cool.
NP: you beat me to it. I was about to point out that Cornell has the ideal number of Indian dance groups. Although the bhangra team was about half non-desi by my last year.
Are the bhangra teams in American colleges of mixed backgrounds or are they all punjabi?
begtodiffer, she could sing– so far, Stanford’s raagapella is all male, but can you hear it now, the girl version?
Isn’t it U Penn that has the U Penn Masala a cappella group? They were hot, both as performers and objectified pieces of desi ishteak-meat.
Completely punjabi culture.
Mixed backgrounds. Hell, Stanford usually always has the token black or white guy =)
Yes, and they are so one of the highlights of UPenn as a college 🙂 (no offense to the Quakers)
Hehe. One of my “surprises” at Yale was its Bhangra troupe, which had a fair share of white Americans, Latinos and East Asians.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEjmZ6NDjcI