The muse's journey: transcultural translators and the domestication of Hindi music in Hausa popular culture

Abstract

Abstract The diffusion of entertainment forms made available through small media technologies has created transnational pathways for the adoption, appropriation, adaptation and domestication of entertainment forms in African mediascapes. In Muslim northern Nigeria, the most common transnational entertainment template is Hindi film and music from the Indian Bollywood film industry. The popularity of Hindi films has stimulated an appropriation strategy that relies on onomatopoeic translation of lyrics from popular Hindi film soundtracks, which are reworked so that they become part of the Muslim Hausa entertainment space. This article traces the antecedent Muslim Hausa onomatopoeic tradition rooted in Hausa shamanism, tsibbu, which reworks selected verses from the Qur'an as vocal amulets to 'cure' various ailments. The cure relies on the vocal harmony between the Qur'anic verses and appropriate Hausa equivalents. This practice eventually found its way into popular culture mediated by the massive popularity of Hindi films, which saw local Hausa musicians using vocal harmonies from Hindi film lyrics and reworking them into Hausa versions. This process was strongly entrenched in the performances of the Ushaq'u Indiya (Society for the Lovers of India), a Sufi bandiri (frame drum) group in the heart of the city of Kano, northern Nigeria. The Ushaq'u Indiya's performance repertoire consisted of reworking the vocal harmonies of Hindi film lyrics into Hausa versions in which the Hausa lyrics sing the praises of the Prophet Muhammad. This onomatopoeic translation strategy thus domesticated Hindi film soundtracks and lyrics. Keywords: Hausa filmKanoBollywoodonomatopoeiatranslationtsibbu Notes The original sources of the narratives in both Ruwan Bagaja and Magana Jari Ce were identified as Alif Laila, or Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (the 1839 edition translated by Sir William Hay McNaghten, although other editions were also consulted by Imam), Panchatantra (a book of Indian fables and folktales), which came to Imam through the Arabic Kalilah wa Dimnah as translated by Thomas Ballantine Irving (1980), Bahrul Adab, Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales, Aesop's Fables, The Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales, Tales from Shakespeare, and Raudhul Jinan. This section partly draws on Adamu Citation(2006). Information here draws, in a limited way, on Adamu Citation(2008). I have recorded Nazeer on video displaying his Hindi linguistic capabilities – probably the first Hausa record of a speech in the Hindi language. The video is now available on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGIVOqfct5U, titled 'Namaste from Nazeer Magoga, Kano, Nigeria'. The translation here is not literal, but has been derived from a Hausa version of the verses as translated by Nazeer Magoga Al-Salgawai, Kano, Nigeria, 25 October 2009. Notably, similarities can be found here with the evolution of Indonesian popular music, dangdut, 'a hybrid pop music extremely popular among the lower classes that incorporates musical elements from Western pop, Hindi film music, and indigenous Malay tunes' (David Citation2008, 179). In Indonesia, as in northern Nigeria, Hindi films were shown after independence in 1945 as entertainment for Indian troops. Subsequently, they were frequently shown on local television and thus eventually served as a model for the development of Indonesian films.