Many years ago, I watched a video of River Dance --- a stage show featuring some superbly upbeat Irish folk music and wonderfully sprightly dance sequences. A recent video that went viral recently on social media irresistibly recalled this show to my mind. It features similarly rousing and enjoyable music but the dancers are doing the bhangra! Check out the viral video of these dancers in Ireland doing the bhangra for St Patrick’s Day:
It starts out with the unmistakable beat of the traditional ‘dhol’, but then the distinctive fiddling joins in to completely transform the performance into a marvellous fusion of two cultures. It is still the bhangra, but it is somehow more.
People loved the dance performance to mark the occasion. St Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland and the Irish people celebrate the feast of St Patrick on 17th March with great enthusiasm all over the world.
This tweet seems to point out how chicken tikka masala is the national dish of Britain.
There were some comments following the video that expressed a negative view.
Unfortunately, there were some who saw this lovely embrace between two cultures as an imposition of another culture upon Irish culture.
This tweet makes a joke about the emphasis that Irish dancing puts on footwork; how the arms are often resting on the hips or by one’s sides.
The bhangra is vigorous and joyful and always a lot of fun; people loved watching men do the bhangra to Irish music
A lot of people welcomed the fact that something like this celebrates diversity. It is a mark of respect that one culture expresses towards another.
The band Delhi 2 Dublin has the strangely titled song Weed, Samosas And Sriracha (with a matching bizarre video).
As the world gets more and more globalised, we will find more such cultural fusion; even mishmash. Rather than see something like this as a dilution or imposition, why not embrace it as enriching and mind-widening?
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