[Post title refers to: My Chemical Romance, "Sing"]Welcome.
To my blog about bhangra. My bhangra blog, if you will. That girl in the middle of that picture there--that is me. Hi. I am waiving at you (with both hands). I am also bobbing my head to the PCBCA Elite 8 mix. It is fire. If you have no idea what I am talking about--you are in the right place. And if you have every idea of what I am talking about--I am glad you are here. Some background questions and answers regarding the blog, and regarding my background, are below. These are just the basics--to get us started and hopefully to get you interested. There is much, much more to come.
Why start a blog about bhangra?
The competitive bhangra scene is major. MAJOR. Sometimes I like to say a word twice and capitalize it the second time to really drive my point home. So the scene—it is growing. GROWING. Okay, it was a joke that time. Competitions in North America started in the late 1990s. A few university teams got together, competed in an auditorium for hundreds of attendees and called it a day. In the early 2000s, things started to change. The competitions grew in size and in number and the teams followed suit (it could be argued that it was vice versa). Today, there are more than thirty competitions a year and nearly every major university has at least one bhangra team. In addition, there are several independent team in each geographic region—some co-ed, some all-female and some all-male.
The competition is fierce. The amount of preparation that goes into creating and executing a routine for a competition is impressive, to say the least. Unless you are in the scene or have a family member or friend in it, it is hard to understand the dynamics, the competitiveness and the heart and soul that are involved. That is where I come in.
Who am I, you ask?I am a long time competitive bhangra dancer. Like I said, I will save the full story for later, but my basic bio is this: I started dancing bhangra competitively at the University of Michigan in the Fall of 2001. I was a member of the Michigan Bhangra Team (MBT) until 2005 and was a captain and choreographer for three of those four years. After graduating, I performed once with the infamous Khalsa Junction (in 2005). In 2006, I joined the Lethal Bhangra Crew, better known as LBC. I am still dancing with them today.
Why are you starting a blog now, you ask?
Well, this has been something percolating for quite some time. I have shared my thoughts on the bhangra scene in various documentaries, interviews and conversations and thought I was contributing to the scene. Turns out, the reach of those conversations has been pretty limited. So instead of keeping my thoughts to myself and assuming I am contributing to the overall dialogue, I decided to start this blog.
In addition, a lot of people ask me how I started dancing with LBC and about my various experiences dancing over the years. I want to share those stories. As to the timing of the blog, I am sure a lot of people are asking if I am too old to be caring about this stuff and blogging about it. In my opinion, which is what ultimately matters to me, the answer is NO. But, I will save age and bhangra for another blog post.
Why blog at all, you ask?
Because I love bhangra. Like, seriously. I LOVE it. See how I did that capitalization thing again? I would say I eat, breath, sleep this stuff but I have a demanding job and limited time—so that is not exactly true. But I do love it. And I see bhangra as a powerful force—it brings us together, challenges us, allows us to create networks and shape the future of our community. To what extent we have done so will be the topic of another blog. But nonetheless, I see bhangra not just as a means to an end—but as a beautiful thing in and of itself. Plus, I am competitive as a mug, so competing and talking about competing is what I wanna do. So Im’ma do it.
So welcome. I hope you enjoy.
