(from Hindi catnī).
A local and popular music and dance form of East Indian culture in the Caribbean. In the Indo-Caribbean communities of Guyana, Surinam and Trinidad the term chutney traditionally denoted light, fast and often ribald songs in Bhojpuri, a dialect of Hindi, set to variants of the four-beat tāla known in India as Kaharvā. Chutney songs were most typically performed, often with lewd dancing, by women in sexually segregated contexts at weddings and childbirth festivities. In Trinidad in the mid-1980s chutney, as performed by a solo vocalist with harmonium, dāndtāl (a metal rod struck with a clapper) and dholak (barrel drum), became widely popular as a social music and dance genre, enjoyed by both men and women at large public fêtes and weddings. In the next decade a hybrid genre called chutney-soca emerged which incorporated dance-band instruments, modern calypso rhythms and mixed Hindi and English lyrics. Although controversial, chutney-soca has become popular among many Creoles as well as Indo-Caribbeans and its appeal has spread to the Indo-Caribbean communities in North America.
P. Manuel: ‘Chutney and Indo-Trinidadian Identity’, Popular Music, xvii/1 (1998), 21–43
PETER MANUEL